The project investigates Uzvaras Park (Victory Park) in Riga as a narrated urban figure, focusing on the themes of contestation and reconciliation. It analyzes the park’s role and form in the changing socio-political context and, with the means of spatial design, proposes an alternative vision for its redevelopment from a conflicted demolition site into a unifying habitat of nature and culture.

Based on conclusions taken from the research, the design method manifested itself as the selection and combination of historical layers together in a collage of spatial fictions, playing with and reframing existing dichotomies between their forms and meanings.

All layers were perceived as equally important, that way removing the former hierarchy between them, which was so characteristic of the previous approach to the park – when with each new ideology the previous layer was put into oblivion, as the regime desired to oppress nature into its image. By treating all former visions of Uzvaras Park, completed/only imagined/devalued/destroyed, as reference material for constructing the new park – the project strives for the much-needed reconciliation between these conflicting visions and allows them to coexist harmoniously in this use-wise no longer monumental space of prosaic recreation.

Increasingly, the attention of the architectural history researchers is drawn to periodicals of the 20th century. However, “Latvijas Architektūra” (1938-1940), the first Latvian architectural magazine, is not yet well known outside of its place of origin. Latvian Republic was among the young independent states, which emerged in Europe after WWI and later on became authoritarian. The national awareness increase and the political environment’s change found their reflection in the interwar architecture and its central print media – “Latvijas Architektūra”.

This article consists of the analysis of 22 digitally available magazine’s issues out of the 24 existing ones. “Latvijas Architektūra” was given its position in the overall chronology of Latvian architectural journalism. Further study focused on the magazine as a published media, investigating the relations between authors and content. Recurring ideas of monumentality, social and green attentiveness, and search for a national expression were identified as dominant narrative, drawing parallels to the ideological agenda of the period. The conflict of the national and international was examined from a wider perspective, looking for similar tendencies in neighboring territories.

It was found that more recent Latvian architectural publications are even less studied than “Latvijas Architektūra”. The magazine, though written in times of censorship and limited political freedom, did not promote a single idea. It rather became a source for public debate, reflection and observation, showing on its pages both the harsh criticism of modernism and descriptions of modernist projects. Architecture of Latvian Republic, being a synthesis of modernist, classical and vernacular, embodied a contradictory nature of visions that shaped it.