Restricted Grand Tours. Architects' Experiences in the Soviet Periphery

This paper reports on the experiences of architects in the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Latvia. Drawing on archival documents from the local Union of Architects, as well as interviews with architects who were professionally active during the Soviet period in Latvia, it provides a comprehensive overview of the daily routines and travels of Latvian architects at the time. Although they were rivals, the Soviet Union and the Western world were eager to follow each other's developments in order to remain mutually competitive. However, the interests and perceptions of architects on both sides of the Iron Curtain were quite different. Such were also their professional lives and travel experiences. Communist ideology played a crucial role in how architecture was approached in the Soviet Union. Limited access to information was compensated for by other sources of inspiration, leading to the peculiar practice of tracing images from foreign architecture magazines to preserve valuable data for future reference.