View from Tbilisi: Georgia's painful transition from Soviet republic to independent state is chronicled in its architecture. Among many unhappy events, Nick Shavishvili holds out hope - View

Architectural Review, The, May, 2003 by Nick Shavishvili

Tbilisi, capital of Georgia (a newly independent country in the Caucasus, formerly a southern republic of the USSR) is over 1500 years old. Its name is translated as 'hot springs': the legend goes that while hunting Vachtang Gorgasali, the King of Iberia (in the fifth century, eastern Georgia), killed a pheasant which fell into the hot Lake Lisi and was promptly cooked.

Today Tbilisi is a large city with over 1.2 million inhabitants--a quarter of the entire Georgian population. The city, on the shoulders of surrounding hills, stretches along Mtkvari River. Over the centuries its basic linear plan was enriched by the wings of residential quarters. The city's average altitude is 450m above sea level (the nearest, the Black Sea, is some 300km west of Tbilisi). The climate is generally mild continental--very much as in the rest of southeastern Europe. Winters rarely bring snow and below zero temperatures while summers sometimes go well above 30 degrees Celsius.

The history of the city is closely related to the Christian period. As an important trading point on the Great Silk Road as well as the Christian outpost in hostile surroundings of Mongols, Persians and Ottomans, Tbilisi constantly suffered from invasions and by the late eighteenth century had virtually been destroyed by Agha Mahmad, the Persian Khan. Years later, friendly Russian forces released Tbilisi from Islamic pressures and easily incorporated the weakened state of Georgia into an ever-growing Russian empire. Via Russia, came German colonists and Franco-Italian merchants and travellers who helped Tbilisi to acquire its mixed status of a mid-eastern town with a south-European, almost Mediterranean touch, still present in its historical area.

An important pre-Russian urban document, the town plan of Tbilisi--completed by Prince Vakhushti in 1735--clearly shows the centre of the city moving along Mtkvari from Seidabad on the south towards Kala on the north. In Russian times, by the mid nineteenth century, the move was completed and the core of the city firmly established around the so-called MtaTsminda (Holy Mountain), or in Russian orthodox terms--St David's Mountain. Mid-nineteenth-century architects' names such as Scudieri, Cumberland, Tatishchev, and after them Simonsen, Salzmann, Grimm, Schroeter, clearly suggest who brought Classicism, Baroque and Art Nouveau to Tbilisi.

The first Georgian Classically-trained architect, Simon Kldiashvili appeared only at the end of the nineteenth century. Decades later, the USSR threatened the unique character of urban Tbilisi and the city could have easily degenerated into a typically Soviet-style faceless settlement, but its beautiful central districts (subject to the first-ever successful large-scale urban reconstruction programme in the USSR), helped to save its distinct character. Thanks to the programme, the concept of traditional multi-racial neighbourhoods of Old Tbilisi--so called wbani, with their inner-courtyard housing blocks and balconies around the perimeter--had been reintroduced, many decaying buildings saved from demolition and their real value re-established.

During the past decade, the city has presided over tremendous changes brought by painful and turbulent processes of succession from Russia and the creation of an independent state, Civil wars and massive political strikes swept across the capital leaving their mark in burnt-out buildings and devastated infrastructure. To make matters worse, on 25 April 2002 a major earthquake struck Tbilisi leaving over 10 000 buildings damaged. A fifth of them cannot be saved or restored, they need to be completely replaced, but among them are 66 registered architectural monuments. Sadly, the earthquake was strong enough to ruin the buildings and peoples' lives but not powerful enough for international aid organizations--hence the city failed to attract their money and support.

So can the city save its urban historic tissue on its own? At the moment the answer is plain 'no'. Once the most prosperous region in the whole of the former USSR, Georgia today is a poor and underdeveloped country. A process of privatization of city housing--a rushed and uncalculated post-Soviet political act--left the city's inhabitants helpless against deterioration. The city's municipality could not cope with the growing demand to improve housing and services, so everything fell into predators' hands, and pressure on Old Tbilisi grew enormously. By the mid-1990s it started to alter the shape of MtaTsminda. With the country in recession, the only large-scale construction activity going on is housing for nouveau-riches. Understandably, prices for real estate in Tbilisi cannot stand comparison with Western capitals or indeed Moscow. In fact, property in Tbilisi is so cheap that in most districts you cannot cover construction costs--so the developers only apply to those fashionable Tbilisi areas (which includ e Old Tbilisi) where they can foresee profits. But even there margins are so small that bigger and higher buildings have to be built to justify the costs.