The Armenian Institute brings you a unique opportunity to come and meet a figure of the architecture and urbanism scene of Armenia, Dr Sarhat Petrosyan, on one of his rare visits to London this November. A researcher in Architecture and Urban Planning, a professor, and the appointed curator of the Armenian National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, he also founded an independent research institute and advised the Armenian government, while pursuing his own private practice in design and urbanism. In this talk, he will enlighten us with a historical overview of urbanisation in Armenia, before delving into details of the fascinating research projects he participated in, notably in the Soviet-style atomic city of Metsamor.

Metsamor, then located in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, was originally intended, in 1969, as a settlement for the employees of a nearby nuclear power plant. But the plant was never completed, and Metsamor soon fell into decay. The team of researchers who documented the rise and fall of this utopian city approached the topic from various angles, from the cultural and architectural histories of Armenia to the typology of Soviet atomic cities, and the phenomenon of modern ruins. Sarhat Petrosyan will guide us through this work to understand what makes the Armenian variety of Soviet Modernism of the 1960s and ’70s unique.

This event is part of Living | Building | Together: The Armenian Institute's Festival of Architecture, funded by the British Council.

About Sarhat Petrosyan

Sarhat Petrosyan is a researcher in architecture and urban planning based in Yerevan, Armenia. After an M.Sc in Architecture and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia, he taught Urban Planning at his alma mater as well as at the Acopian Center for Environment at the American University of Armenia, and in the Department of Geography of Yerevan State University. In 2016, he was the curator of the Armenian National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
In 2011, he founded urbanlab, an independent research “think-do-share” lab based in Yerevan. He led it until his appointment as the head of the Cadastre Committee of Armenia in 2018. From 2019 he focused on his own design and urbanism practice, SP2, founded in 2006.
He is the author of around twenty publications and articles on urban design and urban development policy. He co-edited the first international publication on Armenian modernist architecture: Utopia and Collapse: Rethinking Metsamor: The Armenian Atomic City (2018, Park Books).