Architecture and urban design in contemporary Georgia : A comprehensive review of the work of Shota Bostanashvili

Abstract

Georgia is at the crossroads of Western Asia, namely the Caucasus region of Eurasia, and Eastern Europe. Until 1991 it was a Soviet Republic. Shota Bostanashvili was a Georgian architect, academic, artist and cultural theorist who studied architecture during the early years of the Brezhnev era and died in the year when the term in office of Saakashvili, the main promotor of Western architecture in Georgia, came to an end. The objective of this article is to comprehensively review his major professional and academic milestones and, based on archival research, identify his key executed and unrealized architectural and urban projects, which fall into two phases with the cut off between the two being the threshold from Soviet to post-Soviet Georgia. Works related to the first phase, all state projects, were undertaken with Vakhtang Davitaia. In both phases Bostanashvili engaged with architecture in an innovative manner, emphasising its poetical dimension. Rather than being utopic, he was able to operate on both poles: his critical and poetic thinking was coupled with the pragmatic solution of design problems. Since some of his projects reflect his personal life story, the term existentialist architecture is fitting to his work. This cultural theoretical approach is his main contribution to architecture and critical discourse in contemporary Georgia.