13. Basketball academy “Saulė“, former Šiauliai television factory “Tauras“

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The enormous block reminds the forgotten 50-year-long tale of the Šiauliai television factory: the first Lithuanian monochrome and later colour “Tauras” TV sets were produced here, as well as the “Magnolija” mobile television stations that were used to film the 1980 Summer Olympics for the whole world to see.

At its peak, the city’s largest company had as many as 8,000 employees, several production workshops, published its own newspaper, and maintained dormitories, a health clinic, collective gardens, a stadium, and a recreation centre in Palanga. Both the television factory and some of the most important buildings of Lithuanian industrial architecture in general, were designed by a Renaissance man, architect and innovator Raimundas Arnas Dineika.

Having designed dozens of huge complexes throughout the Soviet Union, R. A. Dineika developed a theory of large industrial complexes, which he applied to the Šiauliai television factory. Using different scales of objects and their position in space, the composition of the buildings’ planes and parts, and their surfaces, R. A. Dineika transformed the gloomy, austere, brutal image of the factory into a lively, bewildering, timeless complex.

The crown jewel is the television factory’s sports hall “Tauras”, which was officially coordinated with Moscow not as a hall at all, but as equipment warehouse No. 7. On the one hand, it is a hall with many stories to tell, and for decades it has been the city’s most modern sports hall, initially dedicated to handball players, and later to one of Lithuania’s strongest basketball clubs, “Šiauliai”. And on the other hand, it is a unique, monumental sculpture against a backdrop of factory buildings. The most exciting features await inside. Visitors will have the opportunity to see the large “antique” fresco by Vytautas Tribandis up close, and the most intriguing part of the experience will be a trip up to the ceiling of the building. Using typical materials, but in a very atypical manner, the architect not only transformed the arched reinforced concrete framework into roof windows but also concealed them under wood panelling, giving them a triangular shape.

Who knows what other secrets, stories and art “Tauras” holds?