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Ministry of HighwaysA Guide to the Performative Architecture of Tbilisi

 - Ministry of Highways
A guidebook that maps the social, urban, and art discourses of Georgia's post-Soviet years as seen from its hilly capital of Tbilisi (the catalogue of the Georgian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale).
Once described as “Italy gone Marxist,” Georgia, located in both an advantageous and vulnerable geopolitical position between the Black Sea, Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, enjoys a Mediterranean climate and viniculture in combination with a community-oriented and self-determined spirit. Its informal, vernacular, and palimpsestic architecture—reflected in the stunning former Ministry of Highways erected in 1975—reveals the uncanny anticipatory and progressive potential of a place where the past is neither monumentalized nor destroyed, but built upon. Taking the exhibition “Frozen Moments: Architecture Speaks Back” (2010) as its starting point, this guidebook maps the social, urban, and art discourses of the country's post-Soviet years as seen from its hilly capital of Tbilisi.
Edited by Joanna Warsza.
Contributions by Ei Arakawa, Ruben Arevshatyan, Levan Asabashvili, Bouillon Group, George Chakhava, Thea Djordjadze, Didier Faustino, Yona Friedman, Nana Kipiani, Nikoloz Lutidze, Marion von Osten, Nini Palavandishvili, Gela Patashuri, Lali Pertenava, Marjetica Potrč, Richard Reynolds, Slavs and Tatars, Gio Sumbadze, Sophia Tabatadze, Éric Troussicot, Jan Verwoert, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, et al.

Graphic design by Kasia Korczak and Krzysztof Pyda.
 
published in September 2013
English edition
13,8 x 21 cm (softcover)
218 pages (127 color & 84 b/w ill.)
 
15.00
 
ISBN : 978-3-943365-72-6
EAN : 9783943365726
 
in stock


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