From the top of the Cascade Complex. Mount Ararat can be seen in the distance
To approach Yerevan from the north is to enter a mildly hallucinatory state. One has just passed through the exquisite foothills of the Lower Caucasus and is faced with a valley where zoning rules do not reach and where whatever can be built is being built, wherever there is room. The outskirts of the city resemble nothing so much as the pieces of a child’s model town set thrown into the air and left wherever they landed- here a McMansion that would not look out of place in the more vulgarly wealthy precincts of the US, sidled up next to corrugated tin shacks; there a primary school with a splendid view of a cement factory. Brand new Audis cut off Lada Nivas as they tear towards downtown. It is as lawless a suburban landscape as could be imagined. Looming over it all is Ararat, the spiritual symbol of the nation despite the fact that it is ruled over by a bitter enemy. The visual confusion resolves itself as one nears the outskirts of the city proper: rows upon rows of deeply stereotypical Soviet buildings, the architect’s brief calling for his usual grey, forbidding and dilapidated. Even an optimist begins to fear the worst for this town.
It was only once Grace and I alighted from our bus that we began to get the measure of the central city. Walking through the city, it felt as if we were in a Soviet Paris, as we wandered up broad boulevards lined with trees and strolled through parks filled with cafes, stylishly dressed people of all ages sipping drinks and people-watching late into the evening. Only the buildings are different- the marble-fronted beauties of Paris making way for more of those grey buildings- but in a busy evening the bustle of the streets softens the ugliness of the backdrop, renders it irrelevant. There is too much else to look at anyway.
The comparisons to Paris are not wholly unreasonable. Just as Baron Von Haussmann reshaped Paris by punching master-planned boulevards through old medieval streets, so the Armenian planner Alexander Tamanyan dreamed that with the right design for the Kentron, or center city, a fairly minor town could be transformed into an enviable capital, with monumental spaces, circle segmented by radial stately boulevards, ringed almost in its entirety by a belt park.
Tamanyan’s original plan
It was Tamanyan’s misfortune that the Soviets were the ones to build out his plan in their typical fashion, rather than his preferred neoclassical style; it was the city’s very good fortune that the government did not abandon his plans altogether. The design of the city clearly shapes the social life of its citizens; the abundance of open space combined with the city’s willingness to allow private cafes to take up some of this means that in summer night in Yerevan is lived nearly entirely outdoors, people pouring out after dark to enjoy relief from the 40+ Celsius/ 100+ Fahrenheit days, the young women glamorous in the way of the Kardashian family, perhaps the most famous living members of the Armenian diaspora. Whether the women of Yerevan took inspiration from those famous sisters or whether such high drama style was always the vogue in the city, I cannot say.
During the day, covered and underground malls allow people some space out of the sun; they must serve a similar function under opposite conditions in the winter, when temperatures are consistently below freezing. They are, when compared with the underground spaces of other Soviet cities, cleaner and more upscale than those of Tbilisi and much more interesting than the generally sterile spaces found in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan.
One area where the Soviets endowed the city kindly was in the design of its early civic buildings, a sign of the esteem with which the central government held the republic and the propaganda effect its success might have on its neighbors. As the British adventurer and spy Fitzroy MacLean described, pre-World War II Armenia had
“occupied a privileged position in the Soviet scheme of things… [this] made the Armenian Socialist Republic and its capital an oasis of prosperity of which it was no doubt hoped that rumours might even filter across the frontiers into Turkey and Persia and thus add to the prestige of the Soviet Union.
Of this prosperity many indications still survived. [Yerevan] had, to a very great extent, been built since 1921 when Armenia came under Soviet rule, and was still being built. The new buildings, built of the local reddish stone in the new-classical style or in an adaptation of the Armenian national style, compared favourably, both as regards appearance and solidity of construction, with new buildings elsewhere in the Soviet Union. As usual the tendency had been to concentrate on immense public buildings: a new University, a new cinema, a new Institute of Marxist Propoganda, a State Opera House, and an enormous hotel for travelling officials, not to mention great blocks of offices which house the various Government and Party organizations.”
State Opera House
These buildings continue to shape the public space- in particular the opulent Opera House, another Tamanyan creation, sits at the heart of the main North-South axis, acting as a focal point for the whole city- but it is private activity which makes the city run now. On the monumental end, the northern terminus of that same central axis is the massive Cascade complex, a towering series of stairs and waterfalls built into the side of a hill, giving the appearance of being one side of a massive ziggurat. Although some idea existed in Tamanyan’s original plan, its completion was the work of an Armenian-American publishing executive, Gerard Cafesjian, who stepped in after the Soviet Union had barely begun work and, only somewhat modifying the original plan, used the building to house his “provocative” collection of modern sculpture. I cannot say I loved the work on display. But the Cascade itself is magnificent, and open to the public, allowing them vistas across the whole of the city.
The Cascade
Cafesjian’s Cascade is just a very obvious example of how the Armenian diaspora has returned to shape Yerevan- some for good (the Genocide Museum), some for bad (bland hotel towers), some for extraterrestrial (the, uh, innovative Karen Demirchyan Complex, a UFO-like sports venue that was apparently masterminded by Moscow-based members of the diaspora)- not a totally new thing, since even master planner Tamanyan moved to Armenia from his birthplace in Russia. It is also one of the grandest examples of how, in contrast to Tbilisi, it is private initiative rather than government action which is shaping the city today. The city is filled with fine, stylish shops, hip restaurants, sleek-looking offices, all of which bely the actual wealth of the country and make its streets feel modern, cosmopolitan and forward-looking. Never mind that the main building stock is junky Soviet, Yerevan feels like a more worldly city in some ways than Tbilisi or other cities we have visited, and that is down to the stylish Armenian people and their efforts to make their downtown attractive and exciting.
The… space age… Demirchyan Complex
It was while surveying the city from the top of the Cascade that we met Ruben, the owner of a tour company. He was knowledgable and curious, open about the issues his country faces while still buoyant and optimistic. He was solicitous of our views about world affairs, particularly on the root causes of the Scottish independence movement (he was particularly keen to know how Scotland would sustain itself outside of the UK, which we didn’t have much of an answer for). He seemed, along with the other young Armenians we encountered, to be a cause for hope; if these are the people building their lives in Yerevan then there is reason to expect further upward trajectory.
It only took a glance upward from our conversation, looking out toward the still desperately poor precincts of the city and that same confused sprawl beyond, to know that plenty of work remains. The careful work of Tamanyan, the preservation of his scheme by the Soviets and the modern respectful additions only extend to the edge of the central city. Radiating outward from there is the same anarchic visual disorder or dour Soviet clumps we observed on arrival. If building is not done with intention, if no one stewards future growth, chaos ensues. Central Yerevan was planned carefully and built out with purpose. Its surrounding precincts are not, and they may well represent the Yerevan of the future.