AZG Armenian Daily #122, 02/07/2005

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HISTORICAL FACE OF YEREVAN STILL TO BE DISTORTED

The general layout of Yerevan will be confirmed by the end of the year and
will deliberately become a mere formal document. But it won’t be possible to
build edifices envisaged in the layout in some central parts of the capital,
as they are already occupied. Mkrtcih Minasian, chairman of RA
Architectures’ Union, believes that violation of Tamanyan’s layout will
continue unless the urban construction rules function in our city. In the
Soviet times the city’s face was distorted with the permission of local
administration bodies, while at present, that process continues due to the
amazing fantasy of the local and foreign investors. The public parks are
being seized with the permission of authorities, huge buildings are being
built, depriving the people of the opportunity to rest there. “Yerevan
Today” one of the hottest topics was discussed at the meeting at Yerevan
Press Club.

Mkrtich Minasian stated that Yerevan is one of the unique cities of the
world. Tamanyan who realized the uniqueness of the city and preserved the
buildings of 18th-19th century buildings, creating a capital of a national
value. Even later, the successors of Tamanyan’s school built edifices of
traditional architecture in the suburbs. But, both in the Soviet times and
later, they permitted huge violations of Tamanyan’s layout.

RA Union of Architects had certain means to control the urban construction;
each decision of the government was thoroughly discussed at the union. “It’s
quite another issue that sometimes these discussions were just formal ones.
But thanks to them, the architects knew that all the procedures were under
control. Today no one demands to hold public discussions, while not a single
project important for the city should not be approved without public
discussions. We have began a cooperation project with the Yerevan City
Mayor’s Office, according to which each big project should be discussed at
our union,” Minasian said.

“Very few things changed in the city in the course of the last year by the
suggestion of RA Architects Union. For example, some of the gas stations
were closed after our demands. But now we are not very strong and authority
as we were before. There always can be a constructer or an architect who
will say that the existing construction rules are old and demand new ones.
But it’s hard to create new ones, we need a base for that,” he added.

The suggestions and the demands of the Architects’ Union concerning the
construction of the capital are not always accepted or often ignored
totally.

In response to the question of “Azg” whether the union envisages creating a
regulation that will forbid the building of the projects out of the rules of
traditional architecture, Mr. Minasian said that there had been a project
test defining the environment and architectural criteria for the
construction, including the color of the stones even. Nobody was allowed to
build green or yellow building beside the pink tuff houses. Today, the chief
architecture of the city is responsible for that. But in fact, he is not
capable of carrying out that function. We often settle that issue by
changing the Mayor or the chief architect of the city.

By Ruzan Poghosian