Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros20Dossier : Small-scale Building En...Co-operative Housing in Lithuania...

Dossier : Small-scale Building Enterprise and Global Home Ownership. Beyond the Welfare State

Co-operative Housing in Lithuania as a Field of Architectural Experimentation (1960s–1980s)

Les coopératives d'habitation en Lituanie socialiste en tant que champ d'expérimentation architecturale entre 1960 et 1980
Marija Drėmaitė

Résumés

Les coopératives de logements en République socialiste de Lituanie constituent un champ d'expérimentation architecturale appliqué à la planification, la conception et la construction de logements de masse à la fin de la période soviétique (années 1960-1980). Ces maisons coopératives ont été réintroduites en URSS en 1962 pour pallier la disparition des maisons individuelles privées dans les grandes villes. Politiquement et économiquement, les coopératives étaient considérées comme une solution à la pénurie d'appartements collectifs de type soviétique. Selon les règles de la coopérative, les résidents contribuaient sur fonds propres au processus de construction de leur logement, évitant ainsi les listes d'attente. C’était aussi l’opportunité pour des citoyens plus aisés d’accéder à des logements luxueux, auparavant réservés aux membres privilégiés du parti communiste. D'un point de vue urbanistique, la transformation de maisons individuelles en immeubles d’appartements était censée limiter les terrains dévolus au logement et réduire le coût des infrastructures techniques en ville. Dans le même temps, l'introduction des coopératives d'habitation a donné lieu à une plus grande variété dans la conception des bâtiments résidentiels (des appartements mieux agencés et plus confortables, avec des matériaux de meilleure qualité) impliquant des bureaux d’études expérimentaux intégrés aux Instituts nationaux d’architecture. On propose ici l’hypothèse selon laquelle le développement de l'habitat coopératif a stimulé l'expérimentation architecturale tout en profitant à des groupes de résidents privilégiés (en accélérant la concentration des citadins les plus aisés) et à des architectes qui souhaitaient innover dans la conception et l’aménagement des espaces résidentiels.

Haut de page

Texte intégral

The house-building co-operatives within residential architecture of the late Soviet period

  • 1 Paul M. White, Soviet Urban and Regional Planning: A bibliography with abstracts, London: Mansell, (...)
  • 2 Philipp Meuser and Dimitrij Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing. Prefabrication in (...)
  • 3 Nikolay Erofeev, “The I-464 Housing Delivery System: A Tool for Urban Modernisation in the Sociali (...)
  • 4 Michael Gentile and Örjan Sjöberg, “Soviet housing: who built what and when? The case of Daugavpil (...)
  • 5 Katharina Ritter, Ekaterina Shapiro-Obermair and Alexandra Wachter, Soviet Modernism 1955-1991. Un (...)
  • 6 Mart Kalm, “An Apartment with All the Conveniences Was No Panacea: Mass Housing and the Alternativ (...)

1To better understand the environment in which Soviet residential planners had to work and to comprehend the architectural aspirations and actual capabilities present within the framework of mass residential construction, one must first understand the system itself. Many detailed and informative scholarly studies have been published on the subject of the Soviet industrialized housing reform, initiated in 1954–1955.1 A study by Philipp Meuser and Dimitrij Zadorin offers a comprehensive overview of Soviet industrialized and standardized residential construction. The book includes an analysis of the development of Soviet production and assembly, and the special characteristics of the mass housing sector.2 Recent papers have shed new light on prefabrication processes3 and the specifics of apartment allocation.4 Moreover, interest in the regional diversity of mass housing is increasing.5 In contrast, however, to the considerable amount of research dedicated to Soviet mass housing, the diversity of residential architecture and the experimentation with alternative housing models have been subjected to far less scrutiny. With rare exceptions,6 the post-war Soviet house-building co-operatives have received relatively little attention. In this context, the originality of this paper lies in the study of the emergence of a differentiated design approach to housing, when the house-building co-operatives were reintroduced in 1962.

2When, at Nikita Khrushchev’s initiative, the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee and the Soviet Council of Ministers passed an act titled “The Development of Mass Production of Assembled Reinforced Concrete Structural Components” on August 19, 1954, the reforms affected the entire system of Soviet architecture and construction, housing in particular. Planning became the responsibility of two government ministries, Gosplan and Gosstroy, each accountable to the USSR Council of Ministers. Gosplan, the State Planning Committee, was responsible for national and regional economic planning, including investment in construction. Gosstroy, the State Construction Committee, was established in 1955 as the Soviet Union's principal national institution controlling construction processes from planning to general contracting.

  • 7 Decree No. 591 “On the development of housing construction in the USSR” of the Soviet Communist Pa (...)
  • 8 Philipp Meuser and Dimitrij Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing, op. cit. (note 1), (...)
  • 9 A. Vlasov, “Napravlennost’ sovetskoi arkhitektury v uslovyakh dal’neishego razvitya industrial’nog (...)

3The development of residential zones became a critical urban planning issue, following the Communist Party's 1957 pledge to provide every Soviet family with an individual apartment.7 The restructuring of the Soviet housing construction industry focused on the standardization of housing types subject to strict regulation by the State Committee on Civil Construction and Architecture (Gosgrazhdanstroy), which was subordinate to Gosstroy. The introduction of large-panel house construction (known by its Russian acronym KPD) and the adoption in 1955 of regulations known as the Construction Norms and Rules (known by their Russian acronym SNiP) served for years as a means of controlling residential housing design. In 1956, Gosstroy organized an architectural competition for new types of design for three-, four-, and five-story blocks with small apartments. Subsequently, Gorstroyproekt, the State Planning Institute, developed model designs that were finally recommended by Gosstroy for universal rollout, thus shaping the majority of mass housing series designed between 1958 and 1963. In the period from 1955 to 1991, SNiP’s building codes for mass housing were overhauled only four times: in 1957, 1962, 1971, and 1985. As a result, mass housing design changed very slowly, and Soviet mass housing estates were famous for their monotony.8 With thousands of new residential districts planned, diversity had to be introduced. As early as 1959, the Congress of Soviet Architects noted to relieve the monotony, experimental and showcase settlements could serve as models for future construction.9

  • 10 John V. Maciuika, Marija Drėmaitė, Lithuanian Architects Assess the Soviet Era: The 1992 Oral Hist (...)

4The most effective way to introduce improvements to the Soviet residential housing system was through so-called experimental design. For example, the Vilnius State Urban Construction Design Institute set up a special department for this purpose in 1960, run in parallel to a department for standardized design. Between 1960 and 1965, numerous experimental apartment units and housing designs were produced, seeking alternatives that improved standardized designs.10 Regional and local adaptations and variations were also encouraged (as long as they did not exceed the budget).

