Vick, Luce and Suriku who walked with me
along Northern Avenue on May night 2011
… Napoleon remarked: "The garden (near Cairo) was full of the most beautiful trees, but there was not a single alley in it." This remark contains the whole spirit of his utopia. His whole life before the fall is, in fact, a straight alley through the thicket of history, the storming of the laws of causality, the siege of paradise …
Anatoly Korolev [1]
Subcortex of Yerevan
Little Armenia at first - out of stupidity or ignorance - seems visible. Its compact and cozy capital compared to Moscow is understandable. But you cuddle a little, look into the doors that are opened to you, dig deep into the depths - and under the visible stone shell ("bark") of the country and the city, a subcortex is revealed[2] - layers of meanings. Strong and weak … Thick to keratinization and thin to transparency … Horizontal and inclined … "Ring" and vertical … Sleeping and throbbing with life … Forgotten and newly invented … A world appears, the image of which was revealed by one Armenian artist. But more on that at the end of the article.
And it turns out that the seemingly solid stone cover of Armenia is vulnerable, thin as lavash. And underneath there are more and more veils.
Yerevan - thin-skinned, multi-layered … Napoleon cake with open sides …
Georgy Gachev wrote about this depth of the “body” of Armenia:
“… The sky and the sun and the air, captured in the pomegranate peel, began to lighten the skin of the earth from within, hence the pinkness of the Armenian tuff and Saryan's canvases …”; “The so-called" signs of modernity ": the city, asphalt, houses, clothes, cars - … are walk-throughs. It is important that from under them in their shell the same ancient Sibylline body, like that old woman smiling in a cab, sways for a long time and smiles in spring, is sunny and youthful … " [3]
From the city it is impossible, as in the happiest moments from a woman, to remove the last veil, revealing - even for a moment - her essence, her soul. The soul of the city is always hidden in something. But a little peep, open a little - where is one "petal", where there are several, where by accidental hit in resonance, where by the effort of thought, where by intuition - sometimes it works. What if you get lucky?
Semantic palimpsest of pseudo-clean place
The reason for this text was the acquaintance with the new central street of Yerevan, Northern Avenue (hereinafter - SP). It has been under construction since 2004, "opened" in 2007 and, according to its authors[4], is the implementation of one of the ideas of the master plan of the city, executed by Alexander Tamanyan in the early 1920s, according to which a diagonal break in a rectangular street grid was supposed to connect the main buildings of the city - the Government House and the People's House (the future Opera)[5]… A case, perhaps, rather rare in the history of urban planning - as an example of the incredible vitality of the planning concept.
But this is also just a significant, significant innovation in the environment and actual life of a big city, in fact, a city-country, comparable to the appearance of Novy Arbat in Moscow in the 60s, which was also cut through by the will of the rulers and architects in the living urban fabric. It is also interesting because in no other city of the former Soviet Union (except, perhaps, Astana) such a significant public space was created in the post-Soviet period.
Based on the "external", material layer of the prospect's environment, it is quite possible to analyze the merits and demerits of the result. Designate the joint venture as an urban development complex or ensemble, consider it in the usual genre of “project and implementation”. But as you immerse yourself in the topic, this approach turns out to be insufficient - deeper, at first invisible problem layers are revealed:
- the initial ideological (symbolic) load put into or attributed to Tamanyan's master plan (after all, the architect himself did not write anything about this[6]), and its today's relics (new Yerevan - "a city that will become an expression of the rebirth of a nation on the verge of death. A city that will save the people"[7], “The city that became the capital of the whole nation[8], every Armenian regardless of place of residence. The city in which the modern people of Armenia formed, which determined the face of the entire nation, "the capital of all Armenians in the world", the response to the Genocide, "Northern Avenue as a national idea", etc.);
- the formal and mental contrast of the joint venture with the historical city - those "bedbugs", "on top" of which, as if in a clean place, the avenue appeared (in fact, during the construction of the joint venture, several valuable historical buildings were demolished, the remains of which are supposedly stored somewhere and await reconstruction in "Old Yerevan"[9]), the memory of the place, the possible interaction of its "first" with the newly built;
- relations of the new prospectus with the so-called. "Yerevan civilization" 60s - 70s[10] - the "golden age" of Soviet Yerevan (the heroes of this new avenue - if there are any - with the heroes of that civilization - if there are any);
- a conflict in the appearance and meanings of this urbanistic innovation of the global and the local (“Yerevan” and / or “Armenian”): the universal time of modernity invades the city's own time; money and stamps from all over the world are pouring into the once organic, practically mono-national urban environment; the material world is reaching for the "global", while relations between people are perhaps archaizing …
And there are also personal impressions. Experience - gradually accumulating - observing this street, living in its surroundings and contexts … More mentally-sensual than physical, getting used to the environment, reading into texts about it. Diving, meditative immersion in the initially almost unknown - but for some reason anticipated by the close - warm, southern atmosphere of the city. Where does this come from, what a premonition? Something will become clear as you work on this text, in the course of life … And much, of course, will not be revealed. After all, "opening" (stone) skin (city) is sometimes fraught with the opening of (your) veins … (Knee in Aghveran on August 7 has already "opened", flying off on a bike from the mountain there).
