The Agonistic City

THE AGONISTIC CITY

Benjamin Wells 2017

THE AGONISTIC CITY B e n j a m i n We l l s

Thesis Programme 2017 The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture Political Architecture : Critical Sustainability Student number: 150152 Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Niels Grønbæk

CONTENTS

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 44 46 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 65 65 66 67-68 69-72 73-78 79-84 85

An Overview An Introduction Compendium 1. Agonistic Urbanism 2. Material Context 3. Organisational Composition 4. Architectural Intent Chapter 1. Towards an Agonistic Urbanism (the political) i. Antagonism to agonism ii. Epochs of urbanism iii. Protagonists and antagonists iv. An agonistic arena Chapter 2. Material Context (the physical) i. The (real and imagined) city ii. Typological parts The Monument The Informal intervention The Courtyard The Ruin iii. Site Urban centrality The monument as void Site fragments Chapter 3. Organisational Composition (the programmatic) i. Programmatic composition ii. An agonistic organisation iii. Programmatic actualisation Chapter 4. Architectural Intent (political - formal - programmatic) i. Towards an agonistic architecture? ii. An aesthetics of a(nta)gonism iii. A sustainable development Submission CV Appendices A - Precedent studies B - Urban actor catalogue C - Masterplan D - Towards an Agonistic Urbanism - theoretical exploration References

A city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence.

Aristotle, Politics 1

Opposition is true friendship ... Without contraries is no progression.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 2

Most of the political life of subordinate groups is to be found neither in overt collective defiance of powerholders nor in complete hegemonic compliance, but in the vast territory between these two polar opposites.

James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance 3

Tbilisi’s urban condition has been shaped by many rulers, many conflicting ideologies and many economic struggles - its continuity lies in its citizens.

Nino Tchatchkhiani. Tbilisi citizen and activist. (Interviewed Oct 2016.)

Instead of dreaming of a perfectly integrated society that can only be achieved as the supreme realisation of urbanisation and its avatar, capitalism, an absolute architecture must recognise the political separateness that can potentially ... be manifest through the borders that define the possibility of the city.

Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture 4

Russia

Georgia

Armenia

Azerbaijan

Turkey

Iran

AN OVERVIEW

This program constructs a basic foundation for the forthcoming thesis project, through four distinct but intertwined chapters: 1. Agonistic Urbanism 2. Material Context 3. Organisational Composition 4. Architectural Intent The following compendium briefly outline these thematics to give an overview of the scope of the project, followed by a more in depth exploration of each. Each chapter moves inwards from the general to the particular, and an appendix provides additional content for the interested reader.

Direction for those that are short on time: Chapter one works through the theoretical thematics of the project, and is necessary reading for a definition of agonistic political theory and its implications for architecture.

Chapter two details the material context of Tbilisi, Georgia. The introduction describes Tbilisi’s current urban condition as well as a future offered by a proposed masterplan, and the second half of the chapter introduces the site itself.

Chapter three describes the programmatic composition of the proposed organisation.

Chapter four explores how the thematics introduced in the previous three chapters can coalesce through architecture, and therefore begins to program the forthcoming thesis project and its architectural intent.

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AN INTRODUCTION

Much of the democratic world has entered a ‘post-political’ era, where politics proper has been negated by representational democracy and suppressed by the generalising tendencies of neoliberalism.

Georgia is an extreme example of this paradigmatic condition - its fledgling democracy has been consistently undermined by a multitude of economic, political and territorial pressures.

This post-political situation is reflected in its systems of urban governance, which emphasise consensus through bureaucracy, suppressing meaningful citizen or NGO participation. The potential for political spatial form actualised through a political urbanism is therefore in perpetual conflict with the homogenising tendencies of capitalist urbanisation and the hegemony of liberalism.

The urban condition of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, reflects the triumph of the latter, with over densification, severe air pollution, endless traffic and the ruins of failed ideologies defining its urban condition. A passive civil society coupled with fledgling state institutions has left the city exposed to unrestricted development, at the expense of urban quality and social cohesion.

Tbilisi’s turbulent history has prevented the growth of a democratic urban governance, and the result is a polarity of responses; the (homogenising) masterplanning of the state which aims to develop the city through emblematic projects, in opposition to the particularity of activist and research groups reacting to specific and isolated urban issues.

This thesis will address these polarities on three fundamental levels; the political, the material and the programmatic, with the intention of composing an agonistic urbanism with conflictual, political discourse as its central foundation. This composition will be developed through a highly specific work of architecture which creates a reciprocal relationship between political architectural form and a political urbanism.

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THE AGONISTIC CITY COMPENDIUM

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AGONISTIC URBANISM Outline of Chapter One

Antagonism (n.)

Hostility that results in active resistance, opposition, or contentiousness.

Agonism (n.) (from Greek agon, ‘struggle’) a political theory that emphasises the potentially positive aspects of certain forms of political antagonism.

From antagonism to agonism The crisis of the contemporary city is perpetuated by its postpolitical condition. The hegemony of liberalism and an ambition for consensus in the processes of city making has suppressed antagonism, and thus the political.

The (re)politicising of urbanism is dependent on the provision of an arena where differences can be confronted and negotiated, and only then might it have the power to resist the complete social mobilisation of late capitalism and its urban ramifications.

Here lies the project of architecture.

This arena must allow conflicting agendas to be negotiated and channelled into productive outcomes, between a diversified network of actors and across a spectrum of social spaces. Only with the acceptance of antagonism as intrinsic to the multiplicity of democracy can it be directed into a generative agonistic politics.

Epochs of urbanism - protagonists and antagonists Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, epitomises this post-political condition. Whilst its recent democratisation may suggest an increased potential for a wider participation in political urbanism, the city’s turbulent history has created complex political, social, economic and spatial problematics that have prevented the evolution of an agonistic urban governance. The program outlines this history, along with a detailed study of the current field of actors operating in Tbilisi and why it has resulted in an urban impasse.

An agonistic arena The practice of agonistic urbanism is contingent on a responsive network connecting an assemblage of actors, and a dissensual space for their conflictual confrontation and negotiation. The project’s core ambition is the design of this arena, exploring architecture’s agency in composing and facilitating the emergence of a polyvocal, agonistic urbanism.

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M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T O u t l i n e o f C h a p t e r Tw o

The City Within

The (real and imagined) city Tbilisi’s urban fabric reflects the opposition inherent in the city’s governance, defined by constant juxtapositions between historical artefacts, ideological monuments and ruins, ad-hoc building extensions and uncontrolled urbanisation. This context is perpetuated by severe traffic congestion, air pollution and a lack of public space or ecology. Nevertheless, the recent emergence of various activists and NGOs has provoked the City Hall to propose a new masterplan for the city, which will set a clear direction for the city for the first time since the Soviet Union (expected April 2017).

Through manifesting some of the ambitions of this masterplan, the project affords a critical debate surrounding their limitations and potential, as well as challenging the very notion of urban planning.

Typological parts In an ambition to compose a meaningful and appropriate architectural intervention, this program will explore four typological parts that exist in Tbilisi; the monument, the informal intervention, the courtyard and the ruin. An abstracted taxonomy of these typologies reveals socio-political, historical and formal thematics with which the project engages.

The Great Hall

Site centrality The boundary of the chosen site is somewhat ambiguous, allowing for both an architectural and urban scale intervention. The primary spatial object of focus is the ruin of a disused power station, lying in a prominent location in the centre of the city. The urban strategy explores a reconnection to the city’s river and the duality between the power station and one of the most significant public squares in Tbilisi. The program will detail the various fragments of the power station and offers a visual exploration.

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O R G A N I S AT I O N A L C O M P O S I T I O N Outline of Chapter Three

Knowledge Archive Library Research l arrangement Studio spaces ow Workshops Discussion Lecture halls Debate Forum Council Committee Research Presentation Exhibition Event Gallery

Workshops

The Knowledge specific programmatic organisation responds to various tangible problematics in Tbilisi, and has been developed through Office space continued discussion with local actors. Supporting the spectrum Archive of discursive social spaces at the centre of the project are studios Study spaces and workshops for various NGO groups, a library and archive, Library various exhibition and event spaces as well as other civic functions.

Meeting spaces Knowledge, research, discussion, debate and presentation are the primary foundations of the organisation, and constantly challenge one another programmatically and architecturally.

Introspective

Studio

Spaces Urban Bridge Park Conflict negotiation

Event

Forum

Debate

ntation

r

Hotel

Event space

An agonistic organisation The programmatic proposition has evolved from extensive research into both the political context and the urban condition of Tbilisi.

The project embraces the city as a heterogeneous ensemble of formalEconomy parts and urban actors, which informs an evolving urban strategy rather than imposing generalising rules. The project advocates urbanism as a collective and politics practice, with agonistic decision making as its core principle.

