Vallikraavi street that winds below the slopes of Toome Hill in Tartu will get three new capacious apartment buildings this year, doubling the number and area of living spaces on this short street that has merely a couple dozen houses altogether. Systemic densification of old towns enhances the possibilities of urban life and helps to save energy through more economical mobility.
The protagonist of the story, Vallikraavi street, took shape in the last quarter of the 18th century, more specifically after the great fire of 1775. ‘Vallikraavi’ stands for ‘moat’ in Estonian. As its name suggests, the street used to accommodate parts of city fortifications such as the moat and the retaining wall of a bastion. Remnants of the wall can still be seen in several places and they are under special protection. When the University of Tartu was reopened in 1802, Toome Hill and the surrounding areas including Vallikraavi street were allocated to it. Over the years, professors at the university received plots to build their residences there.
Today, the whole Vallikraavi street belongs to the Tartu Old Town heritage conservation area and archaeological milieu area. The look of the street is changing—it is undergoing gentrification, i.e., revival as a high-quality residential district. As a result, the street now offers enticing dwellings that attract new residents. The aim of gentrification is to raise the quality of built environment with investments, thus making life in the heart of the city more active. This is meant to push back against urban sprawl, which generates new, uncoordinated neighbourhoods.
One house in two guises
Our written stroll along Vallikraavi begins from the intersection with Ülikooli street. After passing a building that was reconstructed and spruced up at an earlier time, we first encounter a residential building in the final stages of construction that strikes a non-local as having stood there already for some time. In fact, the plot at Vallikraavi 5 was empty for decades before the current construction. The story of this new development began in 2015, when the developer organised an architectural design competition for a new apartment building. The competition was won by the architectural firm Arhitektuuriklubi with their submission ‘Imemuna’. However, construction did not start before several years had passed and the design went through some changes. By summer 2022, the building has been completed.
A DWELLING IN TARTU, VALLIKRAAVI 5
Architecture: Kaido Kepp, Tõnis Taru (Arhitektuuriklubi)
Interior architecture: Henriko Heinoja (Cavallo Disain) and Giga Ehitus
Engineering: Ivo Roolaht (Roolaht and Partnerid)
Commissioned by: Giga Investeeringud
Constructed by: Giga Ehitus
Total area: 702 m2
Architectural competition: 2015
Project: 2017–2022
Completed: 2022
Architects Kaido Kepp and Tõnis Taru (Arhitektuuriklubi) have designed a building with two distinct-looking facades on the street side. It is as if the plot has been divided in two, and one might even get an impression that there are two separate buildings. This is quite appropriate from the milieu preservation perspective. In designing the red brick facade part on the right, the architects drew on an unrealised residential project from 1903 by construction entrepreneur Wilhelm Schilling. The facade mimics a historicist style and is decorated with elements such as wooden cornices, wood-framed windows and niched lesenes, plus a couple of blind windows behind which lie commercial spaces. The red brick facade was initially designed so true-to-the-era that heritage protection demanded that it be distinguished from the modern one—thus, an adjustment was made to lower it, and separate it visually from the rest of the volume and side facade in a way that is somewhat reminiscent of a screen. Such pseudo-facadism strikes as an ironic jab at all sorts of odd renovations where only the front side is kept as a decoy.
The other part of the facade is made of stained wood. It has pleasantly modern feel and fits well with the overall look of the street, adding a hint of lushness to the atmosphere. The outward appearance of the side that faces the street is reminiscent of the 2003 residential building at Herne street 9 in Tallinn, which was designed by architect Gert Sarv. Loggias of four apartments peek at Vallikraavi street from behind the wooden facade, and another four from behind the brick part. Each of the loggias is at least 15 square metres in size, functioning as a room extension during the warmer part of the year. It is not very common for all the apartments in a building to have street-side loggias. Wooden jalousie sliding doors enable to close and open the loggias according to the weather conditions and the resident’s needs. This renders the front side of the building playful also for those who are just passing by in the street.
In addition to the milieu and adjacent Toome Hill, the future residents of the house will be able to enjoy all the functions a modern home should have. The most efficacious ones are panel-controlled smart solutions and district cooling, which is becoming more necessary with each summer. Besides the apartments, there is a soon-to-be-occupied commercial space on the ground floor. This space could become the central hub of the building that helps to plug it into general use of the street.
Although the building is brand new, it contains parts of an older architectural layer. For instance, there is the end wall of an early 20th-century carriage house that has been preserved within the street front. Conserving the embankment and brickwork of the 17th-century Charles IX bastion and the 19th-century hillside fortification was a challenge in itself. Given that pieces of the bastion wall that were built in different times also differed in height across the plot, the courtyard facing toward Toome Hill meanders asymmetrically. In order to preserve the wall, the apartment building has been raised higher than it was originally planned. Two buttresses and a retaining wall were bolstered up and renovated during construction; the latter was covered with a new concrete lining.