Question Street
This is how research questions appeared (and continue to appear) - street doors that are still closed - which may not be answered, but cannot be asked.
- How many stone - or rather "commemorative" - leathers does Yerevan have? What is under them - in the subcortex of the city (if the stones are bark)? Who and what are the holders, the spokesmen for this urban “subconsciousness”? Or does it exist only in the imagination of those few people who think about the Yerevan spirit today, and now also in mine?
- Is the philosophy of the city conceived by Tamanyan - a pink garden city for the victimized people; a national dream embodied in reality? Is such a sense of the city possible, isn't it redundant for it? Isn't it too pretentious (the city is still not a monument)? And does an architect have the right to try to reproduce in stone a certain dream, even a popular one, even if it really is or was?
- Is an environmental "palimpsest" possible in a city that has been actively developing for less than a century? Where there has already been a custom with each new layer - always more "strong", heavy - to suppress, brick up, replace the weak old. Together with the associated traditions of urban life and, perhaps, its heroes? Palimpsests of the Matenadaran manuscripts - not a lesson to the city below?
- How valuable (and for whom can it be valuable now) was that “dusty Russian-Persian town”, which (done in the mainstream of Soviet propaganda) perceived by the majority of local residents pre-revolutionary Yerevan, which stood on the site of “Tamanyan”, and now post-Tamanyan? Was that late imperial city really so weak that it was not a problem to sweep it off the face of the earth? (For the very small - 600 people - Jewish community of Yerevan, it is important that Tamanyan demolished the synagogue and the Jewish cemetery[11]… Someone else remembers the demolished Getsemani chapel, which stood on the site of the Opera …[12]). Why does the almost 30,000 population of pre-revolutionary Erivan seem ridiculously small to today's townspeople? Are the Armenians "ashamed" that their current capital in the past was so small (even Alexandropol was larger)? But a city of this size in the Russian Empire was not at all small[13]… And of course he had his own environment, his own spirit of the place. What about him?
- How deep is the "urban environmental amnesia" of Yerevan residents, who seem to value the history of their country, their people (in every Armenian house there is a book by Leo - at least this is how it once seemed to Andrei Bitov) and so neglect the history of their city? What are its reasons?[14]
- Does the "weak force" of the city's proto-layers still act, and how exactly, of what was here before, dwellings, courtyards, tracts of "aborigines", seemingly "to the end" being destroyed before our very eyes (Soviet "bedbugs", "old buildings of the late XIX - early XX centuries, and maybe earlier)?
- Will the joint venture turn out to be as important a new street for the city as it once was, in the 1960s, Novy Arbat in Moscow, which "instantly" became a central place playing a special role in city life (a model of the new, the master of thought, a trendsetter)[15]? Did the city need such a new street? Maybe it was better to preserve and maintain the old, established places of the center? Joint venture - for whom? To whom can he become his own?
- How are the archetypes of Yerevan city culture related to the Armenian culture? It is believed that the Armenians willingly integrated into “not their” environments, built “alien” cities (Tbilisi, Istanbul, Baku), it was more interesting for them (and more profitable), and they didn’t have their own city for too long[16]… And now the first "national" city, and even the capital, is being purposefully built. How does the joint venture fit into those and other rules and traditions? How “Armenian” and “Yerevanian” is it? And what could have happened if you thought about this before designing a joint venture?
- What is this "window" cut through? In what - different in relation to "normal", today's (or, given its antiquity, "eternal") Yerevan - worlds? To Europe and America? To Asia? Into the future of this city? Or - into the possible - emptiness of its current inhabitants? And isn't it dangerous - to take and break through in your dark interior a channel accessible to all, where now everyone can enter and inspect the contents? And won't some brave naive Armenian boy suddenly exclaim: the king is naked?
