Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the way people might extend themselves outwards into the built environment by paying attention to the multiple meanings and maturing of Linnahall arena, putting the emphasis in the correlation between the materiality of buildings, lived experiences and maintenance work over time.

Paper long abstract:

Based on two in-depth interviews with Peter and Rein, maintenance workers of Linnahall, 25 informal interviews with visitors, and my own personal experience in and on the building, this paper examines how this building stands in a process of constant unfolding, being subject to renovation, extension, neglect; processes correlated with individual subjectivities and societal transformations.

The paper reflects about the life cycles of built forms, reconsidering the birth, death, and reconstitution of the built environment by analysing the different relations that emerge between buildings and people.

Linnahall is an iconic place in Tallinn and illustrates the dramatic identity of the city. This palace stands as both scatological and monumental, giving to the site an effectual energy. The consideration of this building as 'Soviet' poses the problem of how to present the biography of the site in specific terms and how to study the simultaneous maturing of people and buildings.

I thus advocate for treating the building as a curated ruin, establishing a set of measures that do not obliterate the offences of time and acknowledge the traces of the past.

Some lines of thought addressed by the paper are:

- What are the recognised stages of a building's life?

- Can we use human metaphors to study the buildings?

- In which ways do buildings store personal memories and social significance?

- How long should a building live?

- What discrete activities are engendered to maintain buildings alive?

- When or what is the ultimate no-return point that marks the death of buildings and their functional discontinuation?