Tbilisi

Having won an international competition, SPPARC were commissioned to create a masterplan to set out the principles for an iconic development within the ancient city of Tbilisi to encourage future investment.

The world is slowly waking up to the trials faced by the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. A resilient city, Tbilisi’s turbulent history stretches back to 500AD when heir to a Georgian King began to fold a handful of churches into a basic masterplan, many of which still stand to this day. Over the centuries, Tbilisi has been invaded more than 25 times, suffered numerous earthquakes and been swept along a turbulent economic journey.

As time goes on, more and more of Old Tbilisi’s historical jewels are being lost as lack of preservation work and multiple earthquakes reduce these classical buildings to rubble.

Following winning an international competition, SPPARC were commissioned to create a masterplan to set out the principles for an iconic development within the ancient city to encourage future investment.

The scheme is to be found directly above old Tbilisi, with the historic 800-year-old baths and classical buildings.  The Mirza Shafi project is at the heart of the Georgian Capital, located in the middle of the Botanical Gardens with a wide panoramic view over a large 12^th century castle, the Presidential Palace and long views down the River Mtkvari and across the city toward the mountains, the proposition has become locally acknowledged as the ‘New Heart in the Old City’.

Informed by the narrow-sloped street pattern and fragmented scale of the ancient City from which the area originates, the adopted 400,000 sq.ft. mixed use project includes boutique hotels, new retail streets connecting into the Botanical Gardens, apartments, villas and a cultural quarter for artists with galleries and a museum set within a new green landscape.

The success of the scheme is an architectural response that acknowledges the past, and successfully cohabitates with it by creating a character that reflects the classical architecture and cultural assets of ‘Old Tbilisi’ whilst defining a scheme with its own essential unique character, sense of place and destination that integrates into the established urban framework of the City and its green landscape.