- What is the right attitude to the unrealized ideas of A. Tamanyan today - since he is recognized as the national cultural hero of the first row ("Saryan-Tamanyan-Spendiarov")? Using and modifying these ideas postmodern, to satisfy creative ambitions and investment interests? Carefully, in a museum way, to finish building the city according to his projects with absolute precision? Or recognize these projects as part of the national spiritual heritage and not try to implement anything in 80 years?
- And is it really such a planning heroism - in the Ottoman way today to punch avenues through the historical environment? The attitude of Tamanyan, who invented the joint venture, to a “non-Armenian” place as conditionally “clean”, “empty”, as a model for an ideal dream city, can be understood. But has this view of the city not changed at all for 80 years? Only now it is not a city of high ideas, but a city of high real estate prices? "… In utopia, let us note that economic laws have fewer rights than, say, aesthetic ones: it lives according to the laws of beauty."[17]… Did the joint venture arise and live according to the laws of beauty?
- What will happen to Yerevan if all the last remnants of the “old city” (Kond, Kozern, the inner-quarter enclaves of the “Dotamanyan” development) are demolished and new residential complexes are built on these places? or to clear the "Main Avenue" according to the primary projects? What will the city gain from a complete and final victory over the historical "slums" (despite the fact that the Soviet slums on the periphery will remain for a long time)?
- How "fluid modernity" fits in[18] of the modern world in a stone bed of a classic modernist avenue? And if today it is unbearable for someone to build precisely “avenues”, then what could a modern “avenue” of a large capital city be like? How do the Yerevan urban planning processes relate to the world ones? For example, with the "acupuncture" of small urban public spaces carried out in Barcelona[19]? How big is the lag or discrepancy here?
- Does the joint venture continue the trend of erosion of the integrity of the "Tamanyan" (by the way, not built) city, which began in the 1930s with the alteration of the general plan, designed for 150 thousand inhabitants, for 450 thousand, continued in the 60s - 80s with the construction of new peripheral residential arrays? Or maybe he helps to "collect" the city - in what was conceived by Tamanyan? Or does it give an impulse for the formation of a certain new integrity, not yet foreseen by anyone?
- What is the factor of the public space of the joint venture? Tamanyan's idea? Location, extremely convenient pedestrian connection of the Opera with the beginning of st. Abovyan? A shell of houses? A critical mass of boutiques, cafes, restaurants? How does life start between new buildings? How is the joint venture living (settling in) now? Sold out apartments are not inhabited, elite residential buildings have no courtyards, shops are expensive and empty, there is no greenery, the design of the street parterre is frankly bad - how does the public space work?
- What is the identity of today's Yerevan? Sovetskoye was easily dropped. Before that, "Persian" and "Turkic" or, as they say in Baku, "Azerbaijani"[20], dropped just as easily. But what is left? And what kind of identity strengthens or creates the new that appears today?
- Does the 21st century in Yerevan, as well as in many other capitals and large cities of the former USSR (Baku, Tbilisi, Tashkent, Odessa, Lvov, etc.) lead to a kind of deurbanization of the urban environment (with all the external "urbanism" of the joint venture and similar neoplasms)? Instead of producing samples of urban culture, infection, on the one hand, with globalized clichés, on the other, with stereotypes of rural-rural, peripheral culture (rabis[21]). Perhaps, in a mono-ethnic city, this process proceeds somewhat differently? Here at least there is no need to "nationalize" the city. But the most dynamic, advanced townspeople still leave.[22], and in their place come under-cost people … those who like the global "soap" … and the architecture of the joint venture?
- Finally, how could a joint venture be arranged “correctly” from the point of view of preserving the spirit of the place? And is there anything else you can fix here? (I immediately had the idea of preserving the 4-storey building protruding from the corner at the corner of the joint venture and Teryan, turning it into a “museum of the place”: emphasizing its rootedness with the current “foreignness”, bright suprematist coloring, a collection of artifacts of recent history … And look: this house is already taking on this role!). Or let him be satisfied: “the spirit breathes where it wants” - suddenly it wants to here too?
- And in general, is it worth talking about the spirit of such a city, which itself does not really think about it? Almost nothing was Google on the queries “Yerevan - the spirit of the place”, “Yerevan - the soul of the city”. Among the top ten links about this, there is only one answer "in essence" (and even there is just a nice selection of photos of Yerevan drinking fountains[23]), while there were much more finds about the presence or absence of a shower in various city hotels …[24]
And as a result of thinking about all these questions, it would be good to answer a strategic question: what type of urbanism suits Yerevan best, what approaches to planning, development, heritage preservation are most consistent with the character and spirit of this city?
