Hauntology of Loss
the Ghosts of Tbilisi
D. Pietruczynik (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
O.R.G. Rommens – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
P.H.M. Jennen – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
S. Milani – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
This graduation project explores how architecture can metabolise unresolved collective trauma through the transformation of Soviet-era spolia in Tbilisi, Georgia. Situated in a sloped urban park near Liberty Square, the project acts both as a public infrastructure and a space for mourning. It engages with the material and symbolic residues of the Soviet past — fragments of monuments, mosaics, and architectural elements — and reworks them through five consecutive architectural spaces. Each space stages a different phase of material transformation and emotional reckoning, moving from recognisable fragments to dust and digital trace. The project operates on both macro and micro scales: as a depository for contested heritage and as a cemetery for personal objects. Rather than preserving or erasing the past, the architecture processes it — through rituals of walking, deposition, and gradual material dissolution. The result is a spatial narrative of mourning that is not linear but layered, resisting closure and embracing ambiguity.