This year marks 100 years since the birth of architect Oļģerts Ostenbergs. Ostenbergs was not only a practicing architect, but also a well-known teacher of future architects and designers at Riga Technical University and the Art Academy of Latvia, a publicist, a thinker - in many ways an extraordinary personality. As one of the authors of the Salaspils Memorial, his name is inscribed in the Latvian Cultural Canon.
One of the best-known works carried out by Oļģerts Ostenbergs is the "Trade Project", the design institute of the Latvian State Trade and Catering Enterprises, where the legendary café "Leningrada" (now Printful Latvia Inc.) at 25 Raiņa Boulevard was located (1972, together with Ilze Šņori). The interior of the café, although lost today, has become an icon of Latvian design history - it was the first public interior to use tapestries by Rūdolfs Heimrāts as spatial elements.
Oļģerts Ostenbergs, together with architects Gunārs Asari, Ivars Strautmanis and Oļegs Zakamennijs, were among the authors commissioned to design the Salaspils Memorial (1967), built on the site of the former Salaspils concentration camp (1941-1944). The architects argued for a heightened expression in this project. The surviving competition design sheets show that Oļģerts Ostenbergs was the author of the famous entrance wall.