On the topic of finds that were discovered during the construction of the new building, architect Tõnis Taru remarked humorously that although Vallikraavi 5 is a wholly new building, its architects would feel all the pains of working with a historical plot, but none of the usual joys of reconstructing a protected building.
A DWELLING IN TARTU, VALLIKRAAVI 10
Architecture: Aivar Roosaar (Vanamaja)
Interior architecture: Ulvi Raudsik (Eluviis)
Engineering: Heiki Part (Vanamaja)
Commissioned by: V10
Constructed by: Villaare
Total area: 3260 m2
Project: 2021
Construction: 2021–2023
An eclectic ensemble of buildings in the heart of the city
The plot at Vallikraavi 10 contains a truly eclectic assortment of building parts from different eras that have latched onto a 1873 wooden building with saw-cut ornament. The plot originally belonged to Arthur von Oettingen, a physics professor at the university, who sold a part of it to dr Gustav Reyher in 1866. Dr Reyher further built up the plot in collaboration with the city’s master builder Friedrich Hübbe and established a clinic in his buildings. The clinic worked there for almost 60 years, in the course of which new building parts were added. From the cultural history of Estonia, we know that on February 2nd, 1919, Julius Kuperjanov, who had been brought to the clinic from Paju battlefield, succumbed to his wounds there—a plaque commemorating this can still be seen on the building. In 1923, new owner Heinrich Nieländer turned the erstwhile clinic into sumptuous Grand Hotel, and the complex was extended in Art Deco style towards the Senff stairs. Later on, the establishment was renamed Toome Hotel. In 1966, the building was once again adapted for medical purposes and came to house an oncological dispensary. One year later, it was complemented with a Soviet-style building that housed the radiology department. The latter was equipped with thick-walled gamma chambers where patients received radiation therapy. Medical care stopped being provided in the building once and for all in 2017.
Now the building will be renamed Grand Hotel Residence and its completion is planned for the end of 2022. The author of the project is Aivar Roosaar (Vanamaja). The reconstruction project preserves the distinctness of the whole architectural ensemble, and the buildings will be restored based on their original appearance and context of construction, even though the end result will function fully as an apartment building. It is a tailored building where each apartment will have its own distinctive ground plan, depending mainly on which era’s section it is located in. 42 apartments or commercial spaces are planned, the smallest one being only 14 m2 in size, while others are very large and luxurious, some even with a private garden. Having this sort of diversity is a sympathetic idea—it is likely to allow people from different socio-economic backgrounds to move in. Although the capaciousness and layered nature of the ensemble and the number of apartments makes it feel a bit messy, it is still nice to see how the designers and engineers have tried to retain the characteristic looks of different building parts, which has led to this hectic planning solution.
It is exciting to wander in a building still under construction and check out the paintings, ironwork and smaller interior details (e.g., handles, crémones) from earlier architectural layers. The most exciting one was discovered in the apartment that is being built next to the main foyer—it is a symbolist mural depicting Toome Hill. The author and the exact date of the painting is unknown, but we can assume that it was painted in the 1930s, when the hotel was refurbished according to architect Adolf Käsper’s projects. The same period also saw the refurbishment of a windowless secret room, which the hospital used as an archive and the hotel owner reserved for personal use. The building contains much more that is worth preserving, and the list of special heritage protection requirements is long.
A DWELLING IN TARTU, VALLIKRAAVI 14
Architecture: Margit Aule, Katri Mets (Lumia)
Interior architecture: Margit Argus, Liis Tarbe (studio Argus)
Engineering: Ever Haabmets (Projekt O2), Jaak Ilves (Akroteer Projekt)
Commissioned by: Hausers Grupp
Constructed by: Hausers Grupp
Total area: 1570 m2
Project: 2018–2020
Completed: 2022
The second coming of decorous apartment buildings
A building on Vallikraavi street that was long used by the Tartu Art Museum has once again been repurposed as an apartment house. This was its initial function when it was built in 1896, having been designed by Tartu’s master builder Otto Schröder, who also lived there for some time. Gustav and Aino Suits used to have an apartment there before the war; there are some great photos of its interior in the collection of the University of Tartu Museum. After the Second World War, the building was given to the Tartu Art Museum to use. In order to accommodate their needs, architect Raul Levroit-Kivi designed additional side wings that were built in 1967. The building hosted its last exhibitions in 1999, but the museum kept on using it until 2016 when it became prone to collapse and they had to move out. Some years later, it caught the interest of developers who wished to overhaul Vallikraavi 14 into a presentable apartment building. The reconstruction project was authored by architects Margit Aule and Katri Mets from Lumia, and interior architects Margit Argus and Liis Tarbe from Studio Argus.
