There are more than 60,000 species of trees and shrubs in the world. In the beliefs of many peoples, including the Estonians, a tree is a living creature -- to speak to when one was in the woods, and to bring gifts to. But as people needed a roof over their heads, the tree was taken into use for practical purposes at a very early stage. Wood was the oldest building material also for the Estonians, and their oldest tepee-like houses were made of wood. The contents and the idiom expressed in wooden architecture reflects some very deep-going psychological and social features -- wooden buildings are so much closer to the human soul than houses built of stone and concrete, there is mystery in them, they live and they breathe. From time to time they remind us of themselves with a quiet creak of the stairs or an unexpected squeak of the door.

It is believed that the world's oldest wholly preserved wooden building is the Horuyi Temple in Japan, which dates back to 607. The oldest wooden building in Estonia is the wooden church of Ruhnu of 1643–44. The destiny of a wooden building is to be born and to disappear. This raises the value of old wooden buildings, which survive thanks to more expertly selected type of wood, time of felling, better workmanship and good maintenance. 

This exhibition set itself two main aims: to highlight more interesting examples of Estonian wooden architecture from different stylistic periods, as well as to give a survey of the birth and development of the country's major collections of wooden houses -- from urban wooden areas and suburbs to slums and workers' quarters. This covers both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of wooden houses, with attention being equally shared to buildings unique and those erected to standard designs.

Both aspects are equally topical. As ecological thinking has gained ground, the popularity of wooden architecture has grown in the 1990s, winning a place also in new stylistic endeavours. Restoration of the good reputation of wood as a building material provokes interest also in historical wooden houses. In the selection of buildings from the point of view of the history of style, both the special architecture of unique buildings, the effect they have had on a concrete town or quarter, and the example they set for local builders to follow was born in mind. The main attention, however, was on the architecture of towns and urban wooden areas, with the ethnographic aspect deliberately left in the background.

The fate of wooden houses has been giving headaches to conservationists since quite some time ago. Over the recent years, wooden architecture has been disappearing at an alarming rate, both through development, as well as through neglect and vandalism, and this makes the issues of the preservation and protection of wooden houses extremely topical. 

Karin Hallas
Epi Tohvri
 
 

The exhibition was open:
1st July - 12th September 1999: Rotermann's Salt Storage in Tallinn. 
21st June - 27th August 2000: Rättviks kulturhus in Sweden. 

Estonian Wooden Architecture 

Tallinn: EAM, 1999. Compiled and edited by Karin Hallas, design by Ivar Sakk. Estonian and English texts. 173 pages, ill.