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Sorted chaos
Ana Barjadze
Georgia
Vernacular extensions of modernist buildings have been created since the 1990s as an organic response to the new, “lawless” times after the fall of the Soviet Union. They increase the living space and are usually used as terraces, extra rooms, open refrigerators,It is said that a Russian journalist named them “kamikaze,” drawing a parallel between the romantic and suicidal character of such an endeavour and the typical ending of most Georgian family names “-adze.” This architecture also refers back to the local palimpsestic building technique, which since the Middle Ages has allowed new houses to be built on top of existing ones on the steep slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, thus not monumentalisation of the past but expanding on it for the future.
Three residence from different flat which have extensions tell their stories, why they decide to build it and how they use this part of house.
The facades of all these types of buildings look chaotic, but from the inside they are all ordered.