“დღეს ვმუშაობთ?/ Are we working today?” Probably not. Rain comes in 3-day residencies while rare sunny mornings scatter to afternoon thunderstorms. The clay soil adheres to to tires, tools, and boots. Countering this mired mood, prismatic atmospheres surround the city; in meadows scarlet poppies and wild violet orchids abound.
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Updates from the Studio and field: With architects Irina Dikhaminjia and Peter Culley of Spatial Affairs Bureau, Ruderal’s new studio is taking shape in the Shadinova House, a listed cultural monument in Tbilisi’s Sololaki neighborhood. Elsewhere in Sololaki, Giorgi and Robin Winogrond hosted an EUmies Out & About event and a tour of the Tbilisi Urban Forest, with a lively gathering Gudiashvili Square. Spool Journal published Sarah and Ben’s article “Building Biodiverse Urban Forests in the Post-Soviet City” in Landscape Metropolis #10: Urban Forestscapes (open source). Our Tbilisi Urban Forest was honored in Barcelona as a finalist for the European Prize for Public Space. Sarah shared Ruderal’s recent work at lectures at Rapperswilltag in Zurich, the Hearst Lecture Series at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and a gathering in the garden at Terremoto in Los Angeles, California, and she will present “A Landscape Lexicon” at the monthly Landscape Association meeting at Tbilisi Hills on 15 June at 15:00.
Champagne flowed when Benjamin was honored with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action doctoral research position at the University of Ljubljana with the LANDLABs Consortium. He will work with Dr. Ana Kučan to develop a long-term landscape development plan and pilot projects for the Sečovlje Salt Pans, located in the Dragonja estuary near Piran on the Adriatic Coast of Slovenia.
Ruderal Merch! A risograph-printed poster of Tbilisi Urban Forest and an illustrated booklet featuring our Tbilisi projects are available at Kona Books. Design by Ruby Zielinski and printed by Xaraxura Press.
Dog days: Last summer Photographer Grigory Sokolinksy captured the dappled summer haze of Sololaki’s Gudiashvili Square, where we added a new layer of trees to replace an ailing urban canopy.
Cutting, filling, elevating: This winter, Black Sea Group’s heavy machines shaped roads and terraces at Veli in Bakurtsikhe, while shoring continued at the The Basketball House in Kaklebi. Guests at the Bodbe Hotel will float on Giorgi’s Canopy Walk from reception to the pool, and his Tabakhmela Pavilion will shade summer parties near Kojori.
Ashes to Acers: Despite the soaked spring, new projects are taking shape in Tbilisi and Kakheti. Vakho Tsulukidze’s brigade is hard at work planting new forests and shrub understories in Tabakhmela and Tsqneti, including local Quercus castaneifolia, Pterocarya fraxinifolia, and Zelkova carpinifolia. Once earthworks conclude this spring, We invite you to sunbathe on the lawn of the Sky Beach at the Bodbe Hotel.
That’s all for now, see you again in summer!