Gallery

Programmatic actualisation Council Beyond theCommittee architectural proposition, confined to the boundaries of its academic framework, is an ambition to actualise certain aspects of the project. The program outlines these strategies, Discussion including the creation of a website and the potential hosting of a workshop in Tbilisi.

Lecture Hall

Conference Space

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ARCHITECTURAL INTENT Outline of Chapter Four

Towards an agonistic architecture?

The architectural proposition intends to negotiate and coalesce the political, formal and programmatic thematics introduced. As the organisation embraces the antagonism central to urbanism, the architectural proposition will facilitate and celebrate this intrinsic quality, both spatially and formally. Spatially, the project will manifest and organise conflict, offering it a self awareness and potentiality, through a complex spectrum of discursive arenas.

Formally, it will embed itself contextually through the abstraction and consolidation of the outlined typological fragments, reinterpreting and composing them into an ensemble of parts, which becomes a basis for the formation of the city at large.

An aesthetics of a(nta)gonism The presence of a disused power station on the site provokes many questions that are central to Tbilisi’s urban discourse.

Namely, what to do with the problem of the city’s existing urban fabric. From accurate reconstruction to unreserved demolition, the city manifests a whole spectrum of strategies and identities of transformation. The project intends to resolve a number of these strategies against the programmatic and formal organisation, subverting their norms and questioning their validity, resulting in a meaningful constellation of abstract qualities and characteristics.

A sustainable development Organising a sustainable form of urban governance is central to the subsequent formation of a sustainable city. Architecture’s agency lies in facilitating, encouraging and protecting the sustainability of that governance, through an evolving form of urbanism that does not prescribe generalising rules but mediates individual issues through negotiation.

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The POLITICAL

CHAPTER ONE AGONISTIC URBANISM

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F R O M A N TA G O N I S M T O A G O N I S M AGONISTIC URBANISM

An agonistic democratic politics

Hegemony (Greek hēgemonia, from hēgemōn leader) The social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group over another

‘Instead of dreaming of a perfectly integrated society that can only be achieved as the supreme realisation of urbanisation and its avatar, capitalism, an absolute architecture must recognise the political separateness that can potentially ... be manifest through the borders that define the possibility of the city.’ 5 Pier Vittorio Aureli The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture

Left A discursive arena that facilitates dissensus through a diverse field of formal interventions

Georgia’s expeditious adoption of both democracy and capitalism has constructed a complex ideological contradiction; the antagonism intrinsic to multiplicity on the one hand, and individualism, consensus and the apolitical on the other.

The triumph of the latter has led to a condition that several prominent theorists (Rancière, Žižek, Mouffe) describe as the ‘post-political’.

The processes of Tbilisi’s urban development have not resisted the rationalistic and individualistic tendencies of the liberalist hegemony, rejecting the pluralistic nature of society and its inherent conflict. Politics has been reduced to the regulatory practice of Foucauldian governmentality, facilitated through a representational consensus which negates the need for citizen participation.

Several architectural theorists (Mouffe, Swyngedouw, Aureli) discuss the potential of conflictual urban politics in allowing opposing hegemonies to confront one another, accepting antagonism’s perpetual existence and directing it into an agonistic politics (refer to appendix D-1).

An agonistic arena This agonistic urbanism is contingent on the provision of an arena where differences can be confronted and channelled into productive outcomes. Swyngedouw advocates for ‘symbolic spaces for dissensual public encounter and exchange’6, both metaphorical and material, and across a diverse range of scales.

This political field must engage with a spectrum of social spaces and a diversified network of actors, including a more meaningful inclusion of citizens and their right to ‘reshape the processes of urbanisation’7, thus giving a ‘voice to all those who are silenced within the framework of the existing hegemony.’8 The initial design of this agonistic arena, both formally and programmatically, is the central aim of this project.

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EPOCHS OF URBANISM AGONISTIC URBANISM 1991

2003

Fall of Soviet Union

Rose Revolution

2012 Georgian Dream party elected

1985

1992

2007

Permits to build

Beginning of mass

additions

privatisation

Anti-Saakashvili protests 2016

1980

1990 Soviet Urbanism

2000 Citizen Urbanism Shevardnadze

Above A timeline of Tbilisi’s epochs of urbanism

2010 Developer Urbanism

Politicised Urbanism

Saakashvili

2020 Current Agonistic Condition Urbanism?

Ivanishvili / Garibashvili

Whilst Georgia’s recent democratisation may suggest increased opportunity for wider participation in urban politics, Tbilisi’s history has created a complex urban condition with various political, social, economic, and spatial conditions preventing the evolution of an agonistic urban governance.

Tbilisi’s processes of urban governance have been subject to marked shifts in power between various actors, suggesting several definitive and paradigmatic epochs of urbanism. An understanding of the successes and failures of these epochs, and the historic and potential shifts of power between state, citizen and market entities, has helped to form the programmatic composition.

Left Tbilisi’s current urban condition is an accumulation of the material ramifications of these conflicting governance epochs.

Here buildings are obscured from their contexts, reflecting their perceived rejection by the city.

Citizen participation is widely considered ‘as voting for politicians who will be assisted by civil servants. Scientific experts are useful to define minimum regulation that optimises markets, while minimising social problems…

Citizens participate by behaving in a disciplined manner, obeying the laws.’ 9

With the fall of the Soviet Union went the centralised planning systems, and the city went into a decade of ad-hoc ‘survival’ urbanism. It wasn’t until the formation of the 2003 democratic government that the state really began to engage in the city’s development, but an adoption of radical neoliberal market policies allowed for developer-led urbanisation to define the city’s growth.

The latter half of the 2000’s was characterised by an increasingly politically motivated urbanism, with a host of emblematic projects built to project ‘European’ and progressive ideals.

Tracing this urbanism history leads us to its current position in the domain of administrative representational governance, which negates the inherent antagonism of citizen participation and disregards the contradictory nature of heterogeneous socio-spatial practices.

Whilst the city planning department is increasingly proactive in restricting urbanisation, it does so through regulation rather than political engagement, often resulting in reactionary opposition.

The potential for democratic spatial form actualised through a political urbanism is therefore in perpetual conflict with the homogenising tendencies of capitalist urbanisation and the consensus of liberalism.

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Private Sector Axis Development Group

Georgian Development Group

Georgian Reconstruction & Development Company

Metra Development Georgia Co-Investment Fund

Hualing Group Silk Road Group Real Estate

Domus Development State

Tbilisi Development Fund

Mayor’s Office City Hall

Government City Assembly

Ministry of Economy

City Council

Forum for Architecture

Caucasus Environmental NGO Network

Urban Reactor

Goethe-Institut Georgia

CAMPUS Tbilisi MitOst Creative Development Center

TbilisiArchitecture.net Tbilisi Urban Laboratory Tbilisi InSights

Tiflis Hamkari

Tbilisi Moare

Tbilisi Heritage Group Soviet Past Research Laboratory Do.co.mo.mo Association of Georgian Architects Centre for Contemporary Art Non Governmental

Iare Pekhit Activists

Green Alternative

ICOMOS Heritage NGOs

Heinrich BĂśll Stiftung Foundation

Online networks

City Institute Georgia

NGOs

NGO research networks

Ministry of Culture & Monument Protection

Guerilla Gardening Green Fist Critical Mass Cycling

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P R O TA G O N I S T S A N D A N TA G O N I S T S AGONISTIC URBANISM

What challenges does your organisation face?

“Poor to very bad legislation, bad governance, incompetence of official bodies like City Hall, nonexistent concept for the future development of the city, nihilistic citizens and poorly developed civil society and democracy.”

Nino Tchatchkhiani Tbilisi Forum for Architecture.

Survey response.

Left A mapping of the existing actor network in Tbilisi, revealing a centralised system around state organisations, with developers and NGOs/ activists acting independently.

“I would rather talk about dissensus than resistance.“ Jacques Rancière Artforum International

A network of actors Provoked by a range of adverse consequences of unrestricted urbanisation (severe air pollution, excessive traffic, lack of public space or greenery...), a number of non-governmental organisations and activist groups have formed in recent years.

Whilst incipient, the emergence of this set of actors marks a significant development of Tbilisi’s civil society. In a fledgling democracy, this citizen engagement holds critical potential in balancing the power of governmental representation with that of participation - a balance considered central to a vibrant democracy.

The research and fieldwork preceding this program has focused on researching and cataloguing these actors, their influence on the city and their connections (both realised and potential) with other actors. From these connections the adjacent actor network map has emerged.

Within the appendix the reader will find a selection of this cataloguing, with a detailed analysis of five organisations; Georgian Reconstruction Development Company (developer), Tiflis Hamkari (heritage NGO), Tbilisi Development Fund (state funded developer), Tbilisi City Hall (planning department), and City Institute Georgia (urban planning NGO). This cross section aims to provide a representative account of urban actors in Tbilisi, introducing the future protagonists and antagonists of the project.

