Following the Second World War, an increase in leisure time led to the extensive construction of summer houses on the outskirts of major European cities. The construction of small cabins became especially widespread in socialist countries, where the proliferation of second homes was closely linked to the development of large-scale housing estates. These modest, architect-designed but often self-built structures demonstrate how urbanised societies combined progressive, future-oriented aspirations with a nostalgic attachment to rural life, retaining traces of traditional ways of living, land use, and community life. Over time, summer house areas have become a distinctive layer of the peri-urban landscape, where historical patterns of seasonal living are increasingly transformed by suburbanisation.
Bringing together perspectives from architectural history, cultural studies and museum studies from the Baltic and Nordic regions, this symposium will explore the architecture, spatial practices and cultural meanings of summer houses and garden plots throughout the 20th century and beyond. It will examine how these practices and meanings were created, and how they have evolved or are being reinterpreted as lived heritage and within museums and other curated contexts.
The symposium is part of the joint research project “Urbanites in the Country: A Spatio-Cultural Analysis of the Summer House”, conducted by the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Estonian National Museum, and the Estonian Open Air Museum. The project is funded by the Estonian Ministry of Culture (research grant KUM-TA64).
PROGRAMME
11:00 Epp Lankots. Introduction
11:15 Mart Kalm. Searching for Weekend Houses in Interwar Estonia
11:45 Epp Lankots. Separately Together: Holidaying in a Row House
12:15 Tiina Tammet. Landscape Architects Shaping the Gardens of Soviet ‘Summurbia’
12:45 Lunch
13:30 Anu Kannike, Anu Järs. Making Do, Making Space: Creativity and Constraint in Soviet Estonian Summer Houses
14:00 Matas Šiupšinskas. 600 Square Meters of Care: Collective Gardening in Lithuania
14:30 Piia Tammpuu. Approaching the Soviet-Era Summer House Through the ‘Archive’
15:00 Mikko Teräsvirta. Step Inside a Finnish Summer Cottage: The Making of the New Exhibit in Seurasaari Open-Air Museum
15:30 Discussion and closing remarks