  • 11 ZhSK – Russian abbreviation for Zhilishchno Stroitel’nyi Kollektiv (Kooperativ), a house-building (...)
  • 12 Paul M. White, Soviet Urban and Regional Planning, op. cit. (note 2), p. 200-205.
  • 13 Steven E. Harris, “Chapter 4. Class and Mass Housing”, in Communism on Tomorrow Street, op. cit. ( (...)
  • 14 The Lithuanian SSR document, a follow-up to the Soviet Union decree, was released several months l (...)

5The chronic Soviet housing shortage prompted the re-introduction of house-building co-operatives, where residents contributed their own funds to the construction of their houses.11 First introduced in the 1920s as a suitable type of housing tenure to encourage collective living, co-operatives were abolished by Stalin in 1937.12 As explained in decree that eliminated them, members of these co-operatives had benefited from the state loans covering almost 90 percent of construction. Khrushchev, however, successfully shelved the issue explaining that house-building co-operatives bring additional means into housing construction.13 In 1961, co-operative housing was revived and officially sanctioned, at the 22nd Communist Party Congress. In June 1962, a decree followed: “On Individual and Co-operative Housing Construction.”14

  • 15 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 91 (table 4.3 (...)
  • 16 Only in four republics did the proportion exceed 10%. See Ibid., p. 90.

6In his prominent study Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, Gregory D. Andrusz presented data regarding the actual construction of co-operative housing in the USSR and in each of the 15 national republics.15 The statistics show that construction of co-operative housing in the Lithuanian SSR from 1963 to 1975 was the largest on percentage basis in the entire Soviet Union (peaking at 18.7% of all new housing construction in 1970 and 1973), considerably higher than the Soviet average (2.4% in the USSR compared to 6% in Lithuania in 1963, and 6.9% in the USSR compared to 16.8% in Lithuania in 1971-1975).16

7Several historical grounds might explain this. Lithuania, along with Latvia and Estonia, were the last countries to be incorporated into the Soviet Union after the Soviet occupation of June 15, 1940 and the annexation of July 21, 1940. The long tradition of private property ownership and higher housing standards prevailing in the Baltic countries explains the attraction of a larger population to house-building cooperatives. The Lithuanian case is special also because the provisional capital, Kaunas (1919-1939), was better developed in terms of housing quality. After 1940, when Vilnius was restored as a capital city, this time of the recently established Lithuanian SSR, the lack of comfortable apartments there required urgent intervention. All these considerations provide the groundwork for the study of cooperative housing construction in Lithuania in the 1960s-1980s as social and architectural experimentation, gradually challenging and changing the Soviet housing standard.

From the collective to the individual: Co-operative housing as social advancement for certain groups within the late Soviet society

  • 17 An equivalent to the concept of “Wohnung für das Existenzminimum (dwelling for the minimum level o (...)
  • 18 Yulya Kosenkova, “Predstavlenya o tselostnom organizme goroda v period izmenenya tvorcheskoi napra (...)

8In the late 1950s, two types of housing tenure existed in the Soviet Union, state-owned and private. State-owned housing was administered and provided by two types of entities: local councils and large industrial enterprises or state agencies. The apartments owned by industrial enterprises were used as an incentive for workers and were awarded accordingly by plant managers. Housing under the jurisdiction of local councils was allocated to households on the basis of need. Council-appointed apartments were the most common and were assigned to residents on waiting lists according to family size. Such small apartments were designed according to the concept of minimal dwelling17 and were given free of charge. However, the shortage of such units resulted in long waiting lists. During the 1960s, the gradual transfer of housing stock from industrial enterprises to local authorities began in earnest.18

  • 19 Daria Bocharnikova and Andres Kurg, “Introduction: urban planning and architecture of late sociali (...)
  • 20 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 100.

9Private housing, on the other hand, was built by individuals who were assigned a plot of land by local councils or state agencies once building plans had been approved by the city executive committee and after credit had been obtained from the state bank to finance construction. With the increasing post-war urbanization,19 single-family home construction was declared ineffective because it took up too much urban land. It was therefore gradually prohibited in cities with 100.000 (and more) residents since 1958. For example, the allocation of land plots for the construction of single-family dwellings was halted in Vilnius and Kaunas, the largest cities of the Lithuanian SSR, that same year, and from 1975 onward in other cities of Lithuania. Over time, private dwellings that made 30 percent of all housing in the early 1960s became the least significant sector in the 1980s (only 7.9 percent), having been largely replaced by mass housing, except in rural areas, where it continued to be the predominant residential option.20

  • 21 Alexander Bikbov, “Tematizaciya ‘lichnosti’ kak indikator skrytoi burzhuaznosti v gosudarstve ‘zre (...)

10Politically, co-operative housing emerged as a solution to the difficult situation posed by the well-documented Soviet apartment shortage. It is important, therefore, to review what ideological underpinnings justified the legalisation of the payment for and ownership of individual apartments, which were supposedly provided free by the State. Although the official ideology still emphasized collectivism, sociologist Alexander Bikbov has noted that the rejection of the class struggle within the USSR in the late 1950s, manifested in the new Soviet Union Communist Party Program (1961), was the beginning of a discourse on individuality.21 This ideological turn not only eased the introduction of a new form of co-operative housing acquisition by 1962, but also accelerated the concentration of more affluent urban dwellers under the same roof.

  • 22 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 90.
  • 23 Henry W. Morton, “Housing Quality and Housing Classes in the Soviet Union,” in Horst Herlemann (ed (...)

11Andrusz pointed out that although the stated objective of co-operative housing was to help meet the demand for housing, in practice the co-op proved to be a popular housing arrangement for those sections of Soviet society able to afford the necessary down payment on an apartment. Co-operative schemes allowed groups of citizens to combine their efforts and become shareholders in a joint venture to build a multi-apartment complex for their own occupancy. This type of housing provided a means of channeling significant amounts of money directly from the populace into housing, thus relieving the state of this burden.22 In a rare discussion about housing classes in the Soviet Union, Henry W. Morton noted that “the Soviet Union's housing market picks up where the allocation process leaves off and depends largely on one's ability to pay. Upward movement from one housing class to the next, though not impossible, is difficult and may take a good part of one's life.”23

  • 24 Paul M. White, Soviet Urban and Regional Planning, op. cit. (note 2), p. 200-205.
  • 25 Resolution No. 150 by the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers “On the Model Regulations of House-B (...)