Negotiated conflict Extensive research, interviewing and mapping revealed the high level of antagonism in this system. However, it soon became apparent that this conflict has very little space in which it can emerge to be negotiated, utilised or resolved.

This suppressed conflict has led to an urban impasse, with a struggling city hall, disillusioned citizens and exhausted activists allowing the powers of investor development to continue business as usual. NGOs react to specific urban issues in isolation; this absence of political engagement limits their reaction to resistance and prevents a coalescing of these fragmented urban movements into a dissensual urbanism.

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Mayor’s Office

City Hall

City Institute Georgia Association of Georgian Architects

Creative Development Center

Do.co. mo.mo Tiflis Hamkari

Tbilisi Heritage Group

Green Alternative

CAMPUS Tbilisi

Guerilla Gardening

GoetheInstitut Georgia

MitOst

Green Fist Ministry of Economy

Critical Mass

Iare Pekhit

Parliament Urban Reactor

Soviet Past Research Lab City Council

City Assembly ICOMOS

Caucasus Environmental NGO

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AN AGONISTIC ARENA AGONISTIC URBANISM

The practice of an agonistic urbanism in Tbilisi is contingent on two things. Firstly, the establishment of a responsive network between an assemblage of urban actors and their particular concerns, and secondly, the provision of spaces for conflictual public encounter and exchange.

The former is vital in releasing urban conflicts (and actors) from their isolated singularity and connecting them conceptually, and the latter is required to allow these antagonisms to confront one another in a symbolic and spatial political arena. This network would visualise the diversity and complexity of conflict in Tbilisi, and then facilitate it through a specific spatial condition that grounds it in the physicality of the city (refer to appendix D-2).

This is an actor network in the Latourian sense, as it recognises the impact of particular urban objects on social networks, through both material and semiotic relations.

Left Tbilisi’s urban actors, located geographically.

The size of circle relates to perceived influence, and the map reveals contentious buildings/areas.

This arena must allow antagonisms to be manifested and conflicting agendas to be negotiated between a diverse constellation of actors.

To transcend the potential paralysis of hostility, this antagonism must be mediated through frameworks and spaces that aim to reach productive resolutions, moving beyond antagonism to an agonistic urbanism.

If Georgia is committed to the democracy project, then it seems an apt moment to consider widening and diversifying this field of actors to allow a polyvocal, conflictual urban politics to emerge.

This plethora of formalised and scalar conflicts, connected by a responsive network and hosted by designed dissensual spaces, could constitute a truly democratic, agonistic urbanism.

The project intends to respond to this appeal, exploring architecture’s agency in composing an arena for negotiated conflict, and through doing so expand and empower Tbilisi’s field of actors.

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The PHYSICAL

CHAPTER TWO M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T

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THE (REAL AND IMAGINED) CITY M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T

Core aims of ‘From Stability to Sustainability’, the proposed masterplan: Polycentrism Urban ecology Connectivity Sustainable development Public space City identity

“The power of the city is not in any individual building.”

Prof. Dr. Merab Bolkvadze City Institute Georgia.

Interviewed Oct 2017

Real Tbilisi’s urban condition has reached a point of crisis, with vehicular (de)connectivity, anarchic urban sprawl, severe air pollution and a significant lack of public space or greenery. Vast numbers of buildings are deemed structurally unstable, and the few stateinitiated reconstruction projects have been denounced as superficial pastiche with a disregard for internal use. Many districts are marked by the effects of ‘dirty urbanism’ - speculative housing built without regard to urban quality or social cohesion - juxtaposed against emblematic, politically-charged (and often unused) monuments.

Imagined - a (master) plan Empirical research offered a recurring comment; many actors are hopeful that a proposed masterplan, set to be implemented in April 2017, will provide an antidote to Tbilisi’s current condition.

This masterplan, initiated by City Hall and crafted by a conglomerate of local and intentional NGOs, aims to set a clear direction for the city’s development for the first time since the Soviet masterplans.

Refer to appendix C for a detailed description and analysis of the proposed masterplan.

Oswald Mathias Ungers’ 1977 Berlin as a Green Archipelago rejected the impossibility of urban planning and instead proposed a composition of city parts, finite in form but evocative of the city as a hole.

Potential and limitations Whilst a degree of planning is essential for tackling certain urban problems, the notion of masterplanning remains problematic. Its inclination toward norms rather than exceptions, to regularity over complexity, seems at odds with Tbilisi’s urbanity. A holistic and thus homogenising planning strategy is potentially inadequate to respond to the informality and intricacy of the city, unless it is facilitated by a political, agonistic urbanism which mediates between the urban with the particular. Masterplanning, by prescribing rules, risks negating the political potential of urban development.

Left A mapping of the proposed masterplan, based on an interview with the author.

Refer to appendix C.

The project will critique some of the masterplan’s key aims by testing their validity through a condensed, highly specific architectural intervention, thus connecting the city with the particular, or urbanism with architecture. Through manifesting some of the ambitions of an urban vision, the project allows for a critical debate surrounding their limitations and potential.

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T Y P O L O G I C A L PA R T S M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T

The Monument The Informal Intervention The Courtyard The Ruin The Square The Dwelling The Street The Market The River The Mountain

The centre of Tbilisi, in which the chosen site lies, is rich in architectural complexity and opposition - the marks of its turbulent history inscribed into its urban fabric. The following taxonomy introduces several primary spatial components, as each reveals socio-political, material and programmatic thematics with which the project engages.

The Monument - the representation of (imposed) collective ideals The Informal Intervention - the dissent of the individual The Courtyard - the introverted spatiality of a public The Ruin - the remnant / foundation of collective memory

“The confrontation of parts can be achieved only based on common and existing aspects of the city, not ex nihilo creation of the new. Through the exemplary and exceptional clarity of the compositional gesture, a true part of the city recognizes and represents its typical aspects. The part is absolute; it stands in solitude, yet it takes a position with regard to the whole from which it has been separated.”10 Pier Vittorio Aureli The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture

Whilst these typologies have the most significance for the architectural proposition, and will therefore be explored in more detail, the following parts are also core to Tbilisi’s urban condition: The Square - the besieged territory of the collective The Dwelling - the neglected space of the individual The Street - the road The Market - the last representation of the collective?

The River - the rejected artery The Mountain - the last obstacle to urbanisation The latent thematics introduced in this taxonomy reveal the subversions that these formal fragments have experienced in Tbilisi; a distortion that is central to the city’s urban crisis.

The project intends to reinstate aspects of these typological parts, but rather than applying a nostalgic, mimetic contextualism it will develop a critical assemblage of abstracted formal, social, historical and political fragments, composed as a highly particular architectural ensemble.

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THE MONUMENT M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T

Left The repetition of the Soviet microrayon Gldani.

Right Vision of Batumi Exhibited at Saakashvili’s Presidential Library

The Biltmore Hotel Central Tbilisi

The centre of the city is scattered with monuments representing the ideals of various conflicting ideologies. This proliferation reveals Tbilisi’s long held belief in the power of individual projects as tools of urbanisation. Whether developer-led projects or politically motivated emblematic icons, these buildings strive to be liberated from their context, disregarding the city as the incidental product of their amalgamation. This negation of responsibility limits urban politics.

The singular focus of these monuments is coupled with the domination of a singular actor (politician, developer, architect), whose autonomy allows them to define the parameters for the project. This, coupled with the market’s desire for the ‘new’, results in the disparate formal articulations characteristic of Tbilisi, as typified by the ‘neo-classical’ Presidential Palace overlooking the parametric Music and Exhibition Hall (disused). The response to this is reconstruction projects such as Agmashenebeli Avenue, but their false morphology reduces the urban identity of the city to a mimetic image. The attribute shared between these diverging monuments is the apolitical conditions that formed them - does this help explain why they are failures in the eyes of so many citizens?

“Nothing is ever new. Everything is copied.”

Adam Caruso Masterclass in Copenhagen Feb 2017

Pier Vittorio Aureli promotes an ‘absolute architecture’; the formalised assembly of parts into a finite artefact that becomes ‘evocative of the idea of the city.’ But whilst Tbilisi’s monuments are clearly finite forms, they have been widely rejected by the city, exposed as representations of imposed ideologies. They inflict on the city a state of confusion, a distraction from the generic monotony of surrounding urbanisation. Part of the problem lies in their lack of performativity; a focus on form at the expense of use has rendered them ‘untimely ruins.’

Left An archipelago of monuments: (L-R) Public Service Hall, Peace Bridge, Rike Park Concert Hall and the Presidential Palace

If Tbilisi’s urban condition reveals an opposition between the generic of urbanisation and the particular of symbolic form, does this suggest there is an ambiguous middle ground which could offer an alternative to these intentional yet diverging urbanisms? The project will explore the notion of monumentality as the representation of multiplicity as the core idea of the city.

