"Houses built after the war might seem a bit ugly or boring today, but they're part of our history. A large portion of the Estonian population has a connection to them — people either live in them now or their parents or grandparents did," says Alois Andreas Põdra, a researcher at the Estonian Open Air Museum and a doctoral student at the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture at Tallinn University of Technology. Single-family homes built during the Soviet era can be found in nearly every settlement in Estonia: some have been renovated, some rebuilt and others are still awaiting renewal.

According to Põdra, these houses have received little recognition or appreciation until now. Yet they, too, have their own stories — something explored in the exhibition "Standard Designs for Single-Family Homes in the 1940s and 1950s," which opened last year at the Estonian Open Air Museum with his involvement. Põdra will also address this topic in the context of the formation of kolkhozes during a presentation at the museum's upcoming research day at the end of November. "Anyone starting a renovation might want to take a look at the original design plans to see what the house was supposed to look like. Maybe it'll offer inspiration or shed some light on why the house was built the way it is," Põdra reflects.

Do it yourself, do it well?

After World War II, Estonia faced a serious housing shortage. One way to alleviate it was by building single-family homes — what we would now consider private houses. "You weren't allowed to build a private home using state contractors. The state could provide a plot and some subsidies, but the construction work itself had to be done by the homeowner, often with the help of family or relatives," explains Alois Andreas Põdra.

This meant that building your own home was, on one hand, a bureaucratic process. You had to find and apply for a plot, obtain an architectural planning assignment from the local production group or city chief architect, choose a design, sign a building agreement, source construction materials and keep all receipts to prove you hadn't stolen any supplies.

"It was a very family-centered activity. People would build the house together after work or during their time off," Põdra says. On the other hand, over the 46 years of occupation, such houses went through what he calls a fascinating architectural evolution. "What's especially interesting is how each builder interpreted the available construction knowledge and catalog design and adapted it to suit their own needs," he notes.

At the time, people had access to only a few manuals, such as Leo Jürgenson's "Residential Construction I" (1949) or the notorious handbooks by Arvo Veski. House designs were acquired in three main ways: through official standard designs proposed in architectural competitions, through reusable projects found in city archives and adapted as standard designs and through custom individual plans drawn up by architects. "Until the late 1950s, a builder could actually design their own house. They were responsible for ensuring the plan met the requirements. That practice was banned by the 1960s," Põdra adds.

Laconic gable roofs

Today, postwar houses are still visible in urban landscapes — homes that appear similar at first glance but reveal significant differences upon closer inspection. According to Põdra, the guidelines found in the manuals and standard design plans of the time were generally quite clear and thoroughly explained. "And yet, when you look at the inventory drawings, you find some truly fascinating improvisations. The shortage of building materials and the requirement to build the house yourself forced people to get creative," he says.

The first standard designs for single-family homes were already circulating in Estonia by 1945. Still, Põdra notes, many people took their cues from the reusable design albums published by the state design institute Estonprojekt (later Eesti Projekt), the first of which appeared in 1954. "Initially, the albums featured two types of houses: single-story buildings with steep gable roofs and houses with lower sloped roofs. By the third album, you begin to see homes with two full stories," he explains.

The gable-roofed house became widespread in part because, during the Stalin era, Soviet architects were seeking alternatives to the 1930s-era functionalist style. "One direction leaned more rural, with ornate railing boards and scroll-sawn wooden details. The other was urban — very traditionalist and influenced by German architecture," Põdra says, describing gable-roof designs from the 1950s.

However, the intentions of the architects often aren't reflected in the built environment. According to Põdra, many builders simply left out design elements specified in the original plans. "The limited availability of materials and the requirement to do the construction yourself meant that houses often remained incomplete for a long time. Facade details that weren't essential, such as shutters, cornices or decorative porch posts, were frequently left out," he explains.

The pared-down results were also driven by the rule that a single-family home had to be essentially completed within three years. A house was considered ready for occupancy if it had at least one living space, a kitchen, an outhouse, exterior finishing and, if located along a street, a fence. In reality, Põdra says, it often took 10 to 15 years to finish building. "You could finish the attic later. In a gable-roof house, you might initially leave the attic as an unfinished shell and expand into it when better times came," he notes.