12House-building co-operatives were allowed to be established within local councils (municipalities) or under the jurisdiction of industrial enterprises and professional organizations, whose employees had expressed a wish to become members of the co-operative. Co-operatives operated on the basis of a group of households sharing the cost of the down payment for an apartment block and taking out state credits that corresponded to 60 to 70 per cent of the total cost, repayable over ten to twenty years at an interest rate of 0.5 per cent.24 The updated version of regulations issued in 1967 stated that house-building co-operatives had to be granted a plot of land for indefinite use, to obtain credit from the state bank, and to carry out construction under a contract. Each member of the co-operative could build only one apartment, not exceeding the 60 m2 quota of living floor space (a residential floor area measurement specific to the USSR). Members of the co-operative could participate in the construction of their houses together with their family members.25

  • 26 Henry W. Morton, “Housing Quality and Housing Classes in the Soviet Union,” op. cit. (note 23), p. (...)
  • 27 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 85.

13Before 1977, the down payment for a two-room cooperative unit was 5,000 rubles, or 45% of the 11.111 ruble cost, the rest to be paid off at low interest rates over a 15-year period. In the 1980s, the down payment was increased to 6,500 rubles. To repay this sum, it took an 37 months, on average, for an industrial worker earning 175 rubles a month.26 Yet the issue of ownership remained rather ambiguous. Andrusz explains that individual members of the house-building co-operative did not possess ownership rights to a flat in a multi-unit building. They were not permitted to sell, give away, or bequeath the property; they could only transfer the usufruct for an apartment to other family members.27

  • 28 Algimantas Mačiulis interviewed by Marija Drėmaitė (Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, 10:00-1 (...)

14One advantage of building a co-operative apartment was the time gained by bypassing waiting lists for assigned apartments. Even more importantly, it enabled the buyer to live in a better neighborhood. The interviews conducted for this research show that the social aspect of the co-operative was paramount. Residents gave top priority to a good community of peers and a good neighborhood, by avoiding “strangers in their housing co-operative” and emphasizing “people over architecture.”28

  • 29 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 97-98.
  • 30 A. Leipus, “70 šeimininkų statosi namą [70 owners are building a house],” Švyturys, no. 18, 1962, (...)
  • 31 Epp Lankots, “Classes in a Classless Society: The Elite Housing Model in the Estonian SSR and Apar (...)
  • 32 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 90.

15The process of co-operative housing construction also accelerated the concentration of more affluent urban dwellers. Andrusz noticed that “membership of a house-building co-operative is recognized by most as a symbol of status; not all who want to join a co-operative can,” yet “the desirability of co-operative membership varies between individuals and social groups.”29 For example, in 1962, the local press announced that the first residential construction co-operatives in Vilnius were organized by the following institutions: the Republican Economic Council (Sovnarkhoz), Academy of Sciences, State Committee for Higher and Special Secondary Education, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Road Transport and Roads, the Railway Board, and the similar.30 Membership was limited mainly to employees of state institutions, who received consistently high salaries, yet did not belong to the communist party nomenklatura; i.e., the highest rank of the ruling administration of the Soviet State. It is important to note that co-operative apartments should not be equated with the better housing provided by the State for the nomenklatura. Estonian researchers have explained that the nomenklatura was not interested in spending their savings on co-operative apartments. They preferred to make use of their elite position to obtain allocated nationalized pre-war bourgeois apartments or new state-owned apartments. The rent for both types was very low.31 In this regard, it is important to observe that the possibility of joining a house-building co-operative in the late Soviet period enabled larger groups of the population, regardless of their position in the ruling political elite, to gain access to material wealth in the form of better housing. This was especially true in the late 1970s, when the house-building co-operatives became even more popular.32

  • 33 Steven E. Harris, “Chapter 4. Class and Mass Housing”, in Communism on Tomorrow Street, op. cit. ( (...)
  • 34 Alexander Bikbov, Grammatika poryadka: istoricheskaya sotsiologya ponyatii, kotorye menyayut nashu (...)

16All these changes brought about by the co-operative housing construction arrangement show that late socialism provided options and possibilities for individuals to choose the collective identity to which they wanted to belong. In the beginning of the 1960s members of privileged organizations and cultural elites were the first to organize house-building co-operatives33, but later more and more better-off urban dwellers joined the co-operative housing sector. Viewing class structure through the lens of housing consumption, the “owners” of co-operative flats, with their better incomes and choice of apartment (who had exercised the option to use their own income to acquire a better-quality flat and avoid the waiting list) can be hypothetically interpreted as a Soviet middle class. Yet the definition of classes in Soviet society remains complicated and, according to sociologist Alexander Bikbov, the attempts “to mechanically copy European historical lexicons, without observing double vigilance with respect to the social conditions of the circulation of concepts and the historical distance when reconstructing their meaning, give very problematic results.”34 Even if the term “Soviet middle class” remains controversial, the social changes associated with the formation of house-building co-operatives show the increasing social layering of late Soviet society.

From standardized to custom design: Co-operative housing as a challenge for architectural experimentation

  • 35 Resolution No. 592 by the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers “On the Construction of Individual a (...)

17In the early 1960s, co-operative apartment buildings were supposed to be built according to standardized designs provided by the State Planning institutes.35 Usually these referred to five-story apartment blocks containing 40, 60, or 70 standardized units ranging in size from one to three rooms. The one-room apartment covered a total of 30 m2 of useful floor space, of which 19 m² was “living floor space”; the two-room apartment measured 43 m2 for 31 m2 of living floor space; the three-room apartment, 52 m2 for 39 m2. Standardization was the economic means of remaining within the budgeted construction cost of 118-128 rubles per square meter of floor space.

  • 36 “Nauji projektai kooperatinei statybai [New designs for co-operative buildings],” Statyba ir archi (...)

18However, in late 1960s Vilnius, it was noticed that “because of improving material conditions more and more house-building co-operatives started demanding modification of standardized designs”.36 Indeed, to attract the young, talented scientific, cultural, and administrative professionals, the State was compelled to make provision for modifications to the design and furnishings of the standardized apartment block. In this context, house-building co-operatives became a driving force for experimentation in the field of residential architecture.

  • 37 See for example: Yuri Slezkine, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution, Princet (...)

19The story of the Soviet privileged housing goes back to before the re-emergence of the housing co-operatives of the 1960s.37 Already in the 1930s some blocks of flats were built for special categories of residents to whom the usual social standards did not apply, and this discrimination continued well into the 1960s. The local Communist Party and privileged ministries or departments built “improved comfort” apartments for their top-echelon employees (known as a ruling elite of nomenklatura). These flats featured larger kitchens, additional bedrooms, bathrooms, and toilets, elevators, servants’ rooms, and other small luxuries. A servant room might look out of place in Soviet society, which aimed at eliminating home servants, however, its existence (following pre-war standards, a small, 6-square-meter room next to a kitchen with a separate window) in the apartments of the privileged is a good indication of the persistence of classes in the “classless society.” These houses were also built using better construction materials. Likewise, though façade assemblies were simple, they were distinguished by higher quality detailing and better overall maintenance. The essential features of these buildings were additional individual space and lower density: at most they were four-story structures (when there was no lift) compared to the standard five-story multi-apartment block series; they had only two apartment units per landing (compared to three or even four in the standardized mass housing series); they featured higher ceilings, and increased overall floor space for residential and utility rooms.

