Baku in 5 quarters | 2005
video workshop with students from the Architectural University of Baku, Azerbaijan | DVD 14 minutes | 2005
On the south side of the peninsula of Absheron, which reaches way into the shallow waters of the Caspian Sea, lies Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital. The city’s unique geographic location as a port at the far end of the Caucasian corridor and its geopolitical history as the world’s first petroleum town has stimulated our individual artistic research and became the focus of a two week video project realized with local architecture students.
The purpose of the student project was to investigate the historical sediments as well as the post-soviet transformations in the urban fabric today. In this respect, Baku is a particularly interesting city since it expanded from the late 19th century in big developments so that each architectural period is organized in clearly defined areas: Icheri Sheher, the labyrinthian old town; Vorstadt; French town; Black City; Micro Rayons, the soviet housing project. Only recently have the improvised refugee accommodation and the more chaotic proliferation of new highrise buildings fueled by massive foreign investment in the oil industry has started to change the spatial organization of the city. The construction boom is characterized by anti-planning attitudes. There is no general plan for the development of the city.
We were curious to find out what the considerations and priorities in teaching architecture students were under the present conditions. From discussions with the two project coordinators, other faculty members and the students themselves, we learned that land prices have multiplied within a few years and that the optimization of the square meter takes precedence over social considerations. There are barely enough experienced local architects available to design the number of luxurious buildings that the new money can buy. Foreign 10-story designs drafted by remote Russian architects who have never seen the site are acquired on the basis of a cardboard model and built in the midst of a modest one-story immigrant neighborhood or on the isolated edge of a polluted industrial area. Social integration and public infrastructures do not seem to enter into consideration. We decided to place the questions around the social context at the center of our project.
Examining four distinct quarters and the new highrise towers, we wanted to know what kind of living conditions and social interaction the different forms of architecture facilitate. The video is the result of our research which consisted in studying the architectural arrangement, observing how the community uses the surrounding public space and infrastructures for nursing, education and recreation, documenting the interior whenever we were invited in, interviewing people who lived in the apartment buildings, workers hostels and refugee housing that we visited, recording the environmental sounds and voices in each of these areas and learning about their architectural history from other faculty members who accompanied our field trips.
The silent video images are generated by the students from a bird’s eye perspective using a spy camera; the sound track is a montage of the many sounds and voice recordings on location. Text panels provide concentrated information on each of the five quarters.
Peter Cusack signs for the sound track, Ursula Biemann for the moving image.
This project was made possible through the logistic and financial support of: The Architectural University of Baku; The Open Society Institute; Pro Helvetica Arts Council of Switzerland; The London College of Communications