Participants: Katharina Roters, Sarhat Petrosyan. Moderator: Dániel Kovács (art historian, curator, co-chief editor of Építészfórum)

The program will be held in English and the attendance is free of charge.

Built in 1969, Metsamor, Armenia (then the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic), was intended as a settlement for employees of a nearby nuclear power plant to be completed between 1976 and 1980. But the power plant would never realize the ambitions of its creators. In 1988, an earthquake caused the facility to be shut down. In 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted a complete construction freeze. The symbol of the dream of a technologically advanced nation, Metsamor remained incomplete and fell into decay undiminished by the recommissioning of the power plant in 1995.

Utopia and Collapse documents the rise and fall of Metsamor. The book brings together an oral history of Metsamor with essays by Sarhat Petrosyan and a team of contributors and art and photographic research by Katharina Roters, including more than one hundred photographs. Among the topics discussed are Armenia’s cultural and architectural histories; the typology of Soviet atomograds, or atomic cities; and the phenomenon of modern ruins. Although today the power plant’s workers live in a partly built failed utopia, Metsamor stands as examples of the highly idiosyncratic Armenian variety of Soviet Modernism of the 1960s and ’70s, making this a fascinating story for anyone with an interest in Soviet-era buildings and architecture.

Katharina Roters (1969, Cologne) is a visual artist based in Budapest. She graduated from the Painting Faculty of the Düsseldorf Arts Academy in 1999. Her first photo project Yerevan Concrete developed in 1999 in the Armenian capital city. In 2014, her book project entitled Hungarian Cubes: Subversive Ornaments in Socialism, received the DAM Architectural Book Award of the Frankfurt Book Fair and the German Architecture Museum. Roters also participated in the 2016 Architecture Biennale in Venice as an exhibiting artist of the Armenian Pavilion. Her book project entitled Utopia&Collapse. Rethinking Metsamor: The Armenian Atomic City, realized in colaboration with Sarhat Petrosyan, was edited by Park Books (Zürich) in 2018.

Sarhat Petrosyan holds M.S. in Architecture and Ph.D. in Urban Planning from National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia. During 2004-2017 he worked as an Associate Professor at the Chair of Urban Planning of the same university. His fields of interest are urban design qualities and policies on urban development. In 2016 he was the curator of the Armenian National Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale. He was the director of Urbanlab from its establishement till August 2018.

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