📝 Lawyer, expert in construction process issues and FIDIC contracts 🧐Founder at CONSTRUCTIVE and JURISCONSULTUS
A current topic in Latvia is the quality and safety of the existing housing stock. 🏚 Although it's discussed more like a trendy topic than actual problems.. Alongside the impersonality of Soviet-era housing, Latvia has some real architectural gems. And a century ago, those jewels were still rental houses 🧐 One thing is the safety of any building, of course, but there is also the architecture, the aesthetics, the pleasure we feel when we look at buildings a century old, their staircases and other elements. Since Latvia cannot pride itself on excessive wealth, it is a very sad that we are gradually losing the charm that the 20th century brought with it - rental houses and architecture in general. 📸 Here is a photograph of the staircase of a residential building. That beauty will be lost if the government does not start to separate the issues of building safety and energy efficiency from those of preserving historical evidence. I support the idea of preserving the evidence of history as a common task. Because those impersonal apartment blocks are a plague imported from Soviet times, which continues to a large extent today... just look at the beginning of the movie "The Irony of Fate".
Jānis Uzulēns I agree with you, it is important to preserve Riga's Art Nouveau heritage as one of the finest examples at a European level. It is also one of the key strengths in attracting high-quality tourists, intellectuals, and artists.