Beyond the Euro-Western Model: Public Work as a Boundary between Mending and Innovation

Abstract

In post-Soviet non-European cities, the opposition between the negation of signs of the past and the exaltation of new national identities often generates a dichotomy in the value production of public works. It oscillates between the Euro-Western models of intensive building that privatise the public dimension and the re-propositions of pre-modern public space typologies. Conversely, research in Yerevan, Armenia, reveals a possible third way oscillating between mending and innovation public works. Through a process of differentiated integration to build, stabilise, and reconstruct variable contextual relationships, the building/open-space system takes on value as a boundary organism, becoming an artefact that co-evolves with social and environmental changes.