Insurgent Landscapes

• In Event: Landscapes of Memory: Contested Built Environments and Politics in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, 1920s-2020s

Abstract

Insurgent landscapes interrogates the relationship between landscape and Soviet-era architecture in Latvia. It focuses this inquiry onto a range of case studies, foregrounding their geo-aesthetic properties and examining them from the vantage point of the landscape. Emerging from this perspective, the perceived distinctiveness of a regional site starkly contrasts with the Soviet construction complex's emphasis on standardization and uniformity, thus presenting site-specificity as a curious instance of spatial insurgence. Rather than approaching these cases as isolated instances of dissident-architecture, the paper aspires to explore the tactics employed to disrupt spatial homogenization, and to rekindle the tension between the Soviet built environment and the intricate tapestry of culture, symbolic significance, environmental considerations, and climate peculiarities constituting the site ex-ante.

Author

• Megija Milberga, New York U