  • 38 Design for a 16-unit apartment house, archit. Stasys Bareikis, Nijolė Bučiūtė, Vilnius, 1960. Lith (...)

20For example, a building designed by Stasys Bareikis and Nijolė Bučiūtė in 1961 for the Soviet Lithuanian Council of Ministers (A. Mickevičiaus g. 13, Vilnius) consisted of sixteen three- to four-room apartment units with servants’ rooms, distributed over four floors in two building blocks, each with a spacious lobby.38 The same building types were constructed in several picturesque suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s. While these buildings may not have been extravagant in terms of their exterior design, which resembled urban multi-unit dwellings of the late 1930s, their zoning recalled that of pre-war luxury apartments, usually constructed in picturesque historic villa districts around the city center. (Figs. 1-2)

Figure 1: Apartment building for the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers, designed by Stasys Bareikis and Nijolė Bučiūtė, 1961 (A. Mickevičiaus g. 13, Vilnius).

Figure 1: Apartment building for the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers, designed by Stasys Bareikis and Nijolė Bučiūtė, 1961 (A. Mickevičiaus g. 13, Vilnius).

Source: Juozas Šaparauskas, 1986 (Cultural Heritage Center Library).

Figure 2: Apartment building for the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers, designed by Stasys Bareikis and Nijolė Bučiūtė, 1961 (A. Mickevičiaus g. 13, Vilnius). Floor plan of the unit with two apartments.

Figure 2: Apartment building for the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers, designed by Stasys Bareikis and Nijolė Bučiūtė, 1961 (A. Mickevičiaus g. 13, Vilnius). Floor plan of the unit with two apartments.

Source: Personal archive of Nijolė Bučiūtė.

21The important change that housing co-operatives introduced in the early 1960s was the possibility for better-off citizens to obtain housing luxuries that were previously available only to the privileged party nomenklatura. In the beginning, the demand by house-building co-operatives to modify the standardized designs was closely connected with an attempt to improve pre-existing floor plans. What was commonly regarded as an improvement in the plans at that time included: (1) the elimination of walk-through rooms (the need for isolated rooms, especially in two-room apartments, was regularly expressed); (2) extra utility space (a small utility room, called a “dark room” or “dark storage” because it was windowless, was supposed to be a much more convenient in-house storage space compared to storage rooms in the basements of standardized houses); (3) a kitchen exceeding the standard 6-square-meter quota of floor space was usually considered a luxury; (4) separate rooms for the toilet and bathroom were only introduced in later designs of standardized flats and were in great demand, especially by larger families.

  • 39 “20-ies butų kooperatinis namas [Co-operative house with 20 units],” Statyba ir architektūra, no.  (...)
  • 40 “Nauji projektai kooperatinei statybai [New designs for co-operative buildings],” Statyba ir archi (...)

22The increasing demand for custom designs from house-building co-operatives gradually induced urban planners and construction officials to prepare experimental designs for housing blocks and apartments with better layouts,39 or even experimental “separate sections.”40 The latter were units of several apartments that could be combined in different vertical and horizontal configurations in a modular “block” to obtain the desired outcome. The main advantage of such a “separate section” was the possibility to produce buildings with different sizes, shapes, and numbers of apartments in response to the requirements of house-building co-operatives. Such semi-custom design proposals were a smart compromise in the context of the rigid Soviet residential construction economy. However, the great majority of these experimental designs were never utilized or were implemented with considerable modifications, because of economic restrictions. (Figs. 3a, 3b, 3c)

Figure 3a: Design (experimental) for a house-building cooperative of 20 apartments, designed by Algimantas Umbrasas, Vilnius State Urban Planning Design Institute, 1966 (façade).

Figure 3a: Design (experimental) for a house-building cooperative of 20 apartments, designed by Algimantas Umbrasas, Vilnius State Urban Planning Design Institute, 1966 (façade).

In the house, four 1-room apartments, four 3-room apartments, four 4-room apartments and eight 2-room apartments were planned. The two-room flats were the most popular. The house was supposed to be built of red and yellow brick with colored loggias.

Source: Statyba ir architektūra, no. 8, 1966, p. 27-28.

Figure 3b: Design (experimental) for a house-building cooperative of 20 apartments, designed by Algimantas Umbrasas, Vilnius State Urban Planning Design Institute, 1966 (section floor plan with 3 apartments (1 room-2 rooms-1 room)).

Figure 3b: Design (experimental) for a house-building cooperative of 20 apartments, designed by Algimantas Umbrasas, Vilnius State Urban Planning Design Institute, 1966 (section floor plan with 3 apartments (1 room-2 rooms-1 room)).

Source: Statyba ir architektūra, no. 8, 1966, p. 27-28.

Figure 3c: Design (experimental) for a house-building cooperative of 20 apartments, designed by Algimantas Umbrasas, Vilnius State Urban Planning Design Institute, 1966 (a section floor plan with 2 apartments (3 and 4 rooms)).

Figure 3c: Design (experimental) for a house-building cooperative of 20 apartments, designed by Algimantas Umbrasas, Vilnius State Urban Planning Design Institute, 1966 (a section floor plan with 2 apartments (3 and 4 rooms)).

Source: Statyba ir architektūra, no. 8, 1966, p. 27-28.

  • 41 Lietuvos TSR istorijos ir kultūros paminklų sąvadas [List of cultural and historic monuments of th (...)

23The privilege of choosing a better plot for the location of the house, a better standard of comfort reflected in the floor plan, or even better construction materials depended on available finances, the position of the sponsoring organization in the social/political hierarchy, and the informal ties between the house-building co-operatives and the local bureaucracy. Some privileged agencies were able, for various reasons, to successfully request custom designs for their buildings. In 1974, architect Aida Lėckienė designed a multi-unit apartment building in Vilnius (Šeimyniškių g. 30, completed in 1977) for the house-building co-operative of the Soviet Lithuanian Council of Ministers. Socially, it demonstrated an important shift within the local nomenklatura. Together with the lower-ranked employees of the privileged agency, they decided to “invest” their own incomes in the construction of a better apartment. Architecturally, the structure was a clear illustration of “improved comfort,” both inside and out. Joining four 5 to 8-story blocks, each with its own lift, the complex housed 52 non-standard apartment units (3 two-room units, 27 three-room units, 17 four-room units, and 5 five-room units41)—a true luxury by Soviet standards. In addition to taller ceilings and larger kitchens, each apartment included an additional small room with daylight, which could be used for a variety of purposes—as a storage/utility room, a servant’s room, or a small home office. The building's brick walls were finished in terrazzo plaster. (Fig. 4)

Figure 4: House-building co-operative of the Soviet Lithuanian Council of Ministers with 52 non-standard apartment units (Šeimyniškių g. 30, Vilnius), designed by Aida Lėckienė, 1974-1977. Photo: G. Pocius, 1985.

