Open search
« Tuna 4 / 2021

The Biography of a House – Kreutzwaldi 13

This article focuses on the multiple entanglements between a house, lives lived within it, and social and political contexts within which both are situated and adapted. Rather than seeing a house as a background for where things happened to people, the house (home) biography approach interprets space as an active participant in society and sociality. By zooming in on 13 F.R. Kreutzwaldi Street, Tallinn, this article demonstrates how societal ideals have materialized in a house and in every-day practice in nearly a hundred years from 1924 when the house was built up to the present day. The focus is on the turbulent periods in Estonian history – the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the 1990s with the in-between stabilisation of the soviet lifestyle of the 1970s. The latter had a material expression in extensive re-construction of the house, with which traces current inhabitants like society in whole are still trying to tackle.