The street-side facade of the apartment building exudes a fashionably refined and decorous approach. The architects decided to demolish the floor that was added in the 1950s–1960s and the side wings, replacing them with modern parts while retaining the plastic partition of different volumes. The architects wished to emphasise the verticality of the stairwell on the eastern side of the building and used a dormer to add some height to it. Dormers were also used for the additional floor, making the latter less obtrusive and accentuating rather the historical front side of the building. Many original details have been retained, such as murals, stucco ceiling rosettes, panel doors, valuable glazed tile stoves and first-floor windows. Everything is beautifully exhibited and brought to the fore with modern additions. Similar approach can be seen in the architects’ earlier works with historical objects—reconstructions and added parts are so tactful and considerate of the old that the building as a whole feels calm and does not give an impression of excessive intervention. This is how several architecture awards have been won. 29 apartments have been created in the building, plus a small house in the yard that has been divided into two dwellings. Before, the yard used to accommodate an auxiliary building; its valuable earth cellar has been preserved. All the additions adhere to the red brick wall style of the historical building, so the complex forms a whole.
Living heritage space
In Tallinn, residents and city officials are still grappling with the problem of the Old Town becoming a ghost town, and trying to come up with various solutions to make the area attractive and alive for the locals; in Tartu, Vallikraavi street presents an example of steps in the right direction. The new comprehensive plan of Tartu envisages a well-maintained old town that is characterised by durable architecture. Developers have been clever enough to see value and also an opportunity in heritage buildings, thus putting their money into an heritage-protected area. Spruced-up heritage is helping to turn Vallikraavi into an active and attractive city street. Historical spaces can be interesting in their own right, but heritage is truly animated by the everyday activities of people. Vallikraavi street is a good example of how a heritage space can be useful in bringing a city to life. A lively old town in turn enriches and densifies the city centre in a way that makes it a good, safe and exciting place to stay, work and live in.
GRETE TIIGISTE is a master’s student in art history at the University of Tartu and works at the Estonian Museum of Architecture.
HEADER: Vallikraavi 10. Photo by Paco Ulman
PUBLISHED: Maja 109-110 (summer-autumn 2022) with main topic Built Heritage and Modern Times
1 Mart Siilivask, Tõnis Kimmel, Jalutaja teejuht – Tartu I. Südalinn ja Toometagune, (Tallinn: Solnessi arhitektuurikirjastus, 2009), 141
2 Priit-Kalev Parts, „Väärtuse määratlemine maastikul: nature morte või elav maastik“, Estonan Social Science Online, http://www2.sotsioloogia.ee/vana/esso3/15/priit-kalev_parts.htm.
3 Tuuli Põldma, „Miljööväärtuslike piirkondade taaselustamine kultuuriliste ja majanduslike valikute koosmõjus. Kalamaja näitel“, Muinsuskaitse aastaraamat 2014, toim Leele Välja, 123–125.
4 The reconstruction project for the residential building at Vallikraavi 3 was likewise put together by the architects from Arhitektuuriklubi, and the developer is the same as for the Vallikraavi 5 plot.
5 There have been other designs for the plot—in 1991, for example, Leonhard Lapin designed a building for the Oriental Society of the University of Tartu, which was also not built.
6 Behind the brick facade, there are loggias covered with a glass roof; the rest of the building has rolled metal roofing.
7 Used as a dining room in the Grand Hotel days.
8 The mural will be cleaned and conserved by students from the Pallas University of Applied Sciences.
9 Tartus Vallikraavi 10 haiglahoone (reg. nr. 6988) restaureerimise ja ümberehitamise muinsuskaitse eritingimused. Koostanud Enriko Talvistu (2018).
10 Vallikraavi 14, Tartu. Tartu vanalinna muinsuskaitseala, nr 27006 elamu muinsuskaitse eritingimused. Koostanud Reesi Sild (2019).
11 ‘History’, Tartmus, https://tartmus.ee/en/tickets/ajalugu/, viewed 24.07.2022.
12 Vallikraavi 14, Tartu. Tartu vanalinna muinsuskaitseala, nr 27006 elamu muinsuskaitse eritingimused. Koostanud Reesi Sild (2019).
13 E.g., Pilgrim’s House in Vastseliina Episcopal Castle, Tsarist-era objects at Noblessner harbour area, Haapsalu Episcopal Castle and other works by Kaos Architects.
14 Estonian Centre for Architecture organised a forum ‘Vana linna uus võimalus?’ (‘New Chance for an Old Town?’) on June 14-15th, 2022, to look for solutions that would help to develop the Old Town into a functioning living environment.
15 ‘Tartu linna üldplaneering 2040+’