And to practical questions: what needs to be done to stop the process of destruction of the historic city, to save and revive the remains of old Yerevan, to ensure the relevance and historical consistency of new projects?
To get closer to the answers, let us consider a number of local plots (cases), directly or indirectly related to the formation and existence of the SP and its environmental contexts.
Cases and observations
North Avenue: light bottom, dark top
The joint venture looks strange on a summer evening and early at night when the city spills onto the streets. Below - lanterns, garlands of light bulbs, brightly dressed walking crowd. Above are dark floors with black window holes. Almost none of them glow. (The daytime sign of habitability - flowers on the balconies - is observed in no more than 10% of cases in the pioneer part of the joint venture near the Opera). Everyone is walking. Nobody lives. Expensive shops are half empty. Is this the new Yerevan?
And in the afternoon, the joint venture is almost a dead zone. In mid-August at least. Well it's hot in Yerevan. And the joint venture goes exactly from the south to the north. And there is no shadow on it. The galleries are decorative here - it is impossible to walk through them. They are worth comparing, say, with the spacious galleries on Via Roma in Turin, where it is so comfortable to walk and go to shops both in the heat and in the rain. And in Yerevan itself there is an excellent example of a "correct" gallery in a house on st. Tamanyan, 3, near the Cascade.
At the same time, with the advent of the joint venture, the structure of the central environment diversified. The old, historically formed main street (Astafyevskaya St., present-day Abovyan, “opened” in 1863) is now adjoined at an oblique angle by a short multi-storey new one.
Streets are contrasting in type, and form a complementary pair. And one more plus: the joint venture "leads to the temple" - the main Yerevan temple according to Tamanyan's plan, the Opera …
"Broadway", "our little Broadway" … Isn't that what no one calls JV? Do the townspeople reflect on its diagonality within a rectangular grid, its similarity to New York in this and generally “urbanistic” spirit?
And yet this is a strange avenue. SP is a fairly short (about 450 m) pedestrian shopping street. From the classic "prospect" here, in essence, there is only "cut through".
So, the city is enriched and improved in terms of planning, in terms of the environment there is still much that can (and should) be done, but in the architectural aspect, unfortunately, there are more minuses than pluses.
The JV, which was presented as an example of the implementation of Tamanyan's idea and, accordingly, an act of strengthening the identity of Yerevan, by its appearance and design led in fact to a decrease in the originality of the place: it is dominated by the standardized “global” instead of “Yerevan”. This is how you can build, and this is probably inevitable, in new sub-centers, in outlying shopping malls. But in the very heart, the core of the city, which is almost sacred for the people of Yerevan?
Why does the city of Yerevan allow itself to be simplified? A rhetorical question? Why Moscow? (Here is Manezhnaya Square - everything seems to be fine, they also walk, but this is some other Moscow … plastic-Tseretelian, dim reflection of a global city …) But why are Berlin, Paris, Barcelona continually complicating themselves, finding strength to resist global entropy?
City of earth, avenue of air?
Yerevan is the city of the earth. Grew out of it and stands firmly on it[25]… This was seen by Nicholas I, who called the Erivan fortress "clay pot", felt Mandelstam (poem "Armenia"):
Azure and clay, clay and azure, What else do you want? Quickly squint your eyes, Like a shortsighted shah over a turquoise ring, Over the book of sonorous clays, over the book earth, Over a purulent book, over a clay road, With which we suffer, like music and words.
Gachev understood: “The Georgians easily own the land, they are liberated, they have escaped into the open. And among the Armenians - the land owns them, as the essence and insides "[26].
But is the joint venture made of earth, despite its predominantly “clay” color scheme? Is it a castle in the air, is it a soap bubble? And if so, then this is not at all harmless bubble. With the continuation of the trend of the SP-zation of the environment, he and his planning "goal" - such a stable, firmly standing on the ground Opera - can turn into a soap opera.
SP is a case when a city, having ceased to grow out of the ground (literally - like the Erivan fortress or today's Kond, or figuratively - from tuff like “old Yerevan” or the Armenian-Stalinist Empire style), but rushing high-rise buildings from “nowhere” (from a place understood by the authors as empty) in the sky? - going nowhere! - loses himself. The joint venture has yet to grow into Yerevan land. Including the roots of trees, which sooner or later will definitely be planted here.
