Category: News

On June 26th as part of the MakeCity festival the TAB team organised an introductory event in Berlin. Held in the Embassy of Georgia to the Federal Republic of Germany, the topic of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, Buildings Are Not Enough, was presented. Invited guests had a chance to ask questions and get more information about the planned event and beyond.

The event helped to spread the word among the art and architecture community within Germany and our special thank you to the Embassy of Georgia to the Federal Republic of Germany for their support.

The TAB team, with the support of Price Clause Fund, presented the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial “Buildings are not enough” in Rotterdam during International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam (IABR).

The TAB had the opportunity to meet one of the biggest minds in contemporary architecture, Reinier de Graaf, and discuss the possibilities of his involvement during the main event in October. Fortunately, Reinier de Graaf agreed to participate in the Symposium part of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial as a keynote speaker. He will also present his book – Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession

Our Special Thanks goes to Tante Nino and the Prince Claus Fund

Pierre de Meuron is one of the co-founders of world leading architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron.

Pierre de Meuron was born in Basel in 1950 and studied architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) from 1970 to 1975 with Aldo Rossi and Dolf Schnebli. He received his degree in architecture in 1975, establishing his own practice with Jacques Herzog in 1978. In 1977, he was an assistant to Prof. Dolf Schnebli. Since 1994, he has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, and he has taught as a professor at ETH Zurich since 1999, where he co-founded ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute. In 2001, Pierre de Meuron and Jacques Herzog received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, followed by the Praemium Imperiale in 2007. Continue reading “TAB hosts Pierre de Meuron”

Three Swedish architects from architecture firm SECRETARY visited Georgia to host the third pre-event of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial.

Through images, texts, and design experiments, Secretary presented a series of engagements dealing with the theme “The Continuous Surface”. A lecture was followed by a lively discussion where architects shared their working experience and challenges facing small architectural offices.

Thanks for the interesting talk Karin Matz, Helen Runting and Rutger Sjörgim

http://www.secretary.international

Many Thanks to our host Fabrika

Lela Rekviashvili holds a pre event talk on the theme “Right to the City: Who’s right? Which right? To which City?”

One of the latest initiatives of the Tbilisi City Hall to free urban space from private garages in favour of creating recreational areas in the city, was met with relative acclaim. However, some commentators did raise concerns around social costs of garage removal in the city, particularly for those citizens who currently use garages for commercial purposes. It seems the City Hall, will not handle the topic with similar violence as when removing street vendors from public spaces. Still, the case seems to be posing an interesting dilemma to discuss urban politics in Tbilisi. Which rights are more important, the right to free public space from informal occupation or the right to draw on public space for survival purposes? What kind of social conflict lies between the aspirations of different groups? To discuss these question the lecture offers discussion on Peter Marcuse’s works on right to the city. Marcuse tries to offer class analysis for understanding urban spatial production processes, hence allows for identification and naming of groups behind urban conflicts. The discussion will first offer Marcuse’s class definitions and then attempt to use those for understanding the politics of marginalising informal practices in Tbilisi.
Continue reading “Lela Rekhviashvili Pre-Event Talk”

Onur Ceritoğlu’s lecture dealt with ‘Çıkmacılar’ (removers), people who salvage materials from demolished buildings for reuse and recycling purposes in Istanbul.

Their existence can be traced back to informal urbanization, Gecekondu (nightlanders) since the 1960s. The capitalist system tends to create and instrumentalise these social infrastructures and keep them on the periphery. The Çıkmacılar not only supply raw materials for formal mass production, but they also open up an unregulated economy for second-hand building materials.
Continue reading “Onur Ceritoglu Pre-Event Talk”