Spatial Planning and Infrastructures of Leisure in Estonia and the Soviet Union, 1960s-1980s

• In Event: Free Time and Emancipatory Space in Eastern European Art and Architecture, 1960s-1980s

Abstract

This paper studies the idea of the communist leisure society and how it facilitated the emergence of new scientific discourses and spatial disciplines in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. Taking Estonia as a case study, the paper will focus on the ‘soft infrastructure’ – the institutional and intellectual framework of leisure spaces to consider whether innovation in spatial practices, often associated with critical architects and designers, was partly born in research institutes where spatial thinking and practice were promoted differently.

Author

• Epp Lankots, Estonian Academy of Arts (Estonia)