Layered city
Karen Balyan, comparing Yerevan with Moscow, for some reason rejects the historical multi-layeredness of the Armenian capital:
“Moscow is… a multitude of historical layers, mixing one-two-storey buildings and gigantic buildings, antiquity - in the form of Kremlin masterpieces and modernity - in the form of constructivist masterpieces. … A completely different city - Yerevan. Yerevan is what determined its appearance, i.e. the city until the 1980s is a fragile surface of facades with smooth cornices, austere portals, graceful sandrids, every touch of which requires caution and tact. An endless decoration, an ubiquitous reminder of beauty. Warmth, calmness, wisdom came from the Yerevan facades "[27].
Even with the current state of Yerevan architecture (see item 8), this is an obvious simplification for me. Yerevan is heterogeneous. "Napoleon" of the ancient new city is composed of at least eight archaeological and architectural "cakes".
1. Urartian layer
Fortress and city of Erebuni.
2. Medieval Armenian layer
Katoghike Church XII - XIII centuries on the street Abovyan, buried excavations on pl. Republics, other churches, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1679 in ancient Armenian forms.
3. "Persian" and "Turkic" layer
A gay mosque, houses with pointed arches and the remains of a Persian mosque in Konda … (and after all, quite recently - already in the 2000s - several small mosques were demolished in Yerevan[28]).
4. Imperial layer ("Caucasian Empire")
The preserved buildings of the historical center of the city of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. ("Black houses").
5. Layer of self-organizing, vernacular buildings of different times
Separate courtyards of the center of Yerevan, hidden behind the facades of the "Caucasian Empire" (1 Abovyan str., Pushkin str. 4-6, etc.), intra-quarter worlds (the city center quarters were built around the perimeter while preserving the old core. Catherine's plans for Russian historical cities: the unusable buildings were not demolished all at once, but gradually faded away … But then life did not want to close down, come to naught. And it continues to this day), Wednesday Kond, Kozern, Kanaker, Noragyuh …
6. Layer 1920s - 50s
Constructivism (there is not much of it, but we can clearly see it even in the center); Armenian Stalinist style. Baghramyan Avenue is an "exhibition" of his best samples.
7. Layer 1960s - 80s
St. Sayat-Nova, cafe "Poplavok", wide sidewalks st. Abovyan, exits from the central metro stations, the Russia cinema … Plus typical concrete and tuff high-rise buildings, the dominance of which in the center is imperceptible from the ground, but obvious from the upper points of view. It is interesting, however, that with the powerful Soviet architectural layers in today's Yerevan, there is no sense of the "Soviet" life[29]…
8. Post-Soviet layer
Typically "globalist" buildings (sometimes with decorative Armenian motives), often copy / paste designed. An environment of financial investment and consumption, show-off and glamor.
The last three dominate. The first three are ephemeral. And the fourth and fifth - the middle - layers turn out to be very important - this is a visible material breakthrough into the city's past, a key link in maintaining environmental, life continuity. That is why they need to be preserved.
House-Museum of Parajanov
A rare example in today's city (not only Yerevan) of a newly created Place (a place with the atmosphere, the spirit of the place, with its own hero). Enriches the environment of the city as a whole. This place, in contrast to the simplified (and thus simplifying its visitor) joint venture is ambivalent, multi-layered, reflective … Just like a modern man. Like his hero. So you will think: A. Tamanyan, S. Paradzhanov, N. Sargsyan - who is more modern?
Physically, this place is much smaller than the joint venture. And in terms of meaning, perhaps - much more. Well, topologically, it's different. The house is self-sufficient within itself - a microcosm. The street consists of many such microworlds, on it another - new - quality should be obtained … The same as in Abovyan, some other streets of the center … And what has not yet developed at the joint venture.
Visually, this house is not alone in its kind - there are several more similar remakes of the 80s nearby, conceived to accommodate craft workshops and found other functions. But in general, they do not create a tangible layer in the urban environment. Place in yourself.