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THE INFORMAL INTERVENTION M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T

Left Balconies, extensions and interventions are typical of Tbilisi’s architecture

“We have put planning restrictions in place to prevent these extensions from ruining the city’s image.”

City Hall representative.

Interviewed Oct 2017.

If a monument is an intentional composition of finite form, then its antithesis is the informal intervention; arbitrary, evolving, and fragmentary. In Tbilisi this is typified by the balcony, the existence of which can be traced through centuries and has become a typological fragment in its own right. Whilst perhaps revealing the inadequate provision of space or adaptability, this could also be read as an individual’s claim of their right to shape the city, thus empowering them.

Where there is power, there is resistance, and the resistance force against the power of finite monumental form is that of the informal intervention. Tbilisi’s urban condition is dense with these additions, extensions and palimpsests, revealing something of the ingenuity of its citizens whilst disrupting the idealised image of the city of monuments. The informal intervention has both enveloped the genericity of urbanisation and resisted the finiteness of imposed monuments. The state and city hall take objection to this and are consistently questioning its legality; the informal intervention is thus an inherently antagonistic typology.

‘Informal art is open in that it proposes a wider range of interpretative possibilities ... a constellation of elements that lend themselves to all sorts of reciprocal relationships.’11 Umberto Eco The Open Work

The intricacy and originality of Tbilisi balconies is central to their character, but a formal abstraction would focus on their mediation between public and private, creating a commonality around the dwelling and a threshold between it and the city. Italian theorist Umberto Eco discusses the value of informality ‘whose substantial indeterminacy allows for a number of possible readings.’11 This power in the ‘ordinary’, the evolutionary, is reflected in the intentions of the programmatic arrangement. A range of discursive spaces aims to dissolve the hierarchical structures of official-expert-citizen, and embrace the potential in the random encounter, the unforeseen conflict.

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c

T H E C O U R T YA R D M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T

Left Old Tbilisi courtyards

Whilst huge areas of public space have been systematically sold and developed since Georgia’s independence, the introverted spatiality of the courtyard perhaps resembles the last bastion of undefined and thus negotiable collectivity in Tbilisi. Its scale and introversion has largely saved it from development, and remains central to the city’s architectural character.

Salk Institute Louis Kahn The raised central courtyard marks the threshold between land and sea, man and nature.

Left A typical Tbilisi three-sided courtyard, mediating the threshold between street and dwelling.

The courtyard’s containment has a similar architectural quality to that of the plinth - the definition of finiteness and separateness, and thus a manifestation of the political. Aureli suggests that this ‘recuperates in subtle ways the difference that the modern city has subsumed within its generic space: the symbolic possibility of confrontation.’12 The three-sided courtyard typical of Tbilisi questions the finiteness of the plinth, mediating the flows of the city with the architectural space which frames it. It is protected from constant claims of ownership by its containment, yet in dialogue with the city beyond, thus ensuring and encouraging conflict. This formal composition is reminiscent of Mies van der Rohe’s Landhaus Lemke, which adopts the characteristics of the courtyard house without hermetically enclosing the internal space, allowing its political potential to extend beyond its enclosure (refer to appendix A-3).

The project will take cues from the political potential afforded by the courtyard typology, as well as its programmatic ambiguity which mediates between the exteriority of the city and interiority of finite architectural form.

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THE RUIN M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T

Left Dunepark Cyprien Gaillard The act of recovery catalysed collectivity Right A church ruin in Tbilisi used as a temporary exhibition space.

Walter Benjamin saw in ruins ‘allegories of thinking itself’, a meditation on ambivalence.

Left Gudiashvili Square Tbilisi The proposed demolition of buildings bordering the square in Tbilisi’s Old Town provoked extensive protests one of the first times a public coalesced around an urban issue in the city.

Below Ruin as void

In between Tbilisi’s field of opposing monuments and interventions is a myriad of ruins. From ancient ruins of ‘historical importance’ to contemporary ‘untimely’ ruins, much urban conflict surrounds the transformation of Tbilisi’s existing urban fabric. In fact, the most common object of concern for urban activists is issues of urban decay, from which political questions of maintenance, preservation or demolition arise.

Whilst the typology of the ruin gives much insight into thematics of collective memory, historical continuity and material temporality, this project’s primary focus is the ability of the ruin to provoke a strong reaction, to coalesce a public, and to initiate a confrontation concerning their transformation.

The French artist Cyprien Gaillard explored this potential in his work Dunepark, in which the excavation of a hidden bunker was opened to the public (the embodiment of the ‘Bunker Archaeology’ carried out by Paul Virilio) and reminiscent of Gordon Matta-Clark’s concept of a ‘non-ument’; a critical détournement of the historical stability of the monument. This act of recovery became a catalyst for collectivity, revealing the political potential of ruins in their ambiguity, negotiability and scope for reimagination.

The entropic qualities of architecture are explicit in Tbilisi, yet often responded to with either pastiche facadism or wilful demolition; a disinheritance of the city’s formal integrity. It is their ambiguity of meaning and fragmentary nature which holds potential for catalysing agonistic urbanism.

The project engages with these problematics on several levels. The chosen site hosts the ruins of a power station; a monumental yet forgotten structure that manifests a catalogue of states of decay.

This ruin creates a void in the very centre of the city, enriched with a tension of meaning and potential for interpretation which invites political engagement and critical imagination.

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URBAN CENTRALITY M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T

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Left / above Site and context 1. Disused power station (main site) 2. Rose Revolution Sq. (ancillary site) 3. Rustaveli Metro St 4. Rustaveli Av. 5. Mtatsminda Mt. 6. The Dry Bridge 7. Agmashenebeli Av. 8. Kura River

The project site has been strategically selected for its centrality within both the urban field and the networks of power affecting it. The site boundary is intentionally ambiguous, absorbing both an architectural and urban area, whilst bridging a gentle turn in the Kura (Mt’k’vari) river around which the city has grown.

The primary architectural enquiry focuses on the existence of a disused power station, striking in its centrality and abandoned monumentality. The surrounding urbanity hosts the fragmented diversity of dwellings, the linear divisions of rivers and roads, the imposed standardisation of reconstruction, contentious monuments and failed public space.

Despite its qualities, the river has been disconnected from the city by major roads on both its banks, rendering it inaccessible and unusable, and this dominance of the car confines pedestrian movement to particular routes. The power station exemplifies this; an island surrounded by major circulation routes but itself an introverted and static space. Two of these major axis routes, Agmashenebeli and Rustaveli Avenues, run parallel to the river along the periphery of the site. These streets have been the focus of extensive reconstruction projects in recent years, and subsequently the object of much social, political and material conflict.

Opposite the power station lies Rose Revolution square, one of the most important and contentious spaces in Tbilisi. Its morphology has been in perpetual flux, and is now occupied by a major roundabout above a sprawling underground network of brothels and nightclubs. The square and the power station have a duality which is central to the project; the concentration of antagonism manifested in the square sits in direct opposition to the forgotten void of the power station.

Right The view towards Rose Revolution Square from the site. The Radisson Blue Hotel can be seen on the left, with Mtatsminda Mt in the background.

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THE MONUMENT AS VOID M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T

Whilst surrounded by the conflicts and contentions of Tbilisi’s urban condition, the site has maintained a sense of calm amongst this disarray due to the presence of a monumental ruin. Built in 1911, just before the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Georgia’s (short lived) independence, this disused power station maintains an imposing formal character whilst exhibiting various states of disrepair and decay. Built in a strategic site to project industrial innovation, the map to the left (drawn in the year the power station was built) shows how central the site was even in 1911.

Left The power station and ancillary buildings

The building demonstrates a subversion of the monumentality it once embodied; whilst maintaining its formal expression it has gradually lost its cultural significance. Its explicit manifestation of the passing of time is the very attribute that its surrounding monuments desperately try to conceal, and this quality offers it a certain acceptance into the urban fabric that renders it far less contentious. The ruin is a void in a number of ways; it is spatially dislocated from the dynamics of the city, a forgotten relic amongst many highly contentious sites and open to negotiation and reinterpretation.

Below Ara varkargad (I am not well) Mariam Kalandarishvili

This political potentiality is demonstrated by a singular event that occasionally unfolds on the site. A small arts organisation, ArtArea, occupy one of the ancillary buildings on the site, and have used the power station and surrounding areas for artistic events and interventions. The photo below shows one such event. Georgian letters, reading ‘I am not well’, appear to float within the void of the central hall of the power station. Contained, concealed and yet in the very centre of the city, the words personify both the ruin and its surrounding urbanity, making explicit its political agency. The neglected ruin invites its reprogramming, framing a space rich with potential for interpretation and critical collectivity.

