Alar Kotli

Today's official seat of the Estonian President

Alar Kotli (born August 27, 1904 in Väike-Maarja , † October 4, 1963 in Tallinn ) was an Estonian architect.

Life

Alar Kotli was born into the family of a sexton . From 1915 to 1922 he attended high school in Rakvere . Kotli learned sculpture at the Pallas Art School in Tartu and mathematics at the University of Tartu in 1922/23 . From 1923 to 1927 he studied architecture at the Technical University in Danzig , where he was university assistant until 1928. From 1930 to 1937 Kotli was employed in various Estonian ministries before he was deputy director of the state construction company Ehitaja (German builder ) from 1937 to 1940 . From 1941 to 1944 he was a department head at the building administration.

After the Second World War , Kotli was employed by the Estonian state construction company Estonprojekt from 1944 to 1958 , and from 1955 with the title of chief architect. In 1945 he co-founded the Association of Architects of the Estonian SSR , of which he was chairman until 1950. From 1955 to 1963 he was Vice President of the Association. From 1961 to 1963, Kotli headed the Chair of Architecture at the State Art Institute of the Estonian SSR.

In 1947, Alar Kotli was awarded the title of Honored Artist by the Estonian SSR. In 1965 he was posthumously awarded the Estonian SSR State Prize.

He was one of the most famous architects of his time. Alar Kotli is buried today in the Tallinn Forest Cemetery.

Architectural work (selection)

• Mõisaküla wooden church (1933)
• St Paul's Church in Rakvere (1940, unfinished)
• High school in Rakvere (1935–1938)
• School in Tapa (1936–1939)
• (today's) official residence of the Estonian President (together with Olev Siinmaa , Tallinn, Kadriorg district , 1938)
• Main building of the Tallinn Pedagogical University (together with Erika Nõva , 1938–1940)
• Bank in Pärnu (together with Anton Soans , 1939/40)
• Seat of the Kaitseliit in Tartu (together with Elmar Lohk , 1940)
• Reconstruction of the theater and concert hall of the Estonia State Opera in Tallinn (together with Edgar Johan Kuusik , 1945–1950)
• Building of the Estonian SSR Art Foundation ( Eesti NSV kunstifond ) (Tallinn, Victory Square, today Freedom Square, 1949–53)
• Tallinn singer's stage in the Kadriorg district (together with Henno Sepmann and Endel Paalmann , 1958/60)

In addition, Kotli planned and built numerous houses, designed furniture and designed numerous memorial plaques.

Alar Kotli was strongly committed to functionalism before World War II . His plans for the office of the Estonian President (today the President's office) from the late 1930s bear witness to the influence of historicism . With the Soviet occupation of Estonia he turned more and more to so-called brutalism in the 1950s and 1960s .

literature

• Mart Kalm: Architect Alar Kotli. Tallinn 1994, ISBN 9785899200878 .

Web links

Commons : Alar Kotli  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Exhibition on life and work ( Memento of November 16, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) (Tallinn 2004)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eesti elulood. Tallinn: Eesti entsüklopeediakirjastus 2000 (= Eesti entsüklopeedia 14) ISBN 9985-70-064-3 , p. 180
2. ↑ http://register.muinas.ee/pdetail01.asp?mo_id=1173  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.