And not everyone likes it:
“… On the edge of the Hrazdan gorge, a props were erected, more in line with the tastes of our lovers of antiquity - the building of the Parajanov Museum, the appearance of which has nothing to do with the Tiflis house of the great director. The creation of this museum was a debt to the memory of Parajanov, an attempt to return to the robbed Armenian culture a part of what rightfully belongs to it, but what prevented the Armenian architects from creating a modern museum building, and not a monument to their desire to resemble Georgians in everything? "[30]
This statement is typical for those who forget about the existence of the soul (home, place, city). It is characterized by a frontal approach, simplification, non-vision of the complexity of the urban environment and the ambiguity of what people do with it. But this museum is not only a repository of the world of the great artist, an attempt to recreate a piece of a cozy, "real" city, the last genuine remains of which in Yerevan, on the contrary, are being destroyed[31].
Perhaps it is precisely about such innovative objects that Michel de Certeau wrote: "The museum often plays the role of a laboratory, it goes ahead of urban planning."[32].
Well, why is everything that this house is full of, what you enjoy in it, somehow unimaginable in the "modern museum building"? Maybe because it is too rare to find here a good new building of a delicate architect - that in Yerevan (searches have led here so far only to the Mayor's Office of Jim Torosyan - thanks for the tip of the architect G. Poghosyan), which is in Moscow. Nobody has yet built such a modern philosophical museum as, for example, the Knut Hamsun Museum in Norway by the architect S. Hall …
Creating a House as a Place, a Street as an urban space - participants in a complex urban world, bearers of the city's philosophy and soul - is more difficult than choosing an appearance, prototype, style or number of storeys …
"Mono" and "Poly"
I understand that this chapter, containing some preliminary intuitions about the relationship between the Armenian mentality and the Armenian city, is the most fragile and subjective part of the article. I am touching here, probably superficially, areas in which I am not a specialist. But I still consider it important and I don't want to remove it from the text. I hope that the reader will forgive me and also think about the issues raised here - in the context of the city.
Yerevan - the city of one square[33], one Prospect (not the joint venture - Mashtots, former Stalin, Lenin Avenue), a view of one Mountain (albeit with two peaks) …
And when reading the texts of Armenian authors - about the same architecture, anthropology, politics - often there is a feeling of monologue, the dominance of mono meanings.
"… In the Grand Narrative there is only room for one Tragedy, since other dramatic events, competing losses, diminish its significance."[34].
The joint venture showed the paradox of Armenian culture: for all its antiquity / depth in modern manifestations (primarily architectural ones), it often slips into simplification. The post-Soviet architectural layer turns out to be a "thick layer of chocolate" superimposed on top of the "shameful" old, a manifestation of what is called McDonaldization, the starbackization of society[35] (although in Yerevan these specific fast-food chains are not yet available), and in architecture - by the dubaization of cities.
SP-zation. And behind this new layer of thin old ones - at first glance, at least - it is not visible … Does this not lead to a kind of "regression to a more primitive structure"[36]? Rather, the inestimable meanings of culture are becoming more subtle and imperceptible. (Is that so everywhere? - but in some places this danger of regression, cultural entropy is recognized by the intellectual elite of society, which takes on the labor of opposition. This happens in also old, but reflective Western European cultures, which are facing the threat of the erosion of identity due to the influx of foreign cultural migrants). I am not worried about the consequences of this for the Armenian culture or “Armenians” - they will survive. But the consequences for the city - for some reason, worry …
In what I read (about the joint venture, the Parajanov house, etc.), as a rule, there is no understanding of the need for innovations, even if they are “global”, like a joint venture, or “imitation,” like the Parajanov museum … On the contrary, there is a priori the desire to reject them: "we do not need this." Don't accept what you don't like.
But the cultural significance of these places is greater than their "appearance" - and today it may not yet be obvious … For example, the Parajanov Museum - for some, just an injection of "Tbilisi culture" - becomes life-giving for someone else, bringing into the urban environment the complexity it lacks. But the joint venture, which seems to the majority of those writing about it as unusual for Yerevan as a "cultural city", anti-ecological, inhuman, is a really new public space, so rare today, and people are already getting used to walking there, making appointments …
It seems to me that in such monologue, unwillingness to hear another person, to see the “reverse side” of the phenomenon, there is a certain danger for the city.
A normal city is always dialogical. Today's Armenian culture of the urban environment (and SP is its most striking manifestation) - let's say carefully - has a tendency to monologue.
“The property of our mentality is individualism. We do not love and do not know how to obey general rules. Every Armenian presents himself as a leader. This is evident in the architecture of the city. We do not know how to obey the laws of urban planning. And they are the same as in life. Someone is in charge, others are not. Some buildings are main, others are not,”writes Karen Balyan.[37].
