Crowdfunding launches for book on Tbilisi urban transformation

A group of Georgian and foreign authors has launched an online crowdfunding project for a documentary book on the urban and architectural transformation of Tbilisi over its recent history.

The project, involving work by five urban experts, journalists and activists, deals with the intense and wide-ranging changes that have engulfed the city for the last 15 years.

Titled Tbilisi — Archive of Transition, the prospective publication reviews subjects including a reduction of public spaces, city development influenced by market interests and the public protests against the phenomenon.

An illustration of the book with a photograph depicting a Soviet-era square in Tbilisi. Photo: organisers of Kickstarter campaign for the book.

[Witnessing the transformation of Tbilisi] raises important questions: What is to be preserved and what is to be destroyed? What can be owned and what belongs to everyone? What do we want to remember and what can be forgotten?”, says a summary from the authors.

Launched on the popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, the campaign seeks to raise funds for printing the book and includes a short video story of its origins.

In 2015 we started by mapping places of upheaval and talking to people who were trying to shape Georgia's future in different ways. We dived into the archives to discover incredible, yet unpublished material about the cities moving past”, note the organisers of the campaign.

The publication will feature illustrations and images by artists and designers. Photo: organisers of Kickstarter campaign for the book.

Chapters of the book — listed on the Kickstarter page — include contributions by city planner Zurab Bakradze, landscape architect Sara Cowles and activist Elene Margvelashvili.

Other parts of the prospective publication come from journalists Ben Knight and Sebastian Pranz, with images by artists Mamuka Japharidze, Fabian Weiss and Lexo Soselia serving to illustrate the work.

Authors of Tbilisi — Archive of Transition have also revealed the book is projected to feature documentary material on Tbilisi’s urban history from private and public archives never published before.

The Kickstarter campaign for the book is set to run until the deadline of March 28 and aims to raise about 9,200 USD (about 22,200 GEL/7,300 EUR), with over 1,000 USD already pledged.

Those pledging 35 EUR (about 105 GEL/43 USD) or more will be rewarded with a copy of the book in case of the successful conclusion of the campaign.