IS IT TIME TO HAVE A NEW ARCHITECT?

A1+
[04:36 pm] 11 May, 2006

Three architects sat side by side in the club “Mirror” and criticized
the “bustle” of the capital’s construction works. The two former chief
architects of the capital and the recent one were among them. All
of them confessed that 6 years ago the capital wasn’t ready for the
constructive works, that’s why they couldn’t avoid mistakes.

One of the participants was the chairman of the architects’ union
Mkrtich Minasyan who opposed others.

The other was the head of the Yerevan project institute Gurgen
Musheghyan. The latter mainly supported his counterpart, the chief
of the municipality architecture and urban development department
and the chief architect of Yerevan Samvel Danielyan. Mkrtich Minasyan
claimed that the sore point of the capital is not the ugliness resulted
by the construction works. “The point is that we were to preserve
certain normative claims which existed earlier,” he urged. Asked the
question whether he liked the view of the capital from the heaven,
he answered negatively. We tried to find out whether he liked the
Yerevan of his period. “It wasn’t that good either,” said the chairman
of the architects’ union.

He also focused on the fact that constructors break “the red line;”
they want to use public territories as commercial objects. Architect
Musheghyan brought the example of Hrazdan gorge where multiple
entertainment objects were built and according to his words the
visibility of the gorge became obscure.

Samvel Danielyan also confessed that the gorge is a serious
environmental problem for the RA capital as the country doesn’t have
seas and lakes and claimed that all the new objects legalized their
buildings through the court system. As a proper way to avoid further
wilderness he suggested making the roofs of the buildings green.

The most interesting point was the chief architect’s contemplation over
his actions when he claimed that they were immature and unprepared
during the constructions of Northern Avenue and they will not repeat
their mistakes later on as they have already become mature and learned
a lot of new things.