Figure 4: House-building co-operative of the Soviet Lithuanian Council of Ministers with 52 non-standard apartment units (Šeimyniškių g. 30, Vilnius), designed by Aida Lėckienė, 1974-1977. Photo: G. Pocius, 1985.

Source: Cultural Heritage Center Library.

  • 42 Design for a 9-story, 18-unit apartment house, architect Aida Lėckienė, Vilnius, 1979. Lithuania ( (...)

24Architect Aida Lėckienė designed another multi-unit house in Vilnius in 1974. The nine-story, 18-unit house was originally supposed to be built in the new Žalgiris mass housing area; however, the area was never constructed. But the design was later used by the house-building co-operative and built in a different part of Vilnius. The house contained three- and four-room apartments only, with extra halls and two bathrooms per apartment.42 (Fig. 5)

Figure 5: Design for a 9-story, 18-unit apartment house in the Žalgiris mass housing area (which was never constructed) designed by Aida Lėckienė, Vilnius, 1979.

Figure 5: Design for a 9-story, 18-unit apartment house in the Žalgiris mass housing area (which was never constructed) designed by Aida Lėckienė, Vilnius, 1979.

Source: Vilnius Regional State Archives.

25Though custom designed co-operative apartment buildings were multi-unit structures (instead of private single-family homes), they nevertheless inherited the traditional “bourgeois” comforts, their most distinctive features being large rooms, bathrooms with windows (or two separate bathrooms in an apartment), and servants’ quarters. It can be concluded that the diversity of co-operative housing design increased in the late Soviet period, with an ever-increasing number of applications for permits to build custom designed co-operative residential buildings. In this regard, the co-operative housing sector served as a field of experimentation for architects, eager to express more varied planning ideas.

Co-operative housing for artists

  • 43 Resolution No. 428-p by the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers “On the designs of creative studio (...)
  • 44 Marija Drėmaitė, Baltic Modernism. Architecture and Housing in Soviet Lithuania, op. cit. (note 5) (...)

26The greatest range of privileges in terms of non-traditional and non-standard apartment design was enjoyed by members of the academic and artistic communities, who benefited from the fact that artist studios did not count as living spaces and were, therefore, excluded from the floor space calculation. As early as 1953, artists and sculptors were already being permitted to include creative studios adjacent to residential apartments in newly built houses in Vilnius and Kaunas.43 Members of other art organizations were also allowed to apply for larger living space arrangements, justified by the need for a creative studio or study room. The well-known special apartment house for writers with 28 spacious apartment units (1958) and the composers’ village of 16 small semi-detached houses in Vilnius (1960), built and financed by the Union of Artists of the USSR foundation, are an excellent demonstration of the housing privileges provided by the state to its cultural elites.44

27After 1962, members of local artistic organizations were allowed to form house-building co-operatives and were granted the right to apply to local authorities for land plots to build their homes. They continued to request permits for custom-designed houses based on their special needs for a creative room or a studio. Architects supported such arrangements, because it was a tempting creative field to test and practice non-standard housing approaches.

28As socialism progressed, artistic unions advantageously used the possibility to build co-operative apartments with studios, which meant highly desired extra space. True to their name, artistic and cultural workers, together with architects, showed much more creativity than the Communist Party officials or the technical community. Their projects yielded exceptional living spaces in the context of the Soviet urban co-operative housing schemes, such as semi-detached or row houses of two or three floors with separate entrances, fireplaces, and halls.

29In 1967, thirty artists, sculptors, and designers formed a house-building co-operative under the name “Menas” (“Art”) and proposed the construction of creative workshops with adjoining flats. The group managed to secure a land plot near a wooded area in Vilnius, a permit for a custom design issued by the Lithuanian SSR State Construction Committee, and design requirements issued by the chief architect of Vilnius city municipality. It is interesting to note that artists received the narrow northern plot, whereas the southern plot across the street was reserved for the Communist Party nomenklatura. The co-operative then approached architect Algimantas Mačiulis, who was employed at the state planning institute for communal design (and was married to an artist), with a view to design their dwelling complex. (Figs. 6, 7, 8, 9)

Figure 6: Design for the house-building co-operative “Art” in Vilnius, architect Algimantas Mačiulis, 1968.

Figure 6: Design for the house-building co-operative “Art” in Vilnius, architect Algimantas Mačiulis, 1968.

Source: Vilnius Regional State Archives.

Figure 7: Original site plan for the house-building co-operative “Art,” 1968, architect Algimantas Mačiulis.

Figure 7: Original site plan for the house-building co-operative “Art,” 1968, architect Algimantas Mačiulis.

Source: Personal archive of Algimantas Mačiulis.

Figure 8: Floor plans for the “Type B” apartment of the house-building co-operative “Art,” 1975.

Figure 8: Floor plans for the “Type B” apartment of the house-building co-operative “Art,” 1975.

Source: Drawing: Personal archive of Algimantas Mačiulis.

Figure 9: House-building cooperative “Art” after construction (north façade), Šilo g. 29, Vilnius, 1975.

Figure 9: House-building cooperative “Art” after construction (north façade), Šilo g. 29, Vilnius, 1975.

Source: Photo: Personal archive of Algimantas Mačiulis.

  • 45 Housing unit for the house-building cooperative “Menas” (“Art”), first design version, 1968. Lithu (...)
  • 46 Algimantas Mačiulis, Permainingi metai. Architekto užrašai [Changeable Years. An Architect’s Notes (...)
  • 47 Ibid., p. 230.
  • 48 Marija Drėmaitė, “Symbolic Geographies, Nordic Inspirations, and Baltic Identities: Finnish Impact (...)