Left Map of Tbilisi 1911

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SITE FRAGMENTS M AT E R I A L C O N T E X T Central Hall - the power station, and the site, gravitate around an impressive central hall, once hosting the main generators. This void is contained within a solid perimeter wall with only two ground level openings and several apertures at roof level. Its containment affords it a concave spatiality that is reminiscent of the courtyard typology discussed. The hall’s monumental character has the potential to become an ‘urban room’, protected by its introversion but negotiable as a defined public space.

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Secondary Hall - a secondary north eastern hall, equal in floor area but smaller in volume, is contingent on the central hall, structurally, architecturally and once programmatically. Its exposed lower ground level hosts a series of platforms and rooms that once controlled the mechanics of the central generators.

Inhabited wall - a subsidiary form connecting to the west of the central hall reads as an inhabited wall, with two floors looking towards the river and offering glimpses into the central void. Two large chimneys rise from the first floor; the most potent remnants of the building’s industrial past.

2 Left & Below 1. Central Hall 2. Secondary Hall 3. Inhabited wall 4. Connected frame 5. Ancillary buildings 6. Urban landscape 7. Kura River 8. Rose Revolution Sq

Connected frame (ruin) - behind the solid mass of the central hall’s southern wall is a supporting form which is marked by various states of decay. By its perimeter edge it has become a ruinous frame with only columns and floors remaining.

Ancillary buildings Urban landscape - these buildings are connected by an intermediate territory, and an area that once had direct connection to the river.

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T h e P R O G R A M M AT I C

CHAPTER THREE O R G A N I S AT I O N A L COMPOSITION

Library

Containing volumes regarding architecture and urban issues.

Digital resources reflecting organisation’s work. Public.

Discussion

Research

Studio Spaces

Workshops

Lecture Hall

Lecture hall for presentations on proposed developments, arising conflicts, Tbilisi history etc.

Debate / Negotiation

Committee

- Urban Reactor - Iare Pekhit - Guerilla Gardening - Green Fist - City Institute Georgia - Caucasus Environmental Network - CAMPUS Tbilisi - Creative Development Center - Tiflis Hamkari - Tbilisi Heritage Group - Docomomo

Workshops for research production, modelmaking, printing, etc.

Printing press. Digital services.

Conference and meeting spaces for NGOs, City Hall, visiting experts etc.

Council / Congress

- Tbilisi Forum for Architecture - Tbilisi Urban Lab - Tbilisi Insights

Flexible workspaces for various non-Governmental organisations and activist groups.

Conference Space

Forum

NGOs

Flexible space for large scale discussions, debates, events, presentations.

- ArtArea - Visiting / emerging NGOs

Office space

Study spaces

Meeting spaces

Elected and representative council, made up of individuals from City Hall, NGOs, experts and citizens.

Storage

Citizen representative committee.

Canteen

Amenity (economy)

Knowledge

Archive

Providing updated facilities for Central Historical Archive of Georgia - Architectural Archive.

Cafe / Bar

Hotel

WCs

River Park

Gallery

Event space

Flexible exhibition space for architectural pavilions, art installations, city models, 1:1 models Exhibtion of Tbilisi urban and architectural development, proposed developments, archive material, visiting exhibitions etc Architectural / urban events organised by various NGOs. Shares space with main exhibition?

Pedestrian Bridge Urban

Sharing / Presentation

Main Exhibition

Promenade / Street

Public Space

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P R O G R A M M AT I C C O M P O S I T I O N O R G A N I S AT I O N A L C O M P O S I T I O N The proposed organisation accommodates the program for a strategic, progressive and democratic urbanism, with its foundation in research and agonistic politics. The specific programmatic arrangement has developed through the theoretical exploration alongside continued communication with local actors in Tbilisi.

The components of the program are detailed opposite, and address seven primary thematics: Knowledge - the project has knowledge at its centre, with an archive providing facilities for the existing city archive (which is in a state of disarray) as well as an evolving library to create a reliable and research-based knowledge of the city.

Research - flexible studio spaces and workshops have a reciprocal relationship with this knowledge base, and provide much-needed physical space for small scale urban actors. This facilitates collaboration, negotiation and conflict.

Discussion - a series of conference spaces and lecture halls facilitate a broadened discussion on urban issues.

Debate - the central principle of the organisation, providing a range of discursive spaces across various scales. An elected Council makes decisions regarding a multitude of urban issues, as an extension of the City Hall program but consisting of NGO and citizen representatives. A large scale forum provides space for larger public presentations, debates and events, connecting to a wider public.

Presentation - a series of exhibition and event spaces encourage this outreach, providing an evolving tangible and visual presentation of the work and proposition of the organisation and its users.

Economy - a cafe and a hotel provide amenities for visitors and users, as well as offering a financial viability which the organisation could not function without (the organisation would likely be funded further by a membership fee, which gives all members an equal stake).

Urban - a pioneering and symbolic reclamation of the river front, along with a design strategy that encompass a new pedestrian bridge and part of Rose Revolution square, will be key aspects of the development of the project.

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Organisational arrangement Processional flow Economy

Hotel

Research

Knowledge

Office space Archive Workshops

Studio Spaces

Study spaces Library

Meeting spaces

Conflict negotiation

Exhibition / Event

Council

Forum

Debate

Presentation

Event space

Gallery

Discussion

Conference Space

Lecture Hall

Urban

City

Bridge

Cafe / Bar

Committee

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A N A G O N I S T I C O R G A N I S AT I O N O R G A N I S AT I O N A L C O M P O S I T I O N

Introspective

The proposed program embraces the city as a heterogeneous ensemble of both formal parts and urban actors, which informs a perpetually evolving urban strategy. These Delueuzian assemblages are a coalescing of multiple social groups at a range of scales, from city hall officials and developers to activists and engaged citizens.

Left The arrows denote the reciprocal relationship between many of the organisation’s functions.

The main exhibition hall

The project defines urbanism as a collective, political endeavour, with discursive, agonistic decision making as its core principle.

This collaboration, with its inherent conflicts, is central to a more democratic form of city making.

The adjacent diagram begins to consolidate the socio-political thematics with the programmatic concept, resolved against the particularities of the urban site.

Introverted spatiality of the library and archive

Extrospection

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TCF

Tbilisi City Forum

HOME

NEWS

GUERILLA GARDENING

NETWORK

TBILISI CITY HALL

ARCHIVE

FORUM

Centre for Contemporary art

MAPPING

TBILISI HERITAGE GROUP

HOME

NEWS

NETWORK

ARCHIVE

FORUM

MAPPING

TRAFFIC

GREENERY

PLANNING

PUBLIC SPACE

POLLUTION

FUTURE

DEVELOPMENT

BUILDING

HERITAGE

TOURISM

PEDESTRIANS

CYCLING

Tbilisi development fund Reconstruction Completed and Proposed

Search Forum

Most read Proposed Reconstruction Agmashenebeli Avenue Old Tbilisi - Lost Heritage Pedestrianising Tbilisi More...

Most discussed Old Tbilisi - Lost Heritage Air Pollution at record high Panorama Protests More...

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The primary ‘rooms’ of this virtual organisation would be: News - a compilation of facebook news feeds from a spectrum of (perhaps conflicting) organisations.

Network - a cataloguing of existing actors in Tbilisi, allowing connection and collaboration.

Archive - an open source and evolving archiving of urban and architectural info.

Forum - a multitude of discussion forums allowing negotiation of a range of urban issues Mapping - an open source mapping of future developments, buildings at risk, conflictual sites etc

Left A mockup of the proposed website, showing the ‘news’ page and ‘forum’.

A virtual reality As discussed, the potential in dissensual, discursive spaces relies on their multiplicity across a range of scales and forms. The project aims to facilitate this range architecturally, but also considers the virtual as a critical field of agonism in contemporary Tbilisi. Much debate surrounding urban issues has moved to virtual territories, with Facebook now the primary platform for many organisations to communicate and share information.

This shift has had a marked effect on urban politics, facilitating the emergence of publics around a multitude of urban issues, and has therefore been an invaluable tool in democratising urbanism.

Nonetheless, there are shortcomings of this virtual field that reflect the shortcomings of the physical discursive space in Tbilisi; it tends towards vacuums of isolated rhetoric that remain disconnected from a wider discursive field.

The project thus proposes the creation of a virtual space that reflects the role of the physical organisation; to facilitate antagonistic urban negotiation between a field of actors. The aim of this website is not to produce extensive material, but rather provide the infrastructure and organisation of a range of actors to research, learn, propose, present, discuss and debate.

The creation of this website is not a central aim of the project, but would be integral to the success of the proposed organisation, and also has the potential to give the project some real agency within Tbilisi; a virtual reality.

Workshop There is an ambition to return to Tbilisi to supervise a workshop exploring some of the project’s thematics. These discussions could vary in scales as the project does, ranging from larger urban issues such as the impending masterplan, to negotiations regarding the site specific architectural interventions of the project. This would actualise the political potential of the project - creating a temporal arena for a tangible and critical discussion between a diverse range of actors.