This is both pluses (certainty, stability, reliability) and minuses - such a culture does not “see” the nuances well. Poorly assimilates someone else's (and even his own, perceived by the “alien” - “slums”[38]). The beauty of Kond is not visible to the majority of Yerevan residents. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but most of those intelligent townspeople with whom I met had never been to it at all. Not once in my life. Internet collections of poetic photos of his environment were taken mainly by aliens (not Armenians) or representatives of the diaspora. And the residents of Yerevan (judging by the media, the Internet) consider either only this way: "Kond is a shame of our city, it must be demolished as soon as possible", or as follows: "Kond is" old Yerevan ", and there it is necessary to make a museum for tourists - our Montmartre, Place du Tertre”(the latter, however, are much smaller).
Maybe this is a consequence of the lack of roots of the inhabitants in this relatively new city for most of them?
Well, and one more minus - it is difficult for people with a dialogical mentality to live here. And when they leave, the city loses its urban …
The Armenian "mono" has root, metaphysical foundations, noted by the connoisseur of the "national cosmos of the world" G. Gachev: "… The nature of Armenia is a kind of monophysitism: the monolith of the Armenian flat mountain, a plateau, which is the bulge of the earth, swelling from volcanic depths into the sky"[39].
There are also historical and demographic ones: from a certain moment, Yerevan is an amazingly mono-ethnic city. And "… the ethnic interpretation of history could not but lead to a certain simplification of the Armenian ideas about their own national path"[40]… Although multiculturalism (at least, the coexistence of different nations and lifestyles) in this city was and, probably, is still possible. Do you need it?
But there are also modern, global ones. A modern person with a “clip”, clichéd way of thinking does not want to carry an extra burden on himself, to be responsible not only for someone else's, but for his own layering. One-dimensional consciousness flattens, simplifies the environment …
But back to architecture. The national Armenian material, tuff, is multi-colored, faceted, each block of a different tone or shade, every house - all the more so, and, summing up, multiplying in the city, tuff does not allow a monologue. Unlike concrete.
Notes:
[1] Korolev A. Genius loci. M.: RA Arsis-Design (ArsisBooks), 2011. P. 60.
[2] To explain this anatomical allusion, one can use a popular metaphor: "I. P. Pavlov compared the cortex [of the brain] with a rider who controls a horse - the subcortex, the area of instincts, drives, emotions" (https://www.svatovo.ws/health_brain_2.html). Only in relation to the city, the connection is sometimes inverse, and here it would be better not to “manage”, but to cooperate.
[3] Gachev G. National images of the world. M.: Soviet writer, 1988. S. 402, 408.
[4] The avenue was built under the patronage of the then President of Armenia R. Kocharian; the author of the planning solution and designs of most buildings is the architect N. Sargsyan, the chief architect of Yerevan in 1999-2004. and since May 2011
[5] True, today the southern end of the joint venture "sits" not on the 60-meter-high drum of the Government House designed by Tamanyan, and never built, but on the "ziggurat" of the museum building that appeared later.
[6] See: Masters of Soviet Architecture on Architecture. T. 1. M.: Art, 1975. S. 249-252. It should be noted that other sources, including, possibly, existing in the Armenian language, are not yet available to me.
[7] Balyan K. Yerevan. Fragments // Voice of Armenia. 26.12.2009, No. 142 //. Note that K. Balyan has no references to the texts or statements of Tamanyan.
[8] Balyan K. Content and form of Yerevan: according to Tamanyan or against? // Voice of Armenia. Thursday, May 19, 2011, No. 52 (20125) //
[9] The project "Old Yerevan" (2005, authors - architects L. Vardanyan, S. Danielyan) provides for the reconstruction of several dismantled historical buildings of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. in the area between Abovyan, Buzand, Yeznik Kokhbatsi and Aram streets.
[10] See, for example: Lurie S., Davtyan A. Yerevan civilization (New Armenian culture developed in the Soviet years) //
[11] "… The creativity of the chief architect of the city of the Soviet era, Alexander Tamanyan, is evaluated in different ways: they justly cannot forgive him for the demolition of the Yerevan synagogue and the Jewish cemetery" (I. Karpenko In the land of multicolored tuff // https://www.lechaim.ru/ARHIV/ 195 / karpenko.htm).
[12] See: V. M. Harutyunyan, M. M. Hasratyan, A. A. Melikyan. Yerevan. M.: Stroyizdat, 1968. S. 30-31.
