Tamanyan’s Yerevan Between Constructivism and Stalin Era Architecture

L Abrahamian

doi:10.18502/kss.v3i7.2477

Abstract

Highlights

IntroductionSometimes the architect like a demiurge strives to create exceedingly comfortable buildings or even entire cities
Sometimes the architect like a demiurge strives to create exceedingly comfortable buildings or even entire cities. Editors and even those for whom these constructions were intended transform them into something less utopian than the original project was proposing. This happened with Yerevan, which Aleksander Tamanian planned as a small harmonic garden-city with а hundred and fifty thousand population, which turned into an urbanistic monster with population exceeding one million by the end of 1980s, which swallowed the tiny accurate city imagined by Tamanian
Paperny’s terminology), with its local specificities, but general egalitarian ideas presented in architecture by proletarian architects of constructivist orientation

Summary

Introduction

Sometimes the architect like a demiurge strives to create exceedingly comfortable buildings or even entire cities. Often his successors, editors and even those for whom these constructions were intended transform them into something less utopian than the original project was proposing. This was the case with one of the most significant works realized by Aleksander Tamanian – The Opera and Ballet Theater. We will demonstrate the transformations of Aleksander Tamanian’s Yerevan on the case study of this construction – we will trace back the architect’s original idea of this building, discuss the difficulties and tempations it overcame, and the editor’s role in its final transformation

Methods

People’s House of Aleksander Tamanian

Conclusion