Date: 03.06.2019-07.06.2019
Location: Tbilisi Chess Palace and Alpine Club, Alpine club office
The workshop was held within the framework of the project “Conservation and Sustainable Use of Modern Architecture in Georgia” and it aimed at capacity building, with a focus on the next generation of architects, engineers, historians, and conservators including real estate and finance students.
Over the course of five days, the participants explored tools in order to realistically propose solutions for the adaptive reuse of portions of the structure. The workshop started with the sessions about the project, the history of the building which was followed by an exploration of the building, it´s values and mapping of the current uses.
On the second day, participants were introduced to the concepts of values and authenticity in relation to the historic buildings, to Material, functional, design aspects of adaptive reuse as well as to the possible Spectrum of interventions (definitions) in order to set a clear difference between adaptation and other actions. At the end of the day invited instructor – Rand Eppich, introduced participants to the means of planning and implementing successful interviews with the stakeholders.
The third day was dedicated to the interviews with the users of the building, namely the president of the chess federation and head of historic Alpine Club, based on the questionnaires prepared beforehand. Thanks to the several participants of the workshop, who have been trained in alpinism, we were able to include another group of users of the building in the process of discussion – representatives of the United Federation of Georgian Mountaineers, who joined the sessions and helped to clarify some of the vital financial and other issues related to the use of the building. In the second half of the day, workshop participants had a tour in Stamba hotel, which is one of the few successful examples of adaptations. The tour was guided by the architect, who undertook planning and adaptation of the soviet printing press house in the center of Tbilisi into the hotel. At the end of the day participants were divided into two groups and started their work on the adaptation concepts.
On the fourth day the participants met with the representatives of the Department of architecture and Property Management Agency of Tbilisi City Hall. The participants received answers for their questions, the head of Department of Architecture – Temur Bolotashvili (who participated in Keeping It Modern’ Conservation Management Workshop for Getty Foundation grantees together with project architect Lasha Shartava, in October 2018, London) assured the attendees of the interview that he will assist in organizing a meeting with the relevant departments of the city hall for the better communication.
The fifth day was dedicated the presentations by the two groups of participants and the feedback from the instructors. One of the groups managed to prepare a survey on the use of Chess Palace and Alpine club and included 40 people in it;