About the project

Innovative story of old and new.

Lithuanian Interwar Architecture project is an interactive educational platform that connects Lithuanian interwar architecture and the modern technologies. From an outsider‘s perspective interwar seems like a distant period of time that is not a current topic anymore. However, at the same time the architecture of the interwar period represents the beginning of modernism in Lithuania. The duality of what‘s old and new helps us tell the tale of the architecture of this period. Architecture is always close to the community and that helps us explore the contemporary lifestyle.

The European Heritage label was awarded to 44 buildings in Kaunas in 2015 for representing unique modernist architecture and the city itself was listed in the Tentative UNESCO Heritage List. In December, 2015 Kaunas has joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and became the first city in Eastern and Western European countries that received the Design City Status.

These acknowledgements not only encourage but also give us the responsibility to make Kaunas interwar modernist architecture better known both in the country and abroad. Having in mind that it is important to reflect on the general Lithuanian interwar architecture context this route also contains architectural objects not only in Kaunas but in Palanga, Druskininkai, Birštonas, Plungė and Telšiai counties.

Interwar architecture represents the contemporary trends in public building design as well as style tendencies of the whole country. Druskininkai, Birštonas and Palanga are examples of unique resort town architecture. Plungė and Telšiai represent smaller towns that have significant modernist tendencies interconnected with local building traditions. Lithuanian interwar architecture often displays compromise between modernism and traditional styles and it is argued that this connection is the key to it being so unique and distinctive.

Share your best captured views and memories of interwar architecture in an interactive archive here!