The reconstructed wooden building of the Riga School of
Design and Art, which won the Latvian Great Architecture Award
An interior at Bergs Bazaar,
a complex of historical buildings in Riga
Interior of the reconstructed Rūmene Manor
INTERVIEW / December
Rūmene Manor
70
/ airBaltic.com
The Germans began talking about this problem
first. For example, right now I’m designing a theatre
(the New Riga Theatre – Ed.), and there’s a whole
soundproofing industry that deals with how to get
fresh air into the hall. And then I also have to think
about how much it’ll cost the theatre every month.
Actually, modern construction is a real nightmare.
It supposedly conserves resources, but at the
same time...
There are lots of other myths, too. Myths about
medicines, food, waste, and also myths about
modern construction methods. To be honest, we’re
building very poorly nowadays, very slowly and
very expensively.
Why is that happening?
Well, for example, building insulation consists of a
whole industry dealing in mineral wool and ventila-
tion systems, and it’s got interests of its own. The
insulation industry is just as powerful as the phar-
maceutical industry. People are so confused when
they come to me. I tell them, ‘You don’t need any
ventilation. Open a window, and the fresh air will
come in.’ But people have read all sorts of myths,
and they want to do everything the right way.
Another obsession is ‘smart houses’, home auto-
mation. People can’t just push a button and turn on
the light anymore, because they’ve been told that
a special technology will allow them to turn the
light on from their bed or turn the heat on from
their hotel in Mexico. And they can turn on the
security system the same way. Yes, you can do that,
but then your house becomes a machine. That was
French architect Le Corbusier’s idea, the house-as-
machine. But to do that, you need to stuff all of the
walls full of cables...which generate their own mag-
netic fields. On the one hand, people want to build
ecologically, but on the other hand, they pump air
into their homes through pipes because they can’t
open the window.
Are people still complicating their homes, or are
they returning to earlier times – to simpler, more
straightforward ideas?
I see both trends. Swedes, for example, head to their
skerries and live without electricity, carry water
from the well, and build sod outhouses. It’s the
same here, in Latvia. For example, yesterday I was
speaking with a couple, IT specialists. They live in
a little house in Engure (a small town on the coast
northwest of Riga – Ed.), from where they work for
an American company. It’s this lone-wolf syndrome,
living by yourself out in the country, walking
barefoot, being close to nature. It’s a whole theme,
you know.
The whole world went through the so-called
suburbia movement. It began in the United States,
in New York, with ‘American beauty’: a house for
everyone, a green yard, a garden... Wonderful,
you could say. But the problems began when the
children started going to school. And it’s the same