In Estonia, wooden heritage apartment buildings from the late 1800s to 1945, alongside the masonry heritage apartment buildings, are the two archetypes defined for the HeritACE project. The case studies are taken from the neighbourhood of Uus-Maailm, one of the eight milieu protection areas in the city of Tallinn. Uus-Maailm – or New World – used to be a meadow until the middle of the 19th century. Most of the wooden apartment buildings were built between 1890 and 1939, and brick apartment buildings in the 1950s–60s. It started to develop as a residential area when the need for workers' housing rose. The first Archetype is the wooden heritage townhouses (Lender and Tallinn type) that started to appear after the First World War. Wooden buildings cover ca 5% of the whole building stock net area and over 50% of the building stock built before 1945. The second type is masonry heritage apartment buildings built between 1945 and 1955 (Stalinist style).
Archetype: wooden heritage apartment buildings
This archetype can be divided into 2 subtypes: Lender and Tallinn apartment buildings. Lender types (late 1800s ‒ early 1900s) were designed for industrial workers and peasants moving to cities. These two-story buildings featured horizontal logs, finished with horizontal boarding, and were organised with 4 to 8 one-room apartments. The characteristic is the axis: normally, the central axis corresponds to the front door, and buildings could have 3, 5 or 7 additional axes, to respect the symmetry. The wooden apartment buildings of Tallinn type, built during the 1920s-30s, featured brick stairwells and housed apartments of different sizes and with multiple living rooms and modern amenities (like a water closet). The Tallinn type consists of at least two stories with an additional attic under the roof, and the facade could be finished with wooden boarding or plaster. Case Study: Koidu, Pilve, Komeedi
Archetype: masonry heritage apartment buildings Around the period of WWII, Stalinist-style buildings replaced those destroyed in the war, combining classicist forms with national elements, and were designed to accommodate workers from Soviet Russia, resulting in apartments with simple living conditions. These buildings were part of new urban planning initiatives and hold cultural heritage value due to their role in shaping the urban landscape and accommodating different social classes over time. Case Study: Kristiina, Sikupilli.