This aspect of the ongoing project is undeveloped but there is a clear benefit and therefore aspiration in pursuing it.

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The POLITICAL The PHYSICAL T h e P R O G R A M M AT I C

CHAPTER FOUR ARCHITECTURAL INTENT

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TOWARDS AN AGONISTIC ARCHITECTURE? ARCHITECTURAL INTENT

“The primary procedure of aesthetics as a form of politics consists in the creation of possible encounters, which lead in their turn to a conflict between heterogeneous elements.“ Roemer van Toorn Aesthetics as Form of Politics 13

“One should not create a world, but the prospects of a world.“ Jean Luc-Godard, whose work focused on creating a space in which connections can be established in a infinite ways.

Left A circulation strategy that is defined by its facilitation of possible encounters and mediated conflicts through a constellation of contrasting spaces.

The project intends to resolve the thematics introduced in this program - political, formal and programmatic - through architecture.

A critical response to Tbilisi’s current urban paradigm will be developed not through generalising rules for urbanism, but rather be expressing an ambiguous but intentional field of possibilities through a specific architectural composition. The programmatic arrangement will be tested against the political thematics, and resolved against the specific formal context in an iterative design process.

The project aims to create an arena in which the conflicts of the city can confront one another within the particularities of the site; an agonistic urbanism developed through political form. This arena is dependent on a range of discursive spaces - from the expanse of the forum to the intimacy of a studio niche - to allow for a relational polity that might intensify a dissensual practice.

There is an exchange between architecture’s autonomy, and the everyday experiences of projective practice, which leads to an aesthetics of dissensus. Rancière describes this as a ‘politics of aesthetics’14; an antagonistic arena of coalitions and antithetical terms. The political agency of architecture thus lies in its facilitation of possible encounters and potential antagonism, creating a public rather than explicitly representing one.

This framing of conflict offers its potentiality beyond mere resistance, towards the dissensus that Rancière argues for. The resulting tension is an agonistic architecture that can project a field of possibilities, the prospect of new cities. This design methodology can not be easily defined, but practiced.

Both the programmatic arrangement and corresponding architectural intervention are a composition of parts, as Aureli advocates, which becomes a basis for the formation of the city at large by allowing the manifestation of the antagonism central to both the city and its citizens. This constellation of elements facilitates the dissensus of its programmatic workings, framing it, directing it, and then extending this political potential beyond its physical enclosure.

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A N A E S T H E T I C S O F A ( N TA ) G O N I S M ARCHITECTURAL INTENT

‘Art tries to give us a possible image of this new world, an image that our sensibility has not yet been able to formulate’ Umberto Eco The Open Work 15

“The city, and its architecture would be...a ‘coincidentia oppositorum ‘ - that is, the coincidence, or composition, of not just different parts but opposing ones, which leads to a critical unity.“ Pier Vittorio Aureli The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture 16

Neues Museum David Chipperfield The indeterminacy of the existing building is given direction toward field of possibilities through the framing of the intervention Left Framing transforms the crack into an artefact, giving it direction.

The project’s compositional logic will be an abstraction of the disparate typological fragments aforementioned, creating an ensemble of architectural identities rather than a singular form.

This intends to express the diversity embedded in both the programmatic organisation and the urban fabric, through an indeterminacy of form, or an ‘openness’ as discussed by Umberto Eco. This indeterminacy is both architectural and programmatic, offering a negotiability through its informality. Perhaps the existing ruin has an openness in its sensual materiality, and architecture’s role is thus to frame it, to direct it toward alternate possibilities.

Chipperfield’s Neues Museum restoration in Berlin provides a clear example of this; its geometric framing gives direction to the layers of history inscribed in the existing building, without imposing a singular meaning.

The typological abstraction is an attempt to formulate an architectural language that is contextually relevant, socially, politically, formally and materially, whilst avoiding the extremes of pastiche nostalgia or modernist alienation that typifies much of Tbilisi’s architecture. The architecture thus gains an indeterminacy and subsequent negotiability, not through formal referencing but through layers of ambiguous but considered meaning.

The project will pendulate between the singularity and identity of monumentality to the ambiguity and informality of the intervention, explored though the negotiable collectivity offered by the introverted spatiality of the courtyard.

The architecture will therefore absorb a constellation of transformation and formal strategies; the articulation of a variety of responses to the particularities of the site. This aims to construct a complex and meaningful ensemble of abstract characteristics and qualities.

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A S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T ARCHITECTURAL INTENT

‘Solidarity of the forces that aspire and work for positive change is ever more important today, when a faith in stable and prosperous nations as the founding principle ... of the democratic world order seems to have been eroded.’

Voluntary National Review on implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 2016

Left The projects continued influence on the city is undefined and evolving.

It is the gravitational centre of a sustainable urbanism strategy that influences the city project by project, rather than by imposing generalising rules. Each issue is considered, debated and acted upon in a progressive manner.

Sustainable urban development is clearly central to this project.

The crisis that Tbilisi is currently facing is a result of ongoing unsustainable development - rapid urbanisation, corrupt governance, ecological degradation, exponential traffic increase, the list goes on. The project aims to reverse this process, through the orchestration of an evolving urbanism strategy that does not prescribe generalising rules, but rather takes action on particular issues through agonistic, democratic discourse between a diverse network of actors.

The project’s ambition is not to impose a model of sustainable development but rather to facilitate, through architectural means, the emergence of an organisation that is sustainable in its essence as the representation of a democratic public.

This endeavour correlates with Georgia’s adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals; a set of seventeen global targets initiated by the United Nations. Georgia’s 2016 ‘First Voluntary National Review on Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals’ highlighted ‘intra-governmental coordination in strategic policy’ as one of the main challenges at all levels, from data collection to setting measurable indicators, analysing impact to managing the process. This is equally applicable to urban governance, which to be sustainable must be focused on research, data collection and analysis, so that it is able to prove its validity over the politically motivated inconsistency of the city’s current urbanism.

The review also highlights accountability as a major challenge.

A World Bank indicator measuring the extent to which citizens participate in public governance has improved from 44.7 (/100) in 2004 to 55.6 (/100) in 2014, yet civic and political participation remain uneven across different thematic issues and strata of the population. The project addresses this issue directly, empowering citizens through a spatial provision that encourages democratic participation.

Lastly, the review highlights the challenge of ‘striking the balance between the imperatives of growth and that of social justice.’

This project argues that egalitarian society and economic vitality do not have to sit in opposition, and rather that a democratic, agonistic urbanism is integral to a sustainable, and therefore economically viable, city.

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SUBMISSION The project submission will consist of a full set of architectural drawings and models across a range of scales and forms. The content, quantity and form of these will result from the ongoing propositional development.

CV Academic qualifications MA (Cand.arch) Architecture The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, KADK, Copenhagen, Denmark

September 2015 - present

BA (Hons) Architecture University of Sheffield School of Architecture Sheffield, UK First Class Honours

2010 - 13

Professional experience Arcspace (writer/critic) Copenagen, Denmark

2016-17

3XN (modelmaker) Copenhagen, Denmark

2016-17

Carmody Groarke (full time architectural assistant) London, UK

2013 - 2015

BDP (internship) Bristol, UK

2012

APPENDICES

B-1

TIFLIS HAMKARI U R B A N A C T O R C ATA L O G U E

They consider the mains problems facing Tbilisi as: 1. The nontransparent and inaccessible decision-making process.

2. The passive and uninformed citizens; indifference towards a common living space and cultural historical heritage.

This map marks the buildings and areas that Tiflis Hamkari have been most active in defending.

Agmashenebeli Avenue

Endangered Monuments

Tbilisi Old Town

Tiflis Hamkari, the union of Tbilisi caretakers, is one of the most active NGOs in Tbilisi, working through a Culture Education Program and a Public Monitoring and Advocacy Program to engage citizens and hold officials accountable. There vision for the city: - Tbilisi as a city where urban historic and cultural heritage is protected.

- A city where development and modernisation are undertaken with respect to historical and cultural values, in accordance with European standards and active legislation.

- A city that is governed by accountable, local authorities.

- A city in which inhabitants are actively interested in and involved in urban development, particularly in the protection and preservation of Tbilisi’s unique, authentic urban environment and cultural heritage.

B-2

TBILISI DEVELOPMENT FUND U R B A N A C T O R C ATA L O G U E

Various NGOs have highlighted the lack of transparency of the development fund and its use of City Hall funding, as well as questioning the quality of reconstruction both tectonically and historical accuracy.

Tbilisi Development Fund was set up by Tbilisi City Hall, through which they channel state funds for reconstruction and rehabilitation projects across Tbilisi. The development fund acts as a project manager, employing a series of contractors to undertake construction works.

