Postmodern Gyumri

Gyumri, as I mentioned earlier, was enormously damaged in an earthquake in 1988, and there is still not enough housing for everyone here. So a lot of people still live in converted train carriages and other sorts of temporary housing. There are also a lot of improvised renovation projects, people add on stories to their houses and so on. I several houses like this...

And this...

And this...

... and I wondered, where before have I seen this daring juxtaposition of styles, this disregard for conventional genres of architecture, this imaginative use of corrugated metal? Then I remembered ...

... it was my Introduction to Art History class in college and Frank Gehry and his own house:

The postmodern wave here is a bit of a departure from the traditional Gyumri architecture, which is also quite interesting. It all uses the “tuff” (pronounced “toof”) stone that is local here. It comes in three colors: black, pink and orange. In Yerevan they seem to most often use the pink variety, and to me it can look like a skin rash.

But the orange and black are much nicer, I think. Here’s the Sardarapat monument, which I went to on the way to Gyumri:

And in Gyumri they often use the orange and black together, which I think looks quite cool:

Here’s the movie theater:

And the cathedral, under reconstruction: