Butza : architect Victor Jorbenadze

Abstract

At a glance, this book, published bilingually in Georgian and English, reads as a publication on the work of Victor Jorbenadze (1924–1999), a Georgian architect known amongst the intelligentsia of Tbilisi as ‘Butza’. Soon, one realises that the book is a poetic, quasi- metaphysical dedication to his memory. It is not just a text about an architect; it is a book on architecture. Above all, it is not a text about or on some subject: it is a book that plays. It is a book of architecture as much as it is a book on linguistic play. This fragmentary play of various texts (handwritings, memoirs, articles, photographs and drawings) tells a story of a man who himself was a homo ludens in Johan Huizinga’s sense