The fund’s completed projects include part of Agmashenebeli Avenue and much of the historic Old Tbilisi. Ongoing projects include a second part of Agmashenebeli, central areas connecting this with the Old Town, and Gudiashvili Square. The connections of these areas aims to create a tourist route through the city, which is largely pedestrianised and reconstructed.

This map marks the buildings and areas that Tbilisi Development Fund have worked on.

The black is completed projects and the green denotes proposed projects.

Agmashenebeli Avenue

Dry Bridge Market

Aleksandr Pushkin Street

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G E O R G I A N R E C O N S T R U C T I O N C O M PA N Y U R B A N A C T O R C ATA L O G U E

ArtArea, the small arts organisation currently occupying one of the ancillary buildings on the site, has previously proposed a development of the power station into an arts centre.

GRDC were very interested, but unable to justify financially.

The project will therefore propose an alternative.

This map marks the buildings in GRDC’s ownership.

Red denotes developed projects and yellow denotes buildings in their land bank but yet to be developed.

Cinema City (in process)

Power Station National Sciences Academy

GRDC is one of the major developers in Tbilisi, with an extensive land and building portfolio. They focus on commercial (office) and retail real estate development. Two of their major completed projects are the regeneration of the Science Academy on Rustaveli Avenue (into ground floor retail and office space) and the central station.

They have a number of key sites across Tbilisi, including the cinema city area on Agmashenebeli, as well as the disused power station opposite Rose Revolution Square (for which the project proposes a use).

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TBILISI CITY HALL U R B A N A C T O R C ATA L O G U E

City Hall have a lot of hope invested in the new masterplan, which they commissioned.

Whilst much of their work has attempted to contain uncontrolled urbanisation, they hope that the masterplan will set a clear agenda for the city, allowing them to become more prescriptive for the city’s benefit.

Tbilisi City Hall is one of the major actors influencing Tbilisi’s urban development. Their work includes: land use zoning, planning applications, construction permits, sustainability, research.

A Council determines all of City Hall’s political decisions, which until recently has been made up entirely of City Hall representatives.

This has now changed to include invited experts, NGOs and citizen representatives, marking a shift in City Hall’s agenda - an increased interest in engaging citizens in urban development issues.

However, it is still very rare that City Hall’s processes are made transparent to the wider public, apart from in rare cases when there is a strong public protest / reaction.

The map shows one of the key struggles for City Hall protecting green areas. These are some of the most contested areas in the city.

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City Assembly

City Hall

Implement policy

Commission research

Partners

Albert Speer & Partner Architects and Planners

City Institute Georgia Urban Planners

Alfred Peter Urbanists

Dr Brenner Engineers

Tbilisi State University

Caucasus Environmental NGO Network

Steinbeis Academic Institute

Tbilisi Group Surveyors

Fraunhofer Research Institute

Consultants

Citizens Community workshops

C

F R O M S TA B I L I T Y T O S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y MASTERPLAN City Institute Georgia (commissioned by City Hall) Prof. Dr. Merab Bolkvadze (Interviewed October 2016) Urban Planner ‘From Stability to Sustainability’ - key aims: Polycentrism Urban Ecology Connectivity Sustainable Development Public Space City Identity

Left Diagram revealing the organisations involved in drafting the masterplan.

The proposed masterplan, due to be released in April 2017, creates a pivotal moment in Tbilisi’s development. It is the first time since the Soviet Union that Tbilisi will have a clear urban development plan, a definitive direction for its evolution. As a result, there is much hope invested in the success of this masterplan.

Top-down planning is conceptually problematic in many ways, and has often failed in Tbilisi’s past. However, the creation of this masterplan contrasts that of previous masterplans in that it has been crafted by a conglomerate of non-governmental organisations, who won the project through a competition initiated by City Hall.

It therefore absorbed standards from across Europe, resulting from extensive deliberation and expert input, reducing the potential for political distortion. However, there still remains questions regarding implementation, and strong policy and regulation must be put in place to ensure the masterplan is a lawful, rather than just guiding, document. In a city so heavily influenced by market forces, this implementation may prove difficult.

Left A map presenting the key strategies of the masterplan, based on empirical research and interviews

The project aims to test some of the key aims of the impending masterplan, such as sustainable development and urban ecology, to become a case study for future development. It also offers a critique of the logic of masterplanning, reflecting on its past failures and rather offering a site specific architectural intervention that becomes representational of the city at large. Can an architectural project manifest certain values, project certain ideals, that influence continued urbanism in a more direct and effective way that the totality of masterplanning?

The following four pages detail some of the key aims of the masterplan, and explore their relation to the project.

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C-1

P O LY C E N T R I S M MASTERPLAN One of the key recommendations of the masterplan is to create a series of new urban centres across the city - nine new nodes of civic activity (marked in red). Each new centre will contain all of the basic civic requirements for the local population, such as green areas, schools, a cultural centre, administration functions and medical facilities.

The project is located within the existing city centre, consolidating its resources for connection to all of the new centres through its embodiment of the masterplan’s ambitions.

City Institute Georgia have carried out extensive research to identify what programs each area currently contains, and what it needs to make it self-sufficient as an urban centre. The recommendations are therefore unique to each geographical area, but all with the intention of decentralising the city and subsequently reducing social and wealth inequality.

The population size and demographic of each area defines what the proposed centre will contain, following widely used European standards. Investors will be invited to develop these areas under state guidance, and it is therefore vital that private interest is mediated with the city’s new agenda but forward by the masterplan.

C-2

URBAN ECOLOGY MASTERPLAN Another of the masterplan’s key aims is to define a limiting urban boundary, to restrict future urbanisation from encroaching on the surrounding landscapes.

The area marked in grey on the map below shows this defined boundary condition. All areas in white, such as along the river and in the surrounding hills, are to be preserved as natural landscape. No future development will be permitted in these areas, and will rather focus on densifying existing urban areas, especially ex-industrial areas (see overleaf).

The project proposes a river park alongside the reopening of a green area on the adjacent site, creating an urban ecology within the centre of the city.

“The river should turn into the uniting element of the city instead of the separating barrier� - Dr. Merab Bolkvadze One of main problems facing the city is the lack of greenery, there is currently just 3sqm of greenery per person, whilst international guidelines suggest 13sqm. To begin tackling this problem, the masterplan proposes a green artery running along the river edge through the entire city.

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C-3

S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T MASTERPLAN Another focus of the masterplan is the definition of ex-industrial brownfield areas across the city that are to be prioritised for future development. These areas (in grey) are focused along the railway line (red), as well as many ex-industrial sites in the South East of the city.

The project focuses on the redevelopment of an ex-industrial building, and therefore aims to become a case study for future development

The railway running through the city is one of the most contentious issues in discussions on Tbilisi’s development; it is used primarily for cargo trains and very few passengers trains. As this is clearly not efficient, there has long been an aspiration to move the cargo railway to the East of Tbilisi Sea, freeing up valuable land in the city and uniting currently disconnected districts.

“The foundation of the future General Plan and the largest scale project of Tbilisi’s urban development will be the relocation of the existing railway.” - Dr. Merab Bolkvadze The masterplan works on the assumption that the railway will be moved, and therefore proposes extensive development along its former route.

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CONNECTIVITY MASTERPLAN Transport and connectivity is a critical issue facing Tbilisi, with exponential car ownership leading to almost constant gridlock traffic.

The project takes advantage of the relocation of the East bank highway, allowing a reconnection to the river with a park, pedestrian bridge and promenade.

The masterplan proposes two main road arteries running through the city, concentrating the current sprawl of major roads into key axis. There will be two highways running North - South, one to the West of the river (using existing roads but increasing the concentration and flow of the traffic) and another along the East of the railway line. This will reduce traffic in the city centre, and allow access to the river along its East bank (from which the project takes advantage).

In addition, there are proposals for roads that are exclusively for public transport, improving the use and efficiency of public transport, and a subsequent discouragement of private vehicle use.

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A Post-Political Paradigm Georgia’s expeditious adoption of both democracy and capitalism has constructed a complex ideological contradiction; conflict and negotiation on the one hand, and individualism, consensus and the apolitical on the other.

As explored by Rancière, Žižek and Mouffe, the contemporary city has entered a ‘postpolitical’ condition, where political space is retreating whilst social space is increasingly ‘colonised or sutured by consensual techno-managerial policies.’17 This trend towards consensus is built on the acceptance of the capitalist market and the liberal state as the organisational foundations of society, thus negating the need for the political18. Mouffe argues that the uncontested hegemony of liberalism prevents us from thinking politically, as political questions are defined as technical questions to be solved by experts and algorithms, not confrontation and negotiation. The dominant tendencies of liberalism are rationalistic and individualistic, which are unable to comprehend the pluralistic nature of society and its inherent contradictions. Liberalism may accept the existence of conflicting views and values, but only when they coalesce into a ‘harmonious ensemble’ through rational consensus, therefore diminishing all antagonism.

