Student: Shota Jojua
Professor: David Bostanashvili
Theme: Heterotopias - Lazika city theater
Master's thesis project, 2015.
The theater is a place that hosts other places; the fragments detached from everyday time and space. Thinking to design such a space in the city which itself is detached from time and space was the main motive for the project. City of Lazika was a dream - to build a new city for the first time after Georgia gained independence. The city was to embody the neoliberal values and imagery: tall glass skyscrapers, apparently designed by starchitects, or copycats. But the city was never built except a single six-lane road. On the side of the road, one finds the only building of the virtual city: the municipality. A remarkable piece of architecture in itself creates an eerie sight: a metropolitan image surrounded by nothingness. It was here that we decided to continue the story of Lazika and propose a building open to a carnival, simulation, and dreams: a theater.
The narrative of the project suggests storing the entire stages after the play is over thus creating a giant archive of unreal places. The archive is located next to the building and brings to mind a Piranesi's famous Antichità Romane. The building is heterotopic and heterochronic at the same time and this effect is twofold: this heterotopic state of the Lazika is reflected and doubled in its cultural center.