LEFT, THE BUILDING’S
CURVES CONTINUE IN A
MINIMALIST AMPHITHEATRE
BELOW, EXTENSIVE GLAZING
OPENS THE BUILDING
UP TO THE LANDSCAPE.
CIRCULAR SKYLIGHTS
ILLUMINATE THE LEVEL
BELOW GROUND, WHERE
THE DANCE STUDIO,
MUSIC ROOMS, CHANGING
ROOMS AND RECORDING
STUDIOS ARE LOCATEDprogrammes in coding, robotics, engineering, visual
arts, music and dance, all offered free of charge.
Kaloustian signed up to the project after
Tony Shafrazi, the New York-based Iranian-Armenian
gallerist and former art advisor to the Shah, sent him a
message on Instagram. ‘It was surreal,’ Kaloustian says.
‘This was someone I respected, whose career I followed.
He invited me to New York to meet in person; he’d
lost his studio and had a project to replace it. Then
one night, we ended up at a party, and we met Garo.
The whole thing was very organic.’ A couple of weeks
later, Kaloustian found himself flying into Yerevan.
‘The diaspora has this romanticised vision of
Armenia,’ he says. ‘It’s an ideal. So when we go and
see that it’s a real country, it leads to mixed feelings.’
For Kaloustian, though, Lori was love at first sight:
‘Excavation had already started for a three-storey
structure, but I immediately wanted a single-storey
building that related to the sheer size of the plot
and the empty space around it. I wanted to design
something big that would reach out and embrace the
land, a landform, more than a piece of architecture.’
Kaloustian designed an irregularly shaped, winged
building that pushes into the landscape via a long, as
yet unfinished, curving promenade that will combine
rooms, walls and open, ‘wild’ green spaces. ‘I’ve always
been interested in exercises in ambiguity, the way
you can do something that feels like an exterior, but is
delimited,’ he says. ‘Like at the Alhambra. Spaces that
are fluid and ambiguous, so the visitor feels something
is different but doesn’t necessarily know what it is.’
For Kaloustian, the three-year project was a journey,
both as an architect, and as a person of Armenian
origin. Determined to be as bold as possible, he credits
COAF for its willingness to travel along. The contractor,
however, was another matter. ‘It was a shock of two
mentalities,’ says Kaloustian. ‘There are traces of our
clashes all over the building.’This may be why, if you want, you can find fault.
Minimalism is an unforgiving mistress and, in places,
the building’s finish is imperfect. But these flaws
do not detract from the overall impression that this
dynamic beauty stands out even as it hunkers down,
a glazed lantern adrift in a sea of green. There is
nothing similar for hundreds of kilometres. Here in
Lori, this building is alien and yet it is clear from the
easy behaviour of its users that it is also their alien.
‘Unconsciously, that is what I wanted to achieve,’
Kaloustian says of a project he has loved, loathed
and finally come to terms with. ‘The villagers are super
proud of it. They’ve appropriated the building and
understood it, and this is rewarding for an architect.’ ∂
paulkaloustian.com; coafkids.org202 ∑
Architecture