30In the first version of the project, Mačiulis designed thirty houses, arranged in a row.45 Each house had three floors and was offered in three versions: a three-room unit with studio (82 m2), or a four-room unit with the option to include a small or large studio (89.5 or 96 m2). Because it exceeded the 60 m2 limit per apartment, however, the proposal was never approved. Mačiulis recalls that the project had to be revised even in consultation with the Lithuanian Communist Party Central Committee.46 The final version of the complex featured twenty-eight row houses divided into two groups and was completed in 1975. A single home consisted of 56 m2 of living space (four rooms distributed over the first and second floors), a kitchen, storeroom and garage on the ground floor, and a 30 m2 studio with fireplace. To the south, each home had its own separate open yard, seemingly extending the studio workspace into the outdoors. In his memoirs, Mačiulis wrote that the cost of a house was 18,000 rubles (including the down payment of 10,000) and was affordable only by successful artists with sufficient incomes.47 It is interesting that the initial exterior design resembled the Sunila residential area designed by Alvar Aalto in Finland (1936-1938, 1947, 1951-1954). This demonstrates the aspiration of young Lithuanian architects to belong to international modernism and their admiration of modern Finnish design, initiated after their first study trip to Finland in 1959 and furthered later, when the USSR opened a little bit more to “the West.”48

  • 49 Algirdas Kaušpėdas interviewed by Marija Drėmaitė, “Waiting for a New Rebellion,” in Marija Drėmai (...)

31In other Lithuanian cities in the late Soviet period, artistic organizations took ever bolder approaches. In the early 1980s, the young architect Algirdas Kaušpėdas founded a house-building co-operative for architects in Kaunas and applied for a land plot. He also designed a complex of twenty-four houses with small front gardens, composed into four rows. At that time Kaušpėdas was still employed at the state planning institute for urban design in Kaunas, but he left the position immediately after the construction of the house. The project was truly revitalizing for Kaunas in 1985, as it gave birth to both a new postmodernist building trend as well as a new lifestyle. “I devoted my entire soul to make this happen,” Kaušpėdas remembers. “But many around me kept saying that it was a utopian vision and that everything would come to an end once someone eventually complained about it and had it shut down. Maybe we were lucky, or perhaps our smart strategy helped. We got nine architects to form a house-building co-operative and invited several influential partners to join, including the Kaunas Housing Construction Factory. We also took advantage of my father’s connections, since he was already a fairly high-ranking official, the head of the Building Trust. He had a friend from the Planning Committee who was in charge of economic affairs. And we also recruited the son of a high-ranking official of the Building Committee in our co-operative. In other words, we engaged in bureaucratic lobbying from all sides. And we succeeded. Until then, we architects had been living in dormitories. Moving from a dormitory to a four-bedroom cottage was quite an event!”49 Apartments like these, with living space distributed over two floors, were still rare, and their construction was evidence of increasing possibilities and the growing search for individuality in residential construction. (figs. 10-11)

Figure 10: House-building co-operative for architects (Plieno g. 1, 3, Kaunas), designed by Algirdas Kaušpėdas, 1984-1985. Photo: Česlovas Mazūras, 1985.

Figure 10: House-building co-operative for architects (Plieno g. 1, 3, Kaunas), designed by Algirdas Kaušpėdas, 1984-1985. Photo: Česlovas Mazūras, 1985.

Source: Personal archive of Marija Drėmaitė.

Figure 11: House-building co-operative for architects (Plieno g. 1, 3, Kaunas), designed by Algirdas Kaušpėdas, 1984-1985.

Figure 11: House-building co-operative for architects (Plieno g. 1, 3, Kaunas), designed by Algirdas Kaušpėdas, 1984-1985.

Source: Site plan (redrawn by Archfondas, 2015).

Conclusion

32In seeking an answer to the question of how unique and custom-designed residential complexes could have emerged within the rigid standardization of Soviet mass housing construction, several factors should be taken into account. Foremost are the increasing importance of the renewed discourse on individuality and the steadily growing demand for individualized housing. Analysis of the social context of the co-operative housing allows us to see that the discourse on individuality changed certain areas of the Soviet order. It attests to the fact that the Soviet housing system was never a monolithic structure, but a set of alternative and competing projects. The convergence of the values of “socialist” and “bourgeois” explicit in the house-building co-operatives can be understood as a result of the emerging urban professionals and creative communities that demonstrated different levels of opposition to a rigid Soviet housing economy. Through the lens of material culture, the Soviet citizens who built co-operative apartments could be conditionally referred to as the late Soviet society's emerging middle class, enjoying higher incomes and the privilege of using their earnings to acquire better residential conditions.

33Although co-operative building was promoted by official Soviet rhetoric as “people building their own houses,” the house-building co-operatives were not a bottom-up initiative. However, in late Soviet society, they unleashed the entrepreneurial skills of the emerging middle class and creative communities which resulted in non-standardized residential architectural construction. In addition to providing a much faster way to obtain an apartment, housing co-operatives also offered greater comfort over standard apartments and the assurance of living among like-minded neighbors, who would care for their own property. Next to the search for architectural uniqueness, co-operative housing's social aspect was paramount, since residents placed the most value on a good community and neighborhood.

34The house-building co-operatives in late Soviet society emerge as a field of architectural experimentation for architects and their clients, offering a possibility to express more varied design ideas in the 1960s–1980s. House-building co-operatives were granted the option to introduce modifications to the design and furnishings of the standardized apartment block. They responded by improving apartment layouts and even creating entirely new residential typologies, such as row houses or custom-designed multi-family apartment houses. The sufficiently privileged position enjoyed by creative organizations within the Soviet system and informal relationships fostered between political and cultural elites facilitated the adoption of bold non-standard housing approaches and alternatives to Soviet standardization.

Haut de page

Notes

1 Paul M. White, Soviet Urban and Regional Planning: A bibliography with abstracts, London: Mansell, 1979; Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984 (Studies in Soviet History and Society); William Craft Brumfield and Blair A. Ruble (eds.), Russian Housing in the Modern Age: Design and Social History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 (Woodrow Wilson Center Series); Steven E. Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore,: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

2 Philipp Meuser and Dimitrij Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing. Prefabrication in the USSR 1955-1991, Berlin: DOM publishers, 2015 (Grundlagen, 38).

3 Nikolay Erofeev, “The I-464 Housing Delivery System: A Tool for Urban Modernisation in the Socialist World and Beyond,” Fabrications, 2019, vol. 29, no. 2, p. 207-230. DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2019.1611255; Kateryna Malaia, “A Unit of Homemaking: The Prefabricated Panel and Domestic Architecture in the Late Soviet Union,” Architectural Histories, 2020, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 12. DOI: 10.5334/ah.453

4 Michael Gentile and Örjan Sjöberg, “Soviet housing: who built what and when? The case of Daugavpils, Latvia,” Journal of Historical Geography, 2010, no. 36, p. 453-465; Idem, “Housing allocation under socialism: The Soviet case revisited,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 2013, vol. 29, no. 2, p. 173-195.

