In the past decades, Tbilisi had to face many challenges caused by political, social, and economic changes. In Soviet times, socialist ideology completely changed the city, taking it from a non-linear to a linear model, an alternative to Howard’s Garden City Concept. The city’s natural development and the natural city formation process were fully rejected by the Soviet authorities, instead of focusing on a structured and planned-out process. Guided by a strict political and social ideology, planners and architects ‘served as mediators of ideological discourse’ (DeHaan, 2013) without any authority to make suggestions based on their knowledge and experience that were not in agreement with the leadership.

Throughout the project period, Ia will research Soviet city planning ideology, the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR and the current situation regarding the city planning and housing development, analysis of urban structure according to Master plans 1934,(existing) 1934 (concept design proposal) 1954, 1972 (existing), the 1970s (development suggestions), 2009, and 2018 with emphasis on infrastructure and green spaces, and the dynamics of rules and regulations in city planning.  Parallel to this, she will explore the dynamics of chosen buildings or infrastructures: a professional house, a research institute, an elite house, and abandoned Soviet infrastructures with the focus on informal practices and lifeworlds. Ia will conduct a historical study of neighborhoods with a focus on informal practices and their spatial and material dimensions and trace the dynamics of change using computational analyses on the basis of existing databases.

Ia Kupatadze is an associate professor at Ilia State University, School of Technology, Architecture program.