Opinion: former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili may possibly be wished on a number of criminal fees in his residence nation, but his architectural legacy has aided him win political favour in the Ukraine, says Owen Hatherley.
Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian politician who presently serves as the governor of the Ukrainian city of Odessa, was paid a rare honour a couple of years ago. He was, to my expertise, the only planet leader to be especially mentioned on the cover of an architectural magazine, an honour that he possibly appreciated when he misplaced power in a 2013 landslide defeat.
Content articles on Georgia’s architectural policy have tended to anxiety his individual option of architects for huge tasks, and the reality that he keeps abreast of the architectural and layout press. Indeed, he may well be one particular of the handful of planet politicians who checks this web site.
Aside from the promise to “tackle corruption” as he apparently did in Georgia and his obtaining defended the nation against a short Russian invasion, his appeal in Ukraine partly stems from his grand developing tasks. In the present situation of the Ukrainian Railways magazine, the whimsical skyline of Batumi, a seaside resort transformed into an aspiring Dubai, is provided as a attainable guarantee for Odessa. So, what does neoliberal governance with a selection of design and style magazines by your side truly seem like?
Saakashvili isn’t going to come across as a KGB man’s spoiled son, but as the kind of politician liberal locals and Westerners enjoy
1 explanation why Saakashvili is typically exclusively credited with a helpful architectural influence is that, as opposed to a lot of comparable figures, he was truly elected – coming to electrical power in 2004 in the aftermath of a revolt against voting fraud. That big difference is why you never see cover stories on the Architecture of Nursultan Nazarbayev, or the Architecture of Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, although they may be equally instrumental.
As opposed to close by Azerbaijan’s hereditary dictator Irham Aliyev, Saakashvili does not come across as a KGB man’s spoiled son, but as the sort of politician liberal locals and Westerners enjoy – fluent in several languages, educated in the US, savvy, quick-witted.
Even though democratically elected and democratically defeated, there is a reason why he is in Ukraine and not in Georgia. He is desired on numerous criminal fees associated to his tenure in workplace, and was already heavily criticised by the UN Commission on Human Rights for appalling prison conditions and for violently suppressing protests.
Related story: Georgia is investing in architecture “like submit-war Germany” says Jürgen Mayer H
At the reckoning of Globe Financial institution economist Branko Milanovic, Georgia would require at least two decades at present costs to reach the financial degree it had accomplished in the late 1980s. It’s 1 of the most unequal countries in an already hugely “Brazilified” region. The only unquestioned accomplishment he is credited with is a drastic reduction of corruption, anything probably achieved by the creation of a huge and authoritarian police force. But, on to the architecture.
Possibly the greatest way to see “Saakashvili’s Georgia” is to fly to Kutaisi, the country’s 2nd city, and the 1 Saakashvili chose to make into the adminstrative capital. The airport here, which opened in 2012, was made by UNStudio and is a great indication as to the “Saakashvili design”. The control tower is an organic, sensual design and style in white concrete. Within, a smooth white and red interior attributes spreading sofas and beanbags to lie on rather than just the normal grim rows of benches, a peculiar borrowing of the seating arrangements of modern artwork galleries. As you enter, leaflets informing you of customs and visas characteristic Jurgen Mayer H’s border posts on the border with Turkey. It truly is all extremely convincing – bright, optimistic, informal, slightly pretentious.
It truly is all very convincing – vibrant, optimistic, informal, slightly pretentious
When the bus drops you off in Kutaisi itself, even though, you will uncover that outdoors a central grid of renovated streets about a 1950s Stalinist baroque square, the money quickly ran out. Streets are potholed, crumbling, or barely even there, and most buildings are ad hoc a single- or two-storey creations, with their electrical wiring spilling out all more than the street. On a commanding position outdoors the centre, formerly occupied by a monument to the thousands of Georgians killed fighting in the Red Army throughout the second globe war (its dynamiting killed two, incidentally), is the Georgian Parliament. Designed by Mamoru Kawaguchi, it truly is a wonderful glass snail shell, a piece of luxurious bureaucratic sci-fi surrounded by third planet circumstances of poverty and dilapidation.
Some parts of the programme had been less whimsical than other people. There’s the series of Public Services Halls, civic centres combining under one particular roof libraries, courts, and tips centres. For all his neoliberal industry-knows-very best politics, Saakashvili’s projects have been, with out exception, state-driven.
In Gori, a town otherwise best identified for its medieval fortress and an opulent museum to nearby boy Ioseb Jugashvili, aka Josef Stalin – which Saakashvili repeatedly tried and failed to near – you can find a centre designed by regional firm AG and Partners, whose imagination and attractiveness need to appear beacon-like surrounded, as it is, by dire poverty and a developed atmosphere of extreme dilapidation. Similarly, if more grandiosely, the biomimicry of the civic centre in Tblisi by Massimiliano Fuksas serves some kind of useful objective underneath its fussy concrete petals.
The a single typology that in no way featured in all the glossy photograph stories on the New Georgia is the police stations
On the other side of the river in Tbilisi, Rike Park is a much more symbolic area. Reached by a sentimentally swooping Peace Bridge (by Michele de Lucchi, one particular of Saakashvili’s faves) nicknamed “tampax”, it includes giant chess pieces, mazes, and a gold statue of Ronald Reagan, and the two wildly overdesigned tubes of Fuksas’s theatre and art gallery. Coming to completion with its client on the lam and giving his companies elsewhere, it really is more an indictment than a vindication. It is overlooked by the Presidential Palace that Saakashvili had built for himself, a glass dome over some concrete pediments, a pitifully illiterate Neoclassical building that suggests the president came late in his reign to the importance of “very good layout”.
The one typology that never ever featured in all the glossy photo stories on the New Georgia is the police stations, which is curious, given that they were probably much more essential to Saakashvili’s successes than the galleries, civic centres, glossy airports and the useless giant monuments of Batumi.
Huge, green glass buildings (for “transparency”, though you cannot see inside) in a inexpensive, wipe-clean idiom that recalls British PFI architecture, there are a lot more of them in Tbilisi than I’ve ever noticed in any capital city. They’re located on corners, overlooking the crumbling apartment buildings and chaotic street markets and the tiny small enclaves of ‘western’ hotels and shops.
It was the stick, not the carrot, which worked for Saakashvili until finally his eventual defeat, and to layout it, he didn’t need to have fascinating architects.
Owen Hatherley is a critic and author, focusing on architecture, politics and culture. His books consist of Militant Modernism (2009), A Guidebook to the New Ruins of Wonderful Britain (2010), and A New Sort of Bleak: Journeys By way of urban Britain (2012).
