The Museum of Estonian Architecture's webpage (
visit link) informs us:
"The Museum of Estonian Architecture - its exhibition halls and archives is placed in Rotermann’s Salt Storage, a magnificent industrial building near Tallinn harbour. The Museum has spacious exhibition hall of 484 m2 and two galleries of 161 m2 above it. The basement is also used for exhibitions and art events.
The Museum of Estonian Architecture was established on January 1st 1991. Its aims are collecting, preserving, study, interpreting and exhibiting Estonian architecture. As many of architectural museums in the world the Museum of Estonian Architecture is collecting the materials of 20th century architecture mainly. Museum is the member of ICAM (International Confederation of Architectural Museums)."
and at (
visit link)
"The main collection of the architecture museum contains maps of towns and other settlements, architectural drawings and projects, textual materials connected with them, models, papers on architecture and town building, reflecting the formation and development of Estonian professional architecture through the 20th century to the present day. The number of holdings in the collection amounts to 10 000 with in excess of 30,000 prints and drawings.
The oldest pieces of the collection are the facade and interior design drawings of the House of Chivalry in Tallinn’s Toompea area of 1848 by the St. Petersburg architect Georg Winterhalter.
The highlights of the collection are Tallinn’s German Theatre competition entries and drawings by the St. Petersburg architects Alexey Bubyr and Nikolai Vasilyev, as well as interior and furniture designs for the Estonia Theatre (1911–12) by the Finnish architects Armas Lindgren and Wivi Lönn. The so-called greater Tallinn plan by the prominent Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen of 1913 is kept in the museum as a deposit.
Materials from the 1920s and 30s make up the core and simultaneously the most numerous part of the collection. These contain town maps, plans, drawings of nearly 700 residential houses, as well as of theatres, community centres, schools, administrative buildings and banks.
Also post-war architecture of the 1940s and 50s is relatively well represented. The materials include master plans of cities, plans of new main squares, designs of grand Victory monuments, entries of competitions for standard designs of residential houses, schools, kindergartens and other buildings, but also the Tallinn Song Festival Grandstand winning competition entry and many other items.
The Museum also collects recent competition projects, such as winning entries for the Estonian Art Museum competition, the biggest international competition in Estonia (1994), the new administrative building of the Tallinn city government (2009) etc.
Architects’ personal collections, constitute a significant part of the main collection. Besides projects and drawings, these collections, which are mostly donated to the museum by inheritors, contain also student work, sketches, photographs, manuscripts, correspondence, memoirs as well as personal effects.
The museum’s collection of models, which now amounts to 200 models of areas and individual buildings, keeps constantly growing.
The museum also has a small furniture collection, containing 1920s’ and 30s’ furniture in the national style as well as a selection of modern Estonian designer furniture."