Practical rather than fancy

While gathering material for the exhibition, Põdra came across numerous examples of how people deviated from the original house plans. These alterations were especially common in rural areas, where urban-style features, such as a street-facing front door, were often unnecessary and, in extreme cases, even bricked shut. "One of the most common modifications was changing or repositioning windows. Washrooms were left unfinished and instead used as storage closets or pantries. In some cases, entryways were built much larger than originally planned," he explains. Even though the design called for a proper attic staircase, it was often replaced in the first construction phase with a steep ladder, since the attic was usually left unfinished.

According to Põdra, people also made adjustments to smaller details. For example, a garage might be moved closer to the street, eliminating a planned window or requiring it to be relocated, which in turn altered the appearance of the facade. Bay windows might be replaced with standard ones, open verandas were enclosed or glazed and roofs originally designed with red tile were instead covered with fiber cement panels. Some standard plans even included terraces and pergolas for the homeowners' leisure. "In reality, people saw a greater practical need for enclosed spaces where belongings could be protected from the winter weather. Decorative features meant to promote a cultured lifestyle were often approached with a very utilitarian mindset," the researcher observes.

Until the second half of the 1950s, design albums featured only single-story houses. According to Põdra, even houses that looked similar on the outside could have multiple layout variations, depending primarily on the location of the entrance, the number of rooms and whether a washroom was included.

The simplest floor plan followed the traditional Estonian detached-house model: the chimney placed in the center, with rooms arranged around it in four sections — a hallway with a stairwell and outhouse, a kitchen with a pantry, a living room and a bedroom. If a second bedroom or dining room was desired, the hallway could be moved to the center of the house, with three living spaces forming a U-shape around it. If a washroom was added, the living room, dining room and bedroom would then form a layout resembling the shape of an "L."

"Since the number of rooms and overall floor space were limited, but more and more functions were being squeezed into a single floor, layout planning became increasingly meticulous, leading to fairly standardized solutions," Põdra notes. In prewar buildings, the kitchen could be the largest room in the house, but over time it became increasingly smaller — barely larger than the entryway. "This was alleviated with the advent of two-story homes, where the more private functions, like bedrooms and washrooms, could be moved upstairs, leaving the first floor as a more public zone. That allowed for the traditional four-section layout to be preserved without the kitchen becoming too cramped," the researcher explains.

History doesn't have to be consigned to the trash heap

Today, the renovation of single-family homes built in the postwar decades has become a pressing issue. "A lot of these homes are being renovated, but in many cases, the original architecture gets tossed out. There's little discussion about what the house was originally meant to look like or whether some of those unfinished details could be brought back or completed during renovation," says Alois Andreas Põdra.

A common example is the extension of dormers across the entire roofline, from one gable wall to the other, to maximize daylight in attic spaces. "What you end up with is a house that's no longer truly gable-roofed, nor fully two-story. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but let's just say I tend to see more poorly executed examples than successful ones," Põdra explains. Instead of stretching dormers, he recommends adding roof windows to gable-roofed homes as a more elegant solution for bringing in daylight.

According to the researcher, the perception of these homes as dull or nondescript stems largely from the material shortages and time pressures of the era in which they were built. The facades, as originally designed, were in fact high-quality and thoughtfully planned, but the serious lack of building materials at the time made it difficult to fully realize them.

A particularly telling example, Põdra notes, is the construction quality of attic floors. Builders who started from the foundation with better materials often found that supplies had run out by the time they reached the top of the structure. "We have a working hypothesis that the upper floors were built with lower-quality materials. That's why the structural integrity of attics often becomes a question mark during renovation. These were also the parts of the house where plans were most frequently ignored — partition walls, built-in closets and washrooms were simply left out," he explains.

Põdra urges renovators to consult the home's original design plans and consider the surrounding streetscape before demolishing an attic or adding a new floor. It's worth identifying which details are characteristic of the neighborhood and architectural type and which unfinished elements from the original design could still be implemented. "Planning the future of an old house shouldn't start from scratch. If there's any intention to preserve the home's appearance or character, it's worthwhile to learn about its history and origins and to let that knowledge guide your design choices," he advises.

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