Dizaina Studija. Telpa Forma Laiks

Artists had already “laid their eyes” on the fabulous red brick palace in the Esplanāde Square during the first Bolshevik period – built at the very beginning of the 20th century in accordance with Wilhelm Bokslaff’s plan for the building of the Business School of the Riga Stock Exchange Association. After the formal establishment of the Latvian Academy of Art in 1919, famous painter and outstanding functionary Vilhelms Purvītis walked around for a few years with his “academy in his bag”, looking for a space for his pet project. An attempt to occupy the business school failed, and the new art higher education institution commenced its work in the autumn of 1921 in the former Peter the First High School on the corner of Kronvalda Boulevarde and Muitas Street: the space was already too tight right from the beginning and unsuitable for the requirements of art studies. Only a year later the Academy moved into the Railway Central Administration building at 3 Gogoļa Street, and spent its productive interwar period there. It may have been affected by the political situation, but the Academy finally secured the sought-after building on the Esplanāde in 1940, commencing its operations there immediately after the Soviet occupation. If you discount the period when the institution had to partly evacuate the building to provide space for the War Hospital (1941–1944), the Academy of Art has been in continuous residence there.
Despite the romantic enthusiasm for the past demonstrated by the exterior of the building, built in the spirit of 19th century Historicism, Wilhelm Bokslaff planned the new school to be adapted to the progressive ideas of the early 20th century: the physics and chemistry classrooms and laboratories etc., with modern fittings, were located in the teaching block on Nikolajs Bouldevarde (now Krišjāņa Valdemāra Street) which was centrally heated, while the vestibule, hall and administration offices were on Totlēbena (Kalpaka) Boulevarde. The building even contained a bicycle storage space (!) for students, a step ahead of our modern times. The building is a striking symbol of the public face of Riga, and also forms a pleasant symbiosis with the Latvian National Museum of Art next to it. Obviously, on a philosophical level one could debate to what extent – the building’s story-like image with its little towers, brick and stone adornments, Art Nouveau murals and stained glass – inspire the creative spirit or, or perhaps the exact opposite, overshadow and disturb its free flight. One could ask what effect the building has on contemporary art and modern design. Meanwhile, right from the beginning, building users have found themselves within a process of trying to fit practical requirements into the architectural icon – the aesthetic arts have special requirements for natural light and all of the art and design subjects studied at the institution require a comprehensive material and technical basis, i.e., suitably equipped workshops. In addition, demands change with the times: new media requires new technology.
The first expansion of the Academy took place immediately after the war. In 1948, a storage building was built on the park side – a “warehouse for teaching materials” – according to the designs of architect Vladimir Scherwinsky. The fire-fighting authority had demanded the demolition of the temporary wooden buildings built there during the war, and the institution decided to replace them with a stone building. The architect’s family remembers that the institution’s management presented a plate to the master, created in Rūdolfs Pelše’s ceramics master-workshop, as a thank you for his work. It can be assumed that the vast collection of the Academy, accumulated in the inter-war period, also disappeared in a similar way – documented data about the fate of the museum items are missing. From the architectural point of view it was too early for a revolution, and Scherwinsky’s new building was stylistically tailored to the old building’s neo-Gothic forms. The building, which until then opened onto the park, gained a closed courtyard and was sealed off from its surroundings like a convent of the Middle ages. The most creative time at the art school came in the 1960s–1970s, when it – atypically for an academic structure – became a centre for progressive ideas and accumulated cultural processes, which breached conventional boundaries. In the 1960s, decorative art and design made its way into teaching programmes, at the time still disguised by the term “industrial art”. The old walls once again became too constricted for art, and in 1979, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, a competition took place within the framework of the ‘Pilsētprojekts’ planning institute for the addition of a workshop for the Latvian SSR State Academy of Art. For the first time in Riga, a number of tenders offered the major part of the new space to be located underground – similar to the current process of the planned building addition for the adjacent Latvian National Museum of Art. However, at that time, of the 15 competition submissions, the project which courageously juxtaposed the new parts of the building against the old was chosen. This design also won the Medal of the Architectural Association of the USSR. Architects Andris and Biruta Vainovskis contrasted the neo-Gothic vertical structures with the horizontal parts of the new block, also incorporating the sharp roof motifs of the old building. The project was developed over a number of years, until it was found that its integration into the city’s communication networks was too expensive.
The Academy’s next expansion attempt came back on track only in this millennium. The Janis Rozentāls Riga Art High School left the building and the institution allocated the building’s former “residential” block to new designers and conservators. In 2002, the locally most influential architectural and artistic investigation company AIG undertook pre-project research into the building and compiled an architectonic inventory, which was directed towards a readjustment of the building, creating the preconditions for its development. In the same year the Latvian Academy of Art organized a sketch project competition for the building extension in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture’s real estate supervisor of the time, Nekustamie īpašumi, SIA and the Latvian Association of Architects. The idea was to get the funding for its construction from – as mentioned in publications of the time – “state investment funds”. The construction programme was impressive: workshops, four auditoriums and two exhibition halls, a public catering space and even a small work-purposes hotel were planned for the new building. Of the 11 tenders submitted, the submission from the architect bureau F. L. Tadao won (architects Uldis Lukševics and Ivars Lapiņš in collaboration with designer Holgers Elers). The authors had given the new building a poetic meaning, with the idea being for it to have an associative connection between classic values and contemporary art. In a sense the project was utopian as it exceeded the boundaries of the building plot and significantly intruded into the park area. Even with the growing economy, the required investment of about one and a half million lats couldn’t be found in Latvia, and the avant-garde proposal joined the realm of paper architecture.
A new opportunity to get funding presented itself with the competition. The source of the funding, which was earmarked for the modernization of teaching spaces and equipment in higher education institutions, and also to provide education opportunities for the disabled, was the European Regional Development Fund. The Academy of Art received support for the development of new studio spaces and a library and the modernization of studio equipment – the contract was formally signed on 19 May 2010. The overall cost of the project was just over one million lats; co-funding for the European contribution was provided by the Ministry of Education and Science with a partial advance from the State Treasury. The previous building expansion plans for the Academy of Art were connected with the demolition of the storage building in the courtyard and some significant new structures. Time transformed the situation: with a change in the social climate, the concept that post-war constructions also had a right to exist gained credence, plus frugality was now considered a sign of contemporary thinking. On the basis of the sketch project done by the AIG, the SZK architect bureau (architects Andis Sīlis and Guntis Ziņģis) developed a reconstruction project for the storage building, adapting it to the needs of the teaching process. The old building serves as a shell where the new block will be placed. The historical old wall, in which additional apertures will be made, is divided off from the new wall by a metre-wide space. The old exterior wall on the southern side will maintain its character and serve as a blind, which will protect the building from overheating – the new part is made of economical glass facades. Adhering to the protection zone of a cultural monument of state significance and the views of the historic building, the vertical dimension has been developed at the underground level, balancing the mutual relationship of the new and old facades. The part of the roof, where a terrace is planned, will be raised slightly; together with the basement level three additional metres are gained, and the building is divided into two floors. The only newly created architectonic accent, the presence of which was demanded by the needs of people with disabilities which were outlined in the competition, is the massive concrete ramp. A lift is not really necessary for a two storey building, and with the ramp project a different focus has been given – the creators of this new art refer to the history of contemporary architecture in a symbolic format (the project authors invoke Le Corbusier’s and Kahn’s robust icons of modernism as the source of inspiration). This upward movement has been planned as an associative similarity, which expresses the neighbouring neo-Gothic forms through historical means; the massive concrete ramp without a supporting construction coupled with the final stage of the roof exit staircase reveals the same idea, but through the possibilities of a contemporary engineering and technical idea. In addition, according to the plan, the ramp will also have the honour of carrying the burden of art – its finish can be determined through the art campaigns of the institution. In planning the functions of the new space, extended negotiations took place – the institution gained an extra 450 square metres, but the growing demands have exceeded the area. It is this reason in particular which has inspired a flexible solution: part of the space in the basement are given to new media, which requires a ceiling height of five metres; 200 square metres are dedicated to variable functions and the space can be transformed with movable partitions and coverable windows, gaining space for activities, exhibitions or conferences (as necessary), depending on the number of participants. It is difficult to say how these changing plans will actually work, but, taking into account the continual dynamic changes experienced by society, the solution appears to be forward-thinking. In parallel the institution will also gain warehouse space in place of the former “sheds”. And this time the exercise will finish with a real result – the construction has already started.