Between Elbrus and Ararat: transformations in the urban form of the Caucasian cities

The contribution deals with the transformations of the urban form in the countries of the Caucasus and the new directions undertaken by these in recent urban projects. Both that the road taken by Armenia and Georgia turned out to be a continuation or a revolution of the architectural guidelines imposed by the Soviet planner, and that the urban choices involved tortuous paths - ranging from the removal of the memory to construction build a new mythology of urban form - the shaping role of architecture is, in most cases, still visible today in the recurring use of “topoi”. These paradigmatic elements of the built landscape are characterized as generators of forms of collective memory and spatiality that can be traced back to great identity systems. The search for these “identities”, between successes and failures, represents the boundary between the compositional chaos and the typological and morphological order of architecture. The transformations of the last twenty years of some of the Caucasian republics testify how the differences that exist between the approaches of the individual states, a common thread can be identified in the search for a "new identity" made up of linguistic etymes capable of giving life and shape to a coherent national narrative. However, there are some emblematic cases which demonstrate how the recent attempt to overcome the problem of urban identity through starchitecture also contains the risk of damaging the urban fabric and the building heritage to impose languages disconnected from the territory and the rules of the formative process.