New Project Old Story : Iveria Palace

Our new project is in Imereti, one of the administrative regions of Georgia. It is in Tskaltubo, a settlement that is 10 km away from Kutaisi which was once the capital of the country and the largest city in the region, with the Bagrati Cathedral included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Tskaltubo, the last recorded population of 56883 in 2014, is known for its radon carbonate mineral water springs, therefore it is one of the major known thermal tourism centers.

The story is old; We are investigating a fact that existed in the times of the Soviet Union, or the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), which was established by the 1917 October Revolution and remained in existence until 1991: Sanatoriums

With the constitutions adopted in 1936 and later in 1977, the rights of workers and some laws on working systems came up. Laws such as reducing working hours from 10-12 hours to 6-7 hours, securing paid annual holiday leave and working hours not exceeding 41 hours per week were accepted. In this way, it was aimed primarily for the workers to spend labor for themselves. The sanatoriums were the most popular resting houses, providing free service to workers for spending a net 28-day paid leave after working 11 months.

After this law, the rest of the Soviets began to build such recreation centers,named sanatoriums,which the health was major priority. The aim was to renew the workers physically and psychologically so that they could return to their jobs more productive. In the sanatoriums, except for daily exercises, walks, morning sports workers were constantly controlled by doctors, fed special meals or they could find treatment for many diseases from eczema to infertility thanks to radioactive elements found in the water coming from natural sources. At that time, there were 183 sanatoriums in the Soviet Republic. Now, one of them, Tskaltubo Iveria Palace, will be designed by our office, to become a hotel.

The staleness that we have seen while visiting the project building is the sign of the loss of the rights of the workers while gaining the freedom of Georgia after the fall of the Soviet regime in 1991. The stations where the train stopped 4 times a day are now empty. In 1992, a group of 10000 people from Abkhazia settled in Tskaltubo chose our building. Then, when they migrate to cities, they collect what they have behind them; pipes, woods, flooring, wall materials ... What we see as we climb the stairs are what is left behind them... They are all waiting to be transformed into a new project…