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Architect
Elina Amann, last edited on 14.10.2022
Name:
Meeli Truu
Life Dates:
1946 – 2013
Country:
Employers:
EKE Project (1969-1992)
Nordproject (1992-?)
Field of expertise:
Architectural design
Education:
Awards:
Alar Kotli Prize (1990)
Estonian Cultural Foundation Prize for Architecture (2002)
The Estonian architect was born in the capital Tallinn on 27 August 1946. She went to the Estonian Academy of Arts (ERKI) after graduating from secondary school in 1963. At the Academy of Arts she graduated as an architect in 1969 and started working at the design institute “EKE Projekt” in the same year, where she stayed until 1992. Shortly thereafter, she began working at the architecture and engineering firm “Nordprojekt”.
She received the Alar Kotli Award in 1990. Later, in 2002, Truu received the Estonian Cultural Foundation’s annual award for architecture for her work as an architect – an initiative to enhance the built environment on a national level.
Truu’s works can be found all over Estonia, but mainly in Tallinn. She designed office and residential buildings as well as hotels. The shopping centre “Rocca al Mare” was also designed by the architect in 1998 and is located in the district of the same name in the Estonian capital. The office building she designed, “Audi-Haus”, named after the car manufacturer’s advertising logo that is visible from afar, is located in the immediate vicinity of the shopping centre. The style represented here by Truu is also found in the luxury hotel Swissôtel in Tallinn (2007).
There are also buildings by the architect which have been built during the time when Estonia was administered by the Soviet government. Accordingly, the style of these works by Truu is oriented towards Soviet modernism. One notable work is the club and swimming pool building of the Valgeranna Recreation Centre of the Estonian SSR Council of Ministers, built in 1976. The Strand Hotel followed in 1977, and another in 1985 in the Estonian port city of Pärnu. In the small town of Väike-Maarja, she designed the public centre with an administrative building in the neo-functionalist style with round shapes and the main square including ponds.
Main image:
Fig. 1: By Dmitry G – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7606364 (last accessed 14.10.2022)
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