[13] In 1897, Erivan with its 29,006 inhabitants outnumbered such prominent provincial and regional centers of the empire as Vladimir (28,479), Chernigov (27,716), Vologda (27,705), Krasnoyarsk (26,699), Novgorod (25 736), Vyatka (present-day Kirov, 25 008), Verny (present-day Alma-Ata or Almaty, 22 744), Arkhangelsk (20 882), Novorossiysk (16 897), Khabarovsk (14 971).
[14] “… The injuries inflicted on the people were so numerous and great that it gave rise to amnesia, a kind of“zone of insensitivity”in relation to the past and even the present …”, says, for example, Karen Agikyan (House and facade. Conversation with Alexander Topchyan (Yerevan, RA) // Aniv. 2007. No. 6 // https://aniv.ru/view.php?numer=15&st=5). Ruben Arevshatyan (Arevshatyan R. Blank Zones in Collective Memory or the Transformation of Yerevan's Urban Space in the 60s // Red Thread. Issue 2 (2010) / /
[15]According to some estimates, the same role in Yerevan was played by the newly opened Sayat Nova Avenue (see: S. Lurie, A. Davtyan, op. Cit.). However, the old residents of Yerevan do not agree with this: “The street was like a street, nothing special” (conversation with Garegin Zakoyan, September 25, 2011).
[16] See: K. Agekyan City on Earth // Aniv. 2009. No. 5 //
[17] Korolev A. Decree. op. P. 98.
[18] See: Fluid Modernity: A View from 2011. Lecture by Zygmunt Baumann. 06 May 2011 //
[19] See, for example: Jose Acebillo: “We became the creators of the architectural revolution” // Architectural Bulletin. 2011. No. 4, p.23-25.
[20] See, for example: M. Marjanly Armenianstvo. Russia. Caucasus. Moscow: Flinta, 2010.96 p.
[21] Rabis (from "working art") is a trend in modern Armenian music that integrates elements of folk and bard songs, chanson, oriental motives, etc. The growing popularity of rabis leads to the fact that this genre penetrates into various spheres of life: you can dress, arrange your life, behave "like a rabis", in other words, be a "rabis".
[22] See, for example: "Jokes are out of place": migration from Armenia develops into a national catastrophe. 2011-01-07 // www.regnum.ru/news/fd-abroad/armenia/1421149.html.
[23]
[24] Still, there are serious “nostalgic-local lore” resources dedicated to “Old Yerevan” on the Internet. See:
[25] However, let's not forget about the seismic hazard. See: There is a way out, and the authorities are in a position to immediately start solving the seismic resistance of urban development, according to the participants of the “GA” round table // Golos Armenii. September 15, 2011, No. 96 (20169) //
[26] Gachev G. Decree. op. P. 410.
[27] Balyan K. Yerevan. Fragments.
[28] See:
[29] Vartan Yaloyan suggested an interesting interpretation of the Yerevan buildings of Soviet modernism: in his opinion, such buildings as the "Youth Palace", the "Russia" cinema, the "Dvin" hotel, etc., were perceived in the urban landscape as a kind of "reflection" of modern Western art and manifestations of "communist-capitalist convergence" (Yaloyan V. New Political Subjects in Armenia and March 1 Event // Red Thread. 2009. No. 1. P. 34 // https://www.red-thread.org/en /article.asp?a=17).
[30] Mikaelyan A. The history of the city of Foolov: how to build "old Yerevan" // Noah's Ark. № 2 (161) January (15-31) 2011 //.
[31] Another such attempt is Villa Delenda, which is being restored by an Italian entrepreneur, at ul. Kokhbatsi (house of the Mnatsakanyans at the end of the 19th century). I may have yet to write about this house.
[32] De Certeau M. Ghosts in the city // Emergency reserve. 2010. No. 2. P. 115.
[33] The second main public place of the city - the area around the Opera - is not formally a square.
[34] Guchinova E.-B. Deportation and trauma text in autobiographical writing. Diary of Arpenik Aleksanyan // Laboratorium / 2010. №1. P. 84.
[35] See: D. Ritzer, McDonaldization of Society 5. M.: Praxis Publishing and Consulting Group, 2011. 592 p.
[36] Guchinova E.-B. Decree. op. P. 98.
[37] Balyan K. Yerevan. Fragments.
[38] Kareg Agekyan wrote about "a special Armenian logic that fundamentally ignores reality" (K. Agekyan, op. Cit.).
[39] Gachev G. Decree. op. P. 404.
[40] The second main public place of the city - the area around the Opera - is not formally a square.