5 Katharina Ritter, Ekaterina Shapiro-Obermair and Alexandra Wachter, Soviet Modernism 1955-1991. Unknown History, Zűrich: Park Books, 2012; Marija Drėmaitė, Baltic Modernism. Architecture and Housing in Soviet Lithuania, Berlin: DOM publishers, 2017; Daniel Hess and Tiit Tammaru (eds.), Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries, Cham: Springer, 2019 (The Urban Book Series) 2019; Philipp Meuser, Seismic Modernism. Architecture and Housing in Soviet Tashkent, Berlin: DOM publishers, 2016 (Grundlagen, 45).

6 Mart Kalm, “An Apartment with All the Conveniences Was No Panacea: Mass Housing and the Alternatives in the Soviet Period Tallinn,” Architektura & Urbanizmus, Journal of Architectural and Town-Planning Theory, 2012, vol. 46, no. 3-4, p. 189-202. URL: https://www.architektura-urbanizmus.sk/2021/10/28/an-apartment-with-all-conveniences-was-no-panacea/. Accessed 27 September 2022; Steven E. Harris, “Chapter 4. Class and Mass Housing”, in Communism on Tomorrow Street, op. cit. (note 2), p. 154-187. A book by Krisztina Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013 (New Anthropologies of Europe), should also be addressed.

7 Decree No. 591 “On the development of housing construction in the USSR” of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, 1957.

8 Philipp Meuser and Dimitrij Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing, op. cit. (note 1), p. 21.

9 A. Vlasov, “Napravlennost’ sovetskoi arkhitektury v uslovyakh dal’neishego razvitya industrial’nogo stroitel’stva’ [Directions of Soviet Architecture under Conditions of Industrialised Construction]”, Arkhitektura SSSR, no 1, 1960, p. 1-8. 


10 John V. Maciuika, Marija Drėmaitė, Lithuanian Architects Assess the Soviet Era: The 1992 Oral History Tapes, Vilnius: Lapas, 2020, p. 122, p. 142, p. 206-208.

11 ZhSK – Russian abbreviation for Zhilishchno Stroitel’nyi Kollektiv (Kooperativ), a house-building collective/co-operative.

12 Paul M. White, Soviet Urban and Regional Planning, op. cit. (note 2), p. 200-205.

13 Steven E. Harris, “Chapter 4. Class and Mass Housing”, in Communism on Tomorrow Street, op. cit. (note 2), p. 178.

14 The Lithuanian SSR document, a follow-up to the Soviet Union decree, was released several months later: Decree No. 592 ‘On Individual and Co-operative Housing Construction’ by the Lithuanian Communist Party Central Committee and Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR (September 10, 1962).

15 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 91 (table 4.3).

16 Only in four republics did the proportion exceed 10%. See Ibid., p. 90.

17 An equivalent to the concept of “Wohnung für das Existenzminimum (dwelling for the minimum level of existence)” introduced at the CIAM II Congress in Frankfurt in 1929.

18 Yulya Kosenkova, “Predstavlenya o tselostnom organizme goroda v period izmenenya tvorcheskoi napravlennosti sovetskoi arkhitektury [Ideas about the integral organizm of the city in the period of changing the creative direction of Soviet architecture],” in Olga Kazakova (ed.), Estetika ottepeli: novoye v arkhitekture, iskusstve, kul’ture [Aesthetics of the Thaw: New in Architecture, Art, Culture], Moscow: Rossiiskaya politicheskaya entsiklopedya (ROSSPEN), 2013, p. 15-76.

19 Daria Bocharnikova and Andres Kurg, “Introduction: urban planning and architecture of late socialism,” The Journal of Architecture, vol. 24, no. 5, 2019, p. 593-603. DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2019.1671658.

20 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 100.

21 Alexander Bikbov, “Tematizaciya ‘lichnosti’ kak indikator skrytoi burzhuaznosti v gosudarstve ‘zrelovo socializma’ [Thematisation of ‘personality’ as an indicator of hidden bourgeoisness in the state of ‘high socialism’],” in N.S. Plotnikov, A. Haardt, V.I. Molchanov (eds.), Personal’nost’: Yazyk filosofii v russko-nemetskom dialoge [Personality: The Language of Philosophy in Russian-German Dialogue], Moscow, 2007, p. 404-426.

22 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 90.

23 Henry W. Morton, “Housing Quality and Housing Classes in the Soviet Union,” in Horst Herlemann (ed.), Quality of Life in the Soviet Union, London: Routledge, 1987.

24 Paul M. White, Soviet Urban and Regional Planning, op. cit. (note 2), p. 200-205.

25 Resolution No. 150 by the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers “On the Model Regulations of House-Building Co-operatives” (April 1, 1967).

26 Henry W. Morton, “Housing Quality and Housing Classes in the Soviet Union,” op. cit. (note 23), p. 20-24. URL: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1984-629-2-Johnson.pdf. Accessed 28 September 2022.

27 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 85.

28 Algimantas Mačiulis interviewed by Marija Drėmaitė (Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, 10:00-12:00, April 26, 2016). Personal archives of Marija Drėmaitė.

29 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 97-98.

30 A. Leipus, “70 šeimininkų statosi namą [70 owners are building a house],” Švyturys, no. 18, 1962, p. 16–17.

31 Epp Lankots, “Classes in a Classless Society: The Elite Housing Model in the Estonian SSR and Apartment Buildings in Tallinn for the Communist Nomenklatura 1945–1955,” Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi, no. 13, 2004, p. 11-41; Mart Kalm, “An Apartment with All the Conveniences Was No Panacea: Mass Housing and the Alternatives in the Soviet Period Tallinn,” op. cit. (note 6), p. 189-202.

32 Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, op. cit. (note 2), p. 90.

33 Steven E. Harris, “Chapter 4. Class and Mass Housing”, in Communism on Tomorrow Street, op. cit. (note 2), p. 178-185.

34 Alexander Bikbov, Grammatika poryadka: istoricheskaya sotsiologya ponyatii, kotorye menyayut nashu real’nost’ [The Grammar of Order: A Historical Sociology of the Concepts at Change Our Reality], Moscow: HSE Publishing House, 2014, p. 17.

35 Resolution No. 592 by the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers “On the Construction of Individual and Cooperative Dwelling Houses” (September 10, 1962) stated that multiple-family dwellings could only be built according to standardized designs. Most buildings made up of 1-4 room units, the 2- room unit being the most popular. The average residential unit living floor space was approximately 35.9 m2, and the limit was set at 60 m2

36 “Nauji projektai kooperatinei statybai [New designs for co-operative buildings],” Statyba ir architektūra, 1966, nr. 10, p. 14-15.

