The Tskneti Project: Reinterpreting the Relationship Between Architecture, Nature, and Social Context
Tskneti: Where Nature Meets Architecture
For centuries, the mountainous belt surrounding the city of Tbilisi has played a vital role as a natural filter and refuge for the city. Among these elevations, Tskneti stands out, located on the eastern slope of the Trialeti Range, where the dense urban fabric gradually melts into oak and pine forests, creating a unique balance between the built environment and nature. Tskneti has long been regarded as a place to escape the hustle and bustle of the city, offering a tranquil alternative that allows residents to coexist harmoniously with the natural surroundings, with architecture serving as a medium that facilitates this interaction between humans and nature.
Transformations During the Soviet Era
During the Soviet era, Tskneti experienced significant changes in both its character and function. It evolved into a suburban resort shaped by state-planned sanatoriums and artificially planted forests. Over time, private dachas for officials and intellectuals began to emerge, creating a closed community that reflected the social and political distinction of that period. Meanwhile, the wider community remained excluded from these privileges, revealing the hidden social disparities among the population during that era.
The Relationship Between Architecture and Nature
The Tskneti experience highlights how architecture can facilitate coexistence with nature, as buildings became part of the natural environment rather than separate from it. The social and political changes in the area also reflect the impact of urban planning on lifestyle, providing important lessons for understanding the relationship between design and the social environment.
Transformations of the 1990s: The Collapse of the Hierarchy
The 1990s turned the social and functional hierarchy in Tskneti upside down. With the collapse of government structures, internally displaced families began to settle in abandoned villas, while a new elite emerged behind four-meter-high concrete walls. This shift produced two parallel forms of barriers: temporary residents used old wooden fences as firewood, while the wealthy reinforced their plots with sturdy enclosures. Walls thus ceased to be mere architectural elements, becoming social boundaries that redefined the landscape and erased shared spaces.
Culture of Seclusion and Its Impact on Architecture
Over decades, a culture of seclusion became part of the area’s inherited heritage, influencing social perceptions and construction habits alike. Withdrawal and separation became both architectural and social legacies, shaping the form of communities and reflecting prevailing values in each era.
Attempts at Reopening
Today, the municipality is slowly attempting to regulate this phenomenon by imposing restrictions on tall, opaque fences, in an effort to restore the openness that once characterized the area. In this context, the current house is designed as a response to this long-standing culture of seclusion, offering an alternative architectural approach that emphasizes living without walls, while enhancing a sense of openness and connection between people and the surrounding nature.
Site and Natural Challenges
The site is located on the southeastern edge of Tskneti, adjacent to a natural valley that forms part of the environmental ventilation system for both Tskneti and Tbilisi. Although the site is surrounded by forests, the steep terrain had long prevented development, raising a key question at the outset of the design process: How can architecture occupy the site without harming the natural landscape, allowing it to remain an active partner in the experience of the place?
Architectural Strategy: Minimal Intervention
The design is based on the principle of minimal intrusion into nature. The house lightly stands on the slope, supported by long concrete columns anchored into the bedrock, elevating a unified concrete volume that houses the private areas. Beneath this volume, a suspended metal frame forms the ground-floor platform, which contains an open living space with a fully glazed facade that gradually blends with the surrounding forest.
Integrating Nature with Design
The landscape extends directly from the local vegetation onto the site, using native plant species to recreate the continuity of the forest and eliminate the need for traditional exterior walls. A large terrace mediates between interior and exterior spaces, while a sliding corner facade helps blur the boundaries between them, enhancing the sense of openness and connection with the surrounding nature.
Framing Views and Material Integration
On the upper level, each window is carefully framed to capture the beauty of the surrounding forest, while externally, folding wooden shutters merge with rough timber-form concrete, gradually creating a unified architectural texture over time. Interior details follow the same approach through shutter-like wooden elements that conceal functional components in an aesthetic manner, enhancing the harmony between form and function.
Reinterpreting the "Tskneti Wall"
The house offers a reinterpretation of the "Tskneti Wall," not as a mere defensive barrier, but as a suspended, tangible volume that harmonizes with the open and permeable ground floor. This architecture aims to restore direct engagement between people and place, allowing light, air, and the forest to re-enter daily life, enhancing the sense of openness and interaction with the natural environment.
✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight
The Tskneti project can be regarded as a significant experiment in attempting to integrate architecture with nature and the social context of the area, demonstrating a commendable focus on minimizing intervention in the terrain and preserving local vegetation as a positive step toward sustainable design. Reinterpreting the concept of the "Tskneti Wall" and blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior spaces reflects an effort to promote openness and connectivity, an aspect that can be further developed in future projects.
However, certain challenges and reservations arise when considering the project from a broader urban and community planning perspective. Despite its attention to interaction with nature, the design may remain limited in its ability to influence social openness at the neighborhood or community level, especially in areas with clear social divisions. Additionally, the reliance on elevated concrete columns and the intervention in the terrain, though minimal, raises questions about the building’s long-term maintenance and sustainability, particularly in a steep, mountainous environment. Moreover, focusing the project on a single villa can be seen as a limited model, which does not encompass lessons that could be applied more widely across Tskneti or similar areas, reducing its social and functional impact compared to its theoretical potential.
This project can be leveraged in the future as a reference for experiences in integrating the built environment with nature, while reconsidering how to extend the design’s impact to include the broader community. Linking it to more comprehensive urban plans would ensure that success is not only aesthetic or individual, but also social and sustainable on a larger scale.
https://archup.net/eastern-blocks-ii-book-eastern-bloc-concrete-suburbs/ Prepared by the ArchUp Editorial Team
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