Finding Identity in Georgia’s Dissonant Heritage Landscape

Abstract

What makes architectural heritage meaningful? Looking at cities like Baku, Rotterdam, or Tirana, it often feels as though some architects have entirely lost their sense of local heritage, imposing designs that steamroll over cultural identity. Eugene Viollet-le-Duc (1854) famously argued that society requires architects who truly understand the materials, construction processes, and the ideas behind buildings in their specific location and time. Most of us don’t notice when an architect gets it right, but when they get it wrong, it becomes a permanent, unavoidable scar on the city. This is exactly what I experienced visiting Georgia in July 2025.
Walking through Tbilisi felt like jumping in and out of a broken time machine. Meaningful heritage sites are abruptly juxtaposed against “facsimile architecture” mimicking modern global hubs. I became overwhelmed with confusion as questions were piling in my head. Luckily, my initial sense of rejection turned into curiosity. However, I knew that as an outsider, I could not uncover the truth through observation alone. Thus, this research is supported by the lived experiences of local experts: Lela Gelashvili, a professional guide, and Natalia Vatsadze, an art historian. With their help, I aim to uncover the historical events and geopolitical influences that shaped the last two decades of Georgia’s dissonant architecture landscape: a period I view as an architectural dictatorship spanning from Mikheil Saakashvili’s frantic glass-and-steel Westernization to the current oligarchic urbanism of Bidzina Ivanishvili and the Georgian Dream party.
My hypothesis suggests that this architectural “mish-mash” is a byproduct of violent socio-political shifts, seasoned with nostalgia, regional geopolitical pressures, and a desperate pursuit of a globalized image. Hence, we have to look past the surface style. We must apply a more holistic, deeper investigation represented in my research through the analysis of the architectural strata of Georgia, passing through successive waves of Persian, Roman, Arab influence, and two centuries of Russian hegemony including the current territorial occupations. These layers provide the baseline to question the current situation.
I argue that the architecture of the last twenty years is a tangible, reactionary response to a volatile geopolitical climate, specifically, the tension between a heavy Russian grey shadow and aspirations for the European Union. By using Laurajane Smith’s Uses of Heritage (2006) and Tunbridge and Ashworth’s Dissonant heritage: the management of the past as a resource in conflict (1996), I intend to show how power has been used to toy with these historical layers. In turn, this will help to map the “epicenters of dissonance”, through various case studies, in the cartographic project “Looking for Identity”. In the pursuit of a vibrant future, the nation’s collective vigilance faltered, trading the structural honesty of its heritage for a fleeting, power-driven facade. This research seeks to interrogate the architectural “glitch” of modern Georgia: is this skyline a byproduct of rapid urbanism, or a deliberate site where the Soviet past and European future collide?