37 See for example: Yuri Slezkine, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.

38 Design for a 16-unit apartment house, archit. Stasys Bareikis, Nijolė Bučiūtė, Vilnius, 1960. Lithuania (Vilnius), Vilnius Regional State Archives, f. 1036, ap. 11, b. 209.

39 “20-ies butų kooperatinis namas [Co-operative house with 20 units],” Statyba ir architektūra, no. 8, 1966, p. 27.

40 “Nauji projektai kooperatinei statybai [New designs for co-operative buildings],” Statyba ir architektūra, no. 10, 1966, p. 14-15.

41 Lietuvos TSR istorijos ir kultūros paminklų sąvadas [List of cultural and historic monuments of the Lithuanian SSR], T. 1, Vilnius: Vyriausioji enciklopedijų redakcija, 1988, p. 137-138.

42 Design for a 9-story, 18-unit apartment house, architect Aida Lėckienė, Vilnius, 1979. Lithuania (Vilnius), Vilnius Regional State Archives, f. 1171, ATD-1446/2.

43 Resolution No. 428-p by the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers “On the designs of creative studios for artists and sculptors” (April 7, 1953).

44 Marija Drėmaitė, Baltic Modernism. Architecture and Housing in Soviet Lithuania, op. cit. (note 5), p. 203-210.

45 Housing unit for the house-building cooperative “Menas” (“Art”), first design version, 1968. Lithuania (Vilnius), Vilnius Regional State Archives, f. 1171, b. ATD-1127.

46 Algimantas Mačiulis, Permainingi metai. Architekto užrašai [Changeable Years. An Architect’s Notes], Vilnius, 2008, p. 225-230.

47 Ibid., p. 230.

48 Marija Drėmaitė, “Symbolic Geographies, Nordic Inspirations, and Baltic Identities: Finnish Impact on the Formation of the Postwar Modernist Architecture in Lithuania during the State Socialist period,” Architectural Research in Finland, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 21-35. DOI: 10.37457/arf.84565.

49 Algirdas Kaušpėdas interviewed by Marija Drėmaitė, “Waiting for a New Rebellion,” in Marija Drėmaitė and Viktorija Šiaulytė (eds.), Subversive Opportunism, Vilnius, 2014. URL: http://www.archfondas.lt/leidiniu/en/alf-04/waiting-new-rebellion-algirdas-kauspedas-interviewed-marija-dremaite. Accessed 27 September 2022.

Haut de page

Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1: Apartment building for the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers, designed by Stasys Bareikis and Nijolė Bučiūtė, 1961 (A. Mickevičiaus g. 13, Vilnius).
Crédits Source: Juozas Šaparauskas, 1986 (Cultural Heritage Center Library).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 498k
Titre Figure 2: Apartment building for the Lithuanian SSR Council of Ministers, designed by Stasys Bareikis and Nijolė Bučiūtė, 1961 (A. Mickevičiaus g. 13, Vilnius). Floor plan of the unit with two apartments.
Crédits Source: Personal archive of Nijolė Bučiūtė.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 542k
Titre Figure 3a: Design (experimental) for a house-building cooperative of 20 apartments, designed by Algimantas Umbrasas, Vilnius State Urban Planning Design Institute, 1966 (façade).
Légende In the house, four 1-room apartments, four 3-room apartments, four 4-room apartments and eight 2-room apartments were planned. The two-room flats were the most popular. The house was supposed to be built of red and yellow brick with colored loggias.
Crédits Source: Statyba ir architektūra, no. 8, 1966, p. 27-28.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 259k
Titre Figure 3b: Design (experimental) for a house-building cooperative of 20 apartments, designed by Algimantas Umbrasas, Vilnius State Urban Planning Design Institute, 1966 (section floor plan with 3 apartments (1 room-2 rooms-1 room)).
Crédits Source: Statyba ir architektūra, no. 8, 1966, p. 27-28.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 559k
Titre Figure 3c: Design (experimental) for a house-building cooperative of 20 apartments, designed by Algimantas Umbrasas, Vilnius State Urban Planning Design Institute, 1966 (a section floor plan with 2 apartments (3 and 4 rooms)).
Crédits Source: Statyba ir architektūra, no. 8, 1966, p. 27-28.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 469k
Titre Figure 4: House-building co-operative of the Soviet Lithuanian Council of Ministers with 52 non-standard apartment units (Šeimyniškių g. 30, Vilnius), designed by Aida Lėckienė, 1974-1977. Photo: G. Pocius, 1985.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 216k
Crédits Source: Cultural Heritage Center Library.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 126k
Titre Figure 5: Design for a 9-story, 18-unit apartment house in the Žalgiris mass housing area (which was never constructed) designed by Aida Lėckienė, Vilnius, 1979.
Crédits Source: Vilnius Regional State Archives.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 559k
Titre Figure 6: Design for the house-building co-operative “Art” in Vilnius, architect Algimantas Mačiulis, 1968.
Crédits Source: Vilnius Regional State Archives.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 263k
Titre Figure 7: Original site plan for the house-building co-operative “Art,” 1968, architect Algimantas Mačiulis.
Crédits Source: Personal archive of Algimantas Mačiulis.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 327k
Titre Figure 8: Floor plans for the “Type B” apartment of the house-building co-operative “Art,” 1975.
Crédits Source: Drawing: Personal archive of Algimantas Mačiulis.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-11.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 150k
Titre Figure 9: House-building cooperative “Art” after construction (north façade), Šilo g. 29, Vilnius, 1975.
Crédits Source: Photo: Personal archive of Algimantas Mačiulis.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-12.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 292k
Titre Figure 10: House-building co-operative for architects (Plieno g. 1, 3, Kaunas), designed by Algirdas Kaušpėdas, 1984-1985. Photo: Česlovas Mazūras, 1985.
Crédits Source: Personal archive of Marija Drėmaitė.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-13.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 578k
Titre Figure 11: House-building co-operative for architects (Plieno g. 1, 3, Kaunas), designed by Algirdas Kaušpėdas, 1984-1985.
Crédits Source: Site plan (redrawn by Archfondas, 2015).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/13188/img-14.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 204k
Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Marija Drėmaitė, « Co-operative Housing in Lithuania as a Field of Architectural Experimentation (1960s–1980s) »ABE Journal [En ligne], 20 | 2022, mis en ligne le 31 octobre 2022, consulté le 01 décembre 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abe/13188 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.13188

Haut de page

Auteur

Marija Drėmaitė

Professor, Vilnius University, Faculty of History, Vilnius, Lithuania Orcid ID: 0000-0001-6109-343X

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search