E- Journal №4 Architectural Heritage History or Imitation of History: the Reconstruction of the Bridge of Garni Yeva Sargsyan In 2006 the Ministry of Culture undertook the reconstruction work of the bridge of Garni. The purpose was to reinforce the bridge and return its original feature by means of certain reconstruction. But defining what its original feature was and how the bridge should be reconstructed has turned into a matter of debate. The bridge of Garni, which flows in the gorge of Garni over the river Goght, is a single arched bridge which before the reconstruction has been built up with basalt stones of irregular shape and cladding (cleaved stones). The vault of the bridge and the double-arch are cladded with smoothly-hewn tuff stone. There are no certain historical references about the exact date of the construction of the bridge, however specialists, including mainly V. Harutyunyan, date it back to the 10th-14th centuries. The only document stating the former feature of the bridge is Balasanyan’s measurement drawing of the bridge (Fig. 1) made in 1945 where he depicts it with regular cladding (whether this cladding was with roughly or smoothly-hewn stone surface will be discussed further). There are two other drawings of the bridge, one dating from the 1950s made by H. Khalpakhchyan (Fig. 2) where the bridge is already depicted with irregular cladding which had survived up its recent reconstruction, and another drawing made by V. Harutyunyan where the cladding of the bridge is drawn symbolically without any certain depiction of the stones and its surfaces (Fig.3). The bridge survived until now with such image i.e. with an irregular cladding of irregularly shaped stones from the surrounding which is believed to be the naïve attempt of the peasants from the village nearby to restore the bridge. The bridge had entered into the memory of present generations not with its supposedly initial look of smoothly-faced cladding but exactly with that rough and rude cladding of irregular stones which was making the bridge to look as a natural rocky continuation of the landscape. It became beloved by everybody not as a piece of professional architecture but as a handicraft work presenting the simple and not-ambitious contemporary folk craft. Considering the picturesque image it obtained across decades of destruction and decaying, while being overgrown by vegetation, one could understand why it had became so much beloved exactly with that image (Fig. 4). In his initial proposal, the architect of the project proposed to substitute the existing irregular cladding with a regular cladding of smoothly-hewn tuff stones and to add parapet on both sides of the bridge (Fig.5). The argument for the validity of these changes was that the drawing of Balasanyan proves the former existence of smoothly-hewn cladding. Also the common knowledge is that in Middle Ages (at least during the 10th-14th centuries when the bridge was supposedly built) bridges were always cladded with smoothly-hewn facing and had parapets. These seem to be the main and only references proving the validity of such a method deployed on the bridge. The work started in 2006 aimed at cleaning up the bridge from the existing irregular cladding, re-cladding it with smoothly-hewn stones and adding parapets, and following an interruption of few years was eventually finished in 2012. However when on the second phase of the reconstruction work the “Service for the Protection of Historical Environment and Cultural Museum Reservations” (SPHE) was engaged the issue of the arguable choice of smoothly-hewn facing as well as the addition of the parapets was raised. They proposed to clad the bridge with roughly-hewn stones and instead of adding massive stone parapets make them as a light structural framework which would not interfere into the architecture of the bridge. To discuss this proposal a new session of the Ministry’s Scientific-Methodological Committee was called. Overall the main points of criticism presented to this reconstruction project by the SPHE, the general public and professionals, which were also discussed and commented by the Committee, were the following:
These are the main points presented by the general and professional society to this reconstruction project which were also discussed in the Committee by a group of specialists. Let us now examine each point and the solutions that were found by the Committee:
These are the facts on the “reconstruction” of the bridge of Garni. The general conclusion is that the problem of such reconstruction lays deep in the mind of people, people who perceive history as something as only belonging to a very distant past, while in fact anything belonging to the memory of current generations is already part of "history". The bridge of Garni was also a historical monument with its crude cladding and rough appearance since it had already been established as such in the memory of several generations. The way it has been treated does not reconstruct or even recreate the original monument. It is rather a creation of a new monument dedicated to the lost image of the ancient one. 1. Measurement drawing of the Garni bridge by Balasanyan (1945). Archives of the Service for the Protection of Historical Environment and Cultural Museum Reservations SNCO 2. Measurement drawing of the Garni bridge by H. Khalpakhchyan (circa 1950s). Archives of the Service for the Protection of Historical Environment and Cultural Museum Reservations SNCO 3. Measurement drawing of the Garni bridge by Khalpakhchyan 4. The bridge of Garni before reconstruction (courtesy of panorama.am) 5. The bridge of Garni after reconstruction (courtesy of Samvel Karapetyan) 6. Fragments of the initial cladding of the bridge left open at the basement and a fragment of the new cladding (courtesy of Samvel Karapetyan) |
The project is funded by the
European Union EU is not responsible for the content of this website | |||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
|