While preparing an article about Estonian architect Mart Port for FAMagazine, Gregor Taul became acquainted with Mart Port's writings from the Soviet period. In addition to his work as an architect and urban planner, Port was one of the most active writers on architecture in Soviet Estonia; his bibliography consists of several hundred articles. In addition to writing articles, he appeared hundreds of times on television and radio. In 1966, he published a book about his trip to England. In the Soviet period, engaging in the communication of architecture was called architectural propaganda. In official parlance, propaganda was a positive and constructive term.

On this visit to the Estonian Museum of Architecture, researchers Gregor Taul and Merilin Tee examined drawings by architects Toomas Rein and Vilen Künnapu from the museum's collection. During the Grand Tour to Latvia and Estonia in June 2024, participants of the project UpGranT - Updating the Grand Tour. Memory and Invention of the European Built Environment stayed overnight in the sanatorium – the drawing of which can be seen on the photo.

During the Soviet period, architects in Latvia had a rather limited access to information on architecture abroad. They could make an official request to the state library through the so-called architectural design institutes where they were employed as architects. Upon such a request, they could take out architecture magazines to which the library was subscribed and bring them to their institutes for studying for a limited period of time. A common practice was copying the most interesting projects or details on a tracing paper in order to keep them as a reference. Considered the most obvious low-tech solution for obtaining a copy, this must have been a productive learning practice as well.

As part of the Estonian Academy of Arts 2024/2025 autumn semester Interior Architecture MA programme Spatial Semiotics class, students had an opportunity to visit Vello Asi’s house. The visit was part of a day-long urban walk in the suburbs of Mähe and Merivälja which boasts some of the most interesting private houses in Tallinn from the mid- and late-20th century.

It contains some testimonies on the official trips abroad. In the Soviet Union, travel for architects was considered part of the so-called qualification raising measures. The organisation of trips to local destinations was the responsibility of the local unions of architects, whereas all travel abro­ad was exclusively managed from Moscow, with the local unions tasked with providing the allocated number of participants.

Researchers Gregor Taul and Merilin Tee interviewed architect Vilen Künnapu in his studio in central Tallinn. Künnapu, one of the architects who has had the greatest impact on the appearance of Tallinn's city centre, has concentrated on painting for the past ten years. Through the windows of his studio, he can see several buildings he has designed in the Estonian capital. In the interview, we focused on the architects' travels during the Soviet period and discussed how, in the conditions of the Iron Curtain, a generation of radical architects emerged in Tallinn in the 1970s and 1980s, actively participating in the international architectural scene.

As part of the Estonian Academy of Arts Interior Architecture MA programme students participated in the course Presentation Methods during which they focused on the Kuldne Kodu terraced building designed by architect Toomas Rein. At the beginning of the course, the students lived in the building for four days with their tutors (Viktoria Ugur, Triin Kampus), getting to know the house and its residents by visiting various apartments. As the course progressed, each student chose a specific apartment, design element or design principle from the building and developed them into architectural drawings and produced a conceptual model of the chosen topic. Students presented their final projects during an open session for both faculty members and other students.

Estonian Academy of Arts Interior Architecture department organises monthly morning coffee meetings where either teachers or students share their ongoing creative projects. During this meeting Gregor Taul gave an overview of the project UpGranT - Updating the Grand Tour. Memory and Invention of the European Built Environment illustrating the presentation with rich photo materials.

During a visit to the Estonian Museum of Architecture, researchers Gregor Taul and Merilin Tee examined photos by architects Mart Port and Raine Karp in the museum's photography collection. The collection consists of around 30,000 items, the most extensive part of which are the photos from the Soviet period. The slide show on Raine Karp's travels included, among other images, his trips to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1966), Japan (1969), USA (1973) and Seoul (1996).

Leading us along the Baltic coast from Riga up until Tallinn, Grand Tour #2 allows us to explore the rich architectural history of this Northern European region. During this trip, there is a particular focus on the socialist modernism – ambiguous architectural heritage from the Soviet occupation period, as well as some remarkable examples of contemporary architecture.

During the summer of 2024, visitors to the Latvian Academy of Art (LMA) at Kronvalda bulvāris were invited to discover Grand Tour #2 to Riga and Tallinn through a virtual exhibition. Installed on a large screen in Kronvalda Park, one of the most public in Riga, the exhibition reached far beyond the academic context, engaging not only students and staff but also a wide and diverse audience of passersby and city residents.

Positioned along a key pedestrian route leading to the faculty, the screen became an accessible urban interface, allowing every citizen to encounter the research and travel experiences of the Grand Tour. In this way, the exhibition extended into the public realm, transforming the park into a space for shared architectural reflection.

Curatorship, organization and installation: UpGranT - LMA Team (Liene Jākobsone and Manten Devriendt) 

Scans from Modris Ģelzis’s personal archive contains 394 drawings, digitised for the first time as part of the Updating the Grand Tour project and now housed at the Latvian Museum of Architecture in Riga. The documents reveal his idiosyncratic combinations and keen interest in furniture, interiors and housing design, with clear influences from Scandinavian architects such as Jorn Utzon, Arne Jacobsen and Alvar Aalto, and references to his own summerhouse in Saulkrasti.

At the beginning of April, researchers Gregor Taul and Merilin Tee, together with lecturers Malle Jürgenson and Hans Alla and students of Cultural Heritage and Conservation at the Estonian Academy of Arts, visited the home of architect Erika Nõva (1937-1938) at Kadaka pst 120 in Tallinn. The house was introduced to us by Erika Nõva's granddaughter Siiri Nõva.

Between June 12 and 14, 2024, taking the opportunity of Grand Tour # 2, the Porto Team reproduced part of the Alvar Aalto Route that Fernando Távora and Álvaro Siza took together in 1995 through Finland and Russia.

This itinerary, in Fernando Tavora's handwriting and kept in Álvaro Siza's Archive, is part of the current exhibition "C.A.S.A. Collection, Álvaro Siza Archive" and was celebrated during a guided tour on June 25th, Álvaro Siza's birthday.

From this itinerary, the Porto Team focused on Helsinki and its surroundings, visiting all the Alvar Aalto works studied in loco by Siza and Távora, thinking about possible affinities and contaminations.

Organization: UpGranT - Porto Team (Helder Casal Ribeiro and Sílvia Ramos)

The Estonian Association of Architects is an organisation of architects, landscape architects and architecture scholars. The union’s main activity is architectural expertise, both in organising architectural competitions and in providing expert advice. It also has its own archive, which includes personal files of its members. On this visit, we looked at the membership cards of Vilen Künnapu and Toomas Rein, which provided information about their trips abroad during the Soviet era.

Estonian Academy of Arts Interior Architecture MA students continued to analyse the Pärnu KEK Golden Home building during their creative studio supervised by architect Pavle Stamenović from Belgrade. Each student chose one physical or conceptual detail from the building and developed it into a spatial interpretation.

The Estonian Museum of Architecture was founded for the purpose of collecting, preserving, studying and exhibiting materials on the formation and development of professional architecture in Estonia from the early 20th century to the present. The main part of the museum’s collections consists of architectural drawings, city plans, blueprints of buildings, photographs, models and other manuscript materials. The museum also keeps nearly 200 architect’s personal files where information about every person’s trips were recorded. During the visit to the museum we consulted the archival materials of Erika Nõva and Toomas Rein. 

During the 2024/2025 autumn semester Estonian Academy of Arts Interior Architecture first year MA students lived and worked in the Kuldne Kodu terraced building designed by architect Toomas Rein. As part of the course Presentation Methods the students worked in the building for four days with their tutors (Viktoria Ugur, Triin Kampus), getting to know the house and its residents by visiting various apartments. The aim was to learn about the building through sketching and modelling.

Gregor Taul and Merilin Tee visited the archives of Pärnu City Government to see the original drawings of Pärnu KEK's Golden Home building. After the visit to the archives, we visited the terraced building together with the house manager and got acquainted with one of the larger atrium apartments on the first floor.

As part of the Estonian Academy of Arts 2024/2025 spring semester Interior Architecture Master’s Studio II class, students visited Erika Nõva’s home. During the course, students will work with the theme of proposing a renovation project for a historical building, keeping in mind the obligation to preserve valuable interior and exterior details. 

The architects Aet Ader and Karin Tõugu talked about the history of their office b210 and how the participation in international programmes - Erasmus, Nordplus, as well as trips with art historian Mart Kalm - has played a big role in their creative work. As participation in the work of the European Architecture Students Assembly (EASA) was crucial to the creation of b210, we also talked about building international relationships during studies.

One of the satellite events of the 2024 Tallinn Architecture Biennale was the Open House Tallinn which opens up buildings that are otherwise hard to visit. Researcher Merilin Tee visited the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs building which during the Soviet period served as the headquarters of the Communist Party in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. The building was designed by Uno Tölpus, Olga Kontšajeva, Raine Karp and Mart Port. Karp and Port are two of the selected architects researched during the project UpGranT - Updating the Grand Tour. Memory and Invention of the European Built Environment. Unfortunately, the conference hall, which used to seat 600 people and is popularly known as “Sprat tin hall”, where Mart Port had a brave idea to fasten 60 000 oiled sprat tins to the ceiling, remained closed for the visitors. However, some of the well-preserved chairs from the hall could be seen in a modern press room.

Just a bit before Christmas holidays Gregor Taul and Merilin Tee had a chance to interview Margit Argus in her office. We talked about Margit’s studies, starting her own office and her travels throughout her career.

In our selection of Estonian architects-grand tourists we want to give an insight to the four historical periods which have shaped life and culture in the country during the past 120 years: Russian czarist rule, inter-war independence, Soviet power and liberation since 1991.