The dream of allocated flats became a key part of life in Soviet-occupied Lithuania. But as the homes were dolled out on party instructions, this turned into an instrument of social control. In a new book, architecture historians explore the free-housing phenomenon.
“The apartments were distributed on party instructions and were state-owned. [...] We explain how a political regime can affect the architectural field in such a massive way,” said Marija Drėmaitė.
Together with Viltė Janušauskaite, Nojas Kiznis and Matas Šiupšinskas, she co-authored the book, You Got an Apartment. Residential Architecture in Lithuania 1940-1990.
“Everything was counted in apartments, and we can see that almost a million apartments were built [...] from 1940 until 1990,” she said.
The goal to provide everyone with an apartment was utopian and unobtainable, as people used to wait 15 years for a flat.
Therefore, the authorities began reducing living space to make building houses cheaper.
“And what is the cheapest? Standardising and reproducing like a factory. Then we can see why the housing block is being multiplied, why the kitchens are so small, why the flats are so small, why there is this standard of 9 square metres per person, and how that standard is being enforced,” said Drėmaitė.
Seventy percent of housing was mass-built, but 30 percent was non-industrial. The book therefore asks the question: what was the alternative to these blocks of flats?
“We discovered that allotments, for example, were set up as these farming [places] to provide food, to somehow spend leisure time, so that people don't start revolutions,” Drėmaitė said.
The fate of individual houses is also an important theme of the book. In the post-war period, the building of individual houses was encouraged and supported because of the acute shortage of housing.
“However, already during Khrushchev's industrialisation period, authorities noticed that these single-family housing estates are taking up a lot of urban land and need to be densified and to be built into blocks of flats,” Drėmaitė said.
The construction of private housing would only be allowed again in 1987.
“Then what happens? We have [...] explosion [of excessive housing construction]. People were constrained and over a long period, 30 years, they had lost that tradition of what a normal, compact single-family house is, and you start seeing some 600 square metre monstrosities,” said Drėmaitė.
According to the historian, the role of architects was also important and largely unique in the Baltic states.
“In Lithuania, we can see that the architects who designed the apartment blocks, the single-family houses, and the individual flats, nevertheless had a very strong ambition to improve the environment,” she said.
“Despite these standard norms, we saw internal competitions, for example, in the Institute of Urban Construction Design there was a department of Standard Design, where there were really good architects, for example, Bronius Krūminis, who is probably underestimated and unrecognised in Lithuania as an architect, but his biography is very interesting.”
After graduating in architecture, he first worked to restore the Trakai Castle.
“He was the scapegoat for the scandal [over] the restoration of feudal castles in the 1960s, was demoted, and sent to the Typical Design Department,” Drėmaitė said.
There, Krūminis continued to create improved designs for mass-built houses, constantly experimenting and improving them.
“If we look at the Soviet Union as a whole, Lithuanian and Estonian mass-construction districts are much more humane, with very good landscaping, low building heights,” the architecture historian stressed.
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