Kond, Yerevan, Armenia © Onnik Krikorian 2005
It’s one of my favorite places in Yerevan. It’s also one of the poorest. For both reasons, walking through Kond is like stepping back in time. Located in the very heart of the capital it’s also as if you’ve left Yerevan entirely. Indeed, when a National Geographical film crew filming a documentary on Christianity in Armenia said they wanted something ‘biblical,’ I could only take them to Kond.
Which is ironic given that until the 1920s it was a mainly ethnic Azeri populated part of a much smaller city which had a 49 percent Turkic population and a 48 percent Armenian one. The local school still has photographs of Kond when minarets from what appeared to be quite a few mosques towered over it.
Today, the minarets are gone, although some parts of the mosques still remain albeit since turned into homes, but Kond remains. But, with the prospect of yet another corruption-driven land grab hanging over the area, it’s uncertain for how much longer that will be the case. According to Public Dialogues, it seems that the recent global economic crisis has only put those plans on hold… for now at least.
[…] In 2007, according to the decree passed by the Government, 345.000 square meters in Yerevan (the districts of Kond, Kozern, Firdus and some sections of Agatangheghos Street) were announced territories of prevalent public interest.Glendale Hills Ltd. concluded an agreement with 50 residents from the Firdus area by which they were supposed to be given new apartments in the buildings to be built in the place of the houses pulled down in three years’ time. The three years have passed, and so far only the foundation pit has been dug. Similar illegalities can be detected in the territory of Kond. The construction company, Downtown Yerevan, signed contracts with 150 residents and after the construction of 4 – 5 levels of the building declared itself bankrupt. Many of these citizens are currently living in rented apartments, and they do not know how their problem will be solved.
It’s a pity to think that many of Kond’s residents would be happy to leave, but living in sub-standard conditions it’s hardly surprising. It’s particularly upsetting that they will be paid less than market value for their homes.
Kond, Yerevan, Armenia © Onnik Krikorian 2005
In 2005, Hetq Online also examined plans for Kond even though the area has significant historic value and could be turned into something quite valuable for Armenia’s fledgling tourist industry — as was initially planned during the Soviet era.
In the 1860s a visitor described Yerevan as “a typical small Asian town, with narrow, winding streets, and huts built from clay and small stones.” At the time, Yerevan had seven districts: the old district, or Shar, in the center of the city, Shen, Dzoragyugh, Kond or Tapabash, part of which was called the apricot center, and the New District, where immigrants from Atrpatakan lived. The streets in Yerevan’s old neighborhoods were three or four feet wide, with irrigation ditches on either side.
Today, Kond is all that’s left of these old neighborhoods.
Some argue that government appropriation of the district will give it a much-needed facelift, even if that facelift means the destruction of the old historical environment. But from a social point of view, the problem is much harder to solve. Many Kondetsis themselves are utterly fed up with the rickety, dilapidated houses they live in. They dream of the new homes, even in the outskirts of the city, that they have been promised them for decades now.
[…]The authorities admitted that the problem they were trying to solve was paradoxical, and in 1984-85 announced a tender for an architectural plan to reconstruct Kond. Interviewing one architect, Karen Demirchyan, then first secretary of the Armenian Communist Party, declared, “Have you been to Paris, seen Montmartre? I want Kond to become Yerevan’s Montmartre”.
We met this architect, Arshavir Aghekyan, and discussed the changes that had been planned.
“The plan wasn’t a complete reconstruction, but a reconstruction that would integrate the old and new environments. The plan involved the construction of residential and commercial buildings; in short, it would have become a beautiful eastern neighborhood.” Aghekyan’s blueprint called for the construction of beautiful stone stairs with stone houses all along either side. Looking down from the top, the houses would appear to be built one on top of the other, but that would be an illusion, preserving Kond’s historical flavor.
Aghekyan sadly acknowledges that his colleagues have been systematically destroying the buildings that define Yerevan’s past. Kond itself has no buildings of particular historical or cultural value, but as a whole, it is the only part of the city that has preserved the city’s historical atmosphere, and its reconstruction should adhere to that principle. If, however, the reconstruction is approached in the same way as the Northern Avenue project, nothing at all will be left of Old Yerevan, and the city will have just another area of densely packed high-rises in its center.
Anyway, for me at least, Yerevan doesn’t appeal as a city. It’s nice enough to visit for a few days, but it lacks the soul of cities such as Tbilisi, capital of neighboring Georgia. As a photographer, Kond is one of the few really photogenic parts of the city. Regardless of what happens next for it, however, it would be encouraging to at least see running water supplied to the homes of many who live there.
Alas, when I last visited two years ago, nothing much had changed.
Kond, Yerevan, Armenia © Onnik Krikorian 2003-5