Rancière, Žižek and Mouffe all agree that these conditions have led to an almost universal ‘post-political’ era, and its reinstatement is dependent on an understanding of the ‘unconditional primacy of the inherent antagonism as constitutive of the political.’ 19 Mouffe expands on this understanding through her discussion of the hegemonic nature of every social order, which is therefore always challenged by counter hegemonies. She argues that this struggle is central to a vibrant democracy, and is the ‘configuration of power relations around which society is structured.’20 However, this ideal contrasts the reality of the post-ideological consensus, where politics is reduced to social administration and every contradiction is excluded through post-democratic governmental techniques. This follows the Foucauldian concept of governmentality as a technique of governance; a regulatory practice which replaces conflict with ‘technocratic approaches that promote unanimity and consensus’21. If a vibrant democracy is defined by the balance of two lines of power - of representation and of participation - then the processes of governmentality heavily emphasises the power of representation; the institutionalised process of elected representatives that revokes the requirement for citizen participation, and thus antagonistic conflict.

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A N A G O N I S T I C D E M O C R AT I C P O L I T I C S T H E O R E T I C A L E X P L O R AT I O N

An Agonistic Urbanism Considering the crisis of the contemporary city, Mouffe, Swyngedouw and Aureli discuss the potential of agonistic urban politics in resisting the post-political condition outlined above. This agonistic network of governance would allow conflicting hegemonies to confront one another, desiring an end to conflict but also with an acceptance of its perpetual existence, therefore providing an ‘arena where differences can be confronted’22 and channelled into productive outcomes. Mouffe argues that this arena is vital in resisting the hegemony of liberalism and its rejection of the political.

Swyngedouw advocates for ‘symbolic spaces for dissensual public encounter and exchange’23; a multitude of social spaces, both material and metaphorical, that embody an agonistic model of democratic politics even if they do not yet sit within the context of a larger agonistic political structure. Artistic and architectural intervention only has power in resisting the ‘total social mobilisation of capitalism’24 if its field is expanded to engage with a broad spectrum of social spaces and a diversified network of actors, including a more meaningful inclusion of citizens and their right to reshape the processes of urbanisation. Particular intervention must be built on an understanding of the political in its antagonistic dimension as well as the contingent nature of any type of social order, and therefore requires a close examination of the specific political and social contexts.

The Context of Tbilisi Tbilisi’s processes of urban governance have traversed several distinct phases in the past three decades, revealing marked shifts of power between urban actors and therefore providing interesting material for an analysis of (realised and potential) agonistic urban politics. Tbilisi’s current condition is an accumulation of the material effects of these conflicting governance epochs, dense with the ideological ruins of Socialism, parodied democracy and a failing neoliberal order.

This essay explores various epochs of urban governance through an exploration of the shifts of power between the state, citizens and market and their relevant actors. This analysis of power negotiation and its inherent antagonism aims to explore whether the field of actors could, or even should, expand to allow for citizens to have a greater role in Tbilisi’s urban evolution, and whether this would constitute a more democratic agnostic urbanism.

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Towards an Agonistic Urbanism?

Whilst democratisation may suggest increased opportunity for wider participation in urban politics, Tbilisi’s recent history has created a complex urban condition with various political, social, economic, and spatial conditions preventing the evolution of an agonistic urban governance.

The history of urban conflict can be traced to its current position in the domain of administrative representational governance, which negates the inherent antagonism of citizen participation and disregards the contradictory nature of heterogenous sociospatial practices. This post-political condition, as outlined by the several contemporary philosophers such as Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière, has allowed the hegemony of liberalist ideology to prevail, and its material ramifications now define Tbilisi’s urbanity.

The mapping of these failures has suggested that successful urban governance is reliant on proactive state institutions that define and enforce relevant policy and guidelines, coupled with an active civil society which responds to these impositions, through a critical and formalised network that facilitates participation between the state, the market and citizens.

The weighting of power between these entities should be in perpetual flux, but is contingent on this connection to ensure the democratic challenging of hegemonies the confrontation central to a vibrant democracy and politics proper.

The field of urban actors is indeed expanding, with both governmental bodies and civil society increasingly responding to urban issues, thus suggesting that the dilemma lies not in the lack of antagonism but in the lack of facilitation of this antagonism. Many local actors highlighted the absence of a platform between the state, private sector and civil society through which to facilitate discussion and negotiate conflict regarding urban issues. This is exemplified by the fact that citizens will react strongly to tangible sociospatial concerns but do not engage with the scale of urban design which creates them, due to the lack of bridging of this scalar void.

It is it clear that this absence of connectivity, between both actors and issues, is central to the crisis of contemporary Tbilisi. The resulting lack of communication presents itself as the main obstacle to a more democratic, agonistic urban governance.

The conflict that makes itself heard is in unproductive forms, in isolated incidences, and must be understood as within a system which strives to subdue its contradictions into an idealised and abstracted consensus, reducing its political potential. To move from reactionary to meaningful and transformative participation between urban actors, the voids between them must be bridged, built on an acceptance of the antagonism inherent to their plurality. Whilst this urban politics would be dense with contradiction and conflict, it is essential in its ability to open up space in which a more egalitarian and inclusive city could be imagined and created.

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TOWARDS AN AGONISTIC URBANISM? T H E O R E T I C A L E X P L O R AT I O N

The practice of agonistic urbanism in Tbilisi is contingent on two things. Firstly, the provision of spaces for conflictual public encounter and exchange and secondly, the establishment of a bridging, responsive network between urban actors and their particular concerns.

The latter is vital in releasing urban conflicts (and actors) from their isolated singularity and connecting them conceptually, and the former is required to allow these antagonisms to confront one another in a symbolic and spatial political arena. A network of this kind would make apparent and visualise the diversity and complexity of conflict in Tbilisi’s urban politics, which must then be facilitated by space (both material and metaphorical) that grounds it in the physicality of the city and allows the negotiation of its contradictions. These spaces are not centralised, but a multiplicity of discursive surfaces across a spectrum of scales and platforms which are in constant flux. This arena must allow representation and participation to meet, conflicting agendas to negotiate and antagonism between a diverse network of actors to be manifested, creating a common discourse. To transcend the potential paralysis of hostility, this antagonism must be mediated through frameworks and spaces that aim to reach productive resolutions, moving beyond antagonism to an agonistic urbanism.

If Georgia is committed to the democracy project, then it seems an apt moment to consider widening and diversifying this field of actors to allow a polyvocal, conflictual urban politics to emerge. This plethora of formalised and scalar conflicts, connected by a responsive network and hosted by designed dissensual spaces, could constitute a truly democratic, agonistic urbanism.

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William Blake. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. (The Poetical Works.1908) James C. Blake. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. (Yale University Press, 1990) Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (The MIT Press, 2011) Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (The MIT Press, 2011) 21 Erik Swyngedouw. Designing the Post-Political City and the Insurgent Polis. Civic City Cahier 5. (London : Bedford Press. 2011) 11 7. David Harvey. ‘The Right to the City’. in New Left Review. II 53 (2008) pp. 23–40. p23 8. Chantal Mouffe. ‘Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces.’ in Art & Research. A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods. Vol 1. No. 2. (2007) http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html Accessed Nov 2016 9. Kristof van Assche, Gert Verschraegen and Joseph Salukvadze. ‘Changing Frames: Citizen and Expert Participation in Georgian Planning’. in Planning Practice & Research, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2010) pp. 377–395.

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12. Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (The MIT Press, 2011), 37 13. Roemer van Toorn, Aesthetics as Form of Politics. (In)tolerance. 2006 14. Jacques Rancière. The Politics of Aesthetics. (Bloomsbury, London) 2006. T. Gabriel Rockhill 15. Umberto Eco. The Open Work. (Harvard University Press, 1989) 84. Translated by Anna Cancogni.

16. Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (The MIT Press, 2011), 25 17. Erik Swyngedouw. Designing the Post-Political City and the Insurgent Polis. Civic City Cahier 5. (London : Bedford Press. 2011) 11 18. Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. Steven Corcoran, (Continuum. 2010) 19. Slavoj Žižek. ‘Carl Schmitt in the Age of Post-Politics’ in The Challenges of Carl Schmitt. ed. Chantal Mouffe (London: Verso. 1999), pp. 18-37, p29 20. Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony, Radical Democracy, and the Political. ed. James Martin (Oxon: Routledge.

2013) p212 21. Jesko Fezer. Design In & Against the Neoliberal City. Civic City Cahier 6. (Bedford Press. 2013) p9 22. Chantal Mouffe. The Democratic Paradox. (London, New York : Verso, 2000) 23. Erik Swyngedouw. Designing the Post-Political City and the Insurgent Polis. Civic City Cahier 5. (London : Bedford Press. 2011) p11 24. Chantal Mouffe. ‘Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces.’ (as above)

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