ABSTRACT
During the post-war period, the architectural discourses and developments taking place in Estonia, annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940 as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (ESSR), were fairly consistent with those of the vast socialist conglomerate. The forcibly introduced, pseudo-classicism of the Stalinist period was followed by a decree of “abolishing the excesses” from Khruchchev in 1954, which implemented a decisive turn towards the rationalization and industrialization of the building processes in addition to the development of standardized typologies for the cities and in the countryside. Yet beginning in the late 1960s, the growth and economic independence of the collective farms (kolkhozes) in addition to the establishment of a special state design office for them, the Estonian Kolkhoz Construction (EKE Projekt), brought about a unique phenomenon of progressive and imaginative rural architecture in Estonia. Here a younger generation of architects found work and were able to experiment with form, spatial program, and materials.
