Wedding Talks with Tbilisi: The Genius of Victor Djorbenadze

Part of the 'Speed-Dating Cities' Series






Oh Beautiful Tbilisi,

I stumbled across this article on one of your Architect-sons the other day, and I just had to find out more about you. Sure, this is somewhat akin to stalking, but I am man caught by this intense desire to know more about Victor's Djorbenadze's Soviet Wedding Palace. Forgive me if I'm being too forward.

The aggravating thing about it all was that I began with the article - it didn't have pictures - and started slowly crawling around the net for images to bring to life Rolf Gross' intense imagery and descriptions of the place.



I found the plan of the Wedding Palace based on the anatomical drawing Victor Djobenadze got out of his mother's book (she's a gynaecologist).


Then I find an image of the "false dome" Gross compares with the stacked roof sructures in 4th Century Buddhist temples in Central Asia. His vision is incredible - the symmetry and the meditation of structure... it's interesting. Architecture is often described in very masculine terms, but this building is extraordinarily feminine.


Then I find this tantalising image of the palace interior with the bridge housing the choir for ceremonies. And a few more from Flickr:



some construction pictures:



Check out Igor Palmin's Flickr set (source for the B&W photos) here.

Other photos from here and here.

Finally, I end up at the same website I started from, but on a separate page where Gross has provided images to go with his descriptions... still, despite the aggravation, m'lady, you are most definitely worth the chase:




2 comments:

  1. fabulous wonderful fantastical but what state is it in now ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's in Georgia - near Russia. Pretty far from Australia....

    ReplyDelete

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