Near the heart of Tbilisi, where the River Vere once ran freely above ground, lies in ruins an aquatic complex once vibrant with life and engagement. Time shifts around Laguna Vere, yet it slumbers in-between the city’s unfolding moments. Restored buildings no longer stand within the same urban fabric or era. Nevertheless, upon its awakening, staying true to its identity will be our core principle.

With Laguna’s construction, the River Vere’s course was diverted and confined within a tunnel. Yet, the bound current broke free, flooding the complex and the entire Valley on June 13th, 2015. Since then, the building has remained muted, buried in mud and sludge. Despite social indifference, Laguna Vere is anchored in memory with notions of collectiveness and a wonder of swimming.

Our proposal addresses climatic adversities, implements flood prevention solutions, environmental waste management, ecological renovation practices through the reanimation of Laguna Vere as a sports and recreational complex. This sustