Interior Postimaja 1985, Harald Leppikson. Rahvusarhiivi.
Reconstruction of Postimaja, photo by Ilmar Saabas
Postimaja 1985, Harald Leppikson. Rahvusarhiivi.
The term taxidermy itself derives from the Greek: taxi meaning “movement” and derma meaning “skin”. If not considered as embodying Soviet ideology, modernist buildings would be hunting trophies, specimens which, through the act of dissecting and freezing from the affectation of time, can achieve an outward look of the past and authenticity, an organic appearance of bohemian touristification. However, the political infection that makes internal organs rancid leads to a deeper degree of emptiness, beyond design logics of re-dressing what is raw or naked. Nowadays, new projects are not seeking to render buildings lifelike – through a process of deconstruction – but rather to show a new preference for enhancement, instead of imitation (van Dijck 2001), making buildings look as if they were not made but born (Haraway 1984). An example of architectural taxidermy is the refurbishing of the Central Post Office of Tallinn (Postimaja), originally built between 1977 and 1980 on the eve of the Moscow Olympic games (in which the yachting events were held on the outskirts of the Estonian capital). The main function of the building was to host mail processing and telephone services, while long distance calls were also available through an operator on the first floor of the building. A distinctive, three-story, limestone construction replaced an old gas station, symbolically connecting the Rottermann quarter with the Old Town and the Narva highway. The Central Post Office had the first escalator in Estonia, which people came from all over the country to see and to experience. However, the escalator soon broke down, and was finally replaced by a conventional staircase in 1988. Besides sending the social world that the internal things of these buildings represented off to oblivion, another important feature of the architectural taxidermy practiced in post-socialist cities is that the buildings-creatures were often not dead before taxidermy, but were functioning well despite sustained investment and maintenance (e.g. Krenholm). Indeed, many of the architectural and industrial ruins of Tallinn are not simply Soviet but also material signifiers of the decline of Fordism and neoliberal policies. For instance, the innovations brought about by information technologies led to structural changes in mail and communication industries in recent decades, gradually decreasing the volume of traditional mail.[2] Yet there were the privatization processes and the need for self-financing, which forced Estonian Post to sell practically 32
all of the real estate properties they owned, keeping just four of ninety they had in the 1990s.[3] Since 2005, the building has been under heritage protection, so its demolition is formally forbidden. However, the new owners started a complete “building surgery” (Harris 1999), which changed the façade, interior and use of the Postimaja, nowadays transformed into a shopping mall with a glossy crystal façade and numerous advertisements: “It is not the same building”, argues Silver Agu, the head of its maintenance for a decade ; “only the form and size were preserved”. Buildings can give and receive; they are performative, and they happen. The opposite of architectural taxidermy, which removes the human voice and warmth from the architectural skin, is to honor buildings maturing with occupation, repair and maintenance work, a form of warming them up as historical, political and financial bodies. An example of this is the re-discovery of the Tallinn energy plant, or more precisely the creation of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) and its organic development for over ten years The EKKM is a non-profit exhibition venue established in late 2006, when artists looking for studio space started squatting in the office building of the former boiler plant. The museum gained convenient institutional stability in 2011, as a consequence
Museum of Contemporary Art of Estonia, 2017, by F. Martínez.
33