Untold Stories of Urban Armenia
Armenian Institute
1 Onslow Street London EC1N 8AS United Kingdom
The Armenian Institute brings you a unique opportunity to come and meet a figure of the architecture and urbanism scene of Armenia, Dr Sarhat Petrosyan, on one of his rare visits to London this November. A researcher in Architecture and Urban Planning, a professor, and the appointed curator of the Armenian National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, he also founded an independent research institute and advised the Armenian government, while pursuing his own private practice in design and urbanism. In this talk, he will enlighten us with a historical overview of urbanisation in Armenia, before delving into details of the fascinating research projects he participated in, notably in the Soviet-style atomic city of Metsamor.
Metsamor, then located in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, was originally intended, in 1969, as a settlement for the employees of a nearby nuclear power plant. But the plant was never completed, and Metsamor soon fell into decay. The team of researchers who documented the rise and fall of this utopian city approached the topic from various angles, from the cultural and architectural histories of Armenia to the typology of Soviet atomic cities, and the phenomenon of modern ruins. Sarhat Petrosyan will guide us through this work to understand what makes the Armenian variety of Soviet Modernism of the 1960s and ’70s unique.
This event is part of Living | Building | Together: The Armenian Institute's Festival of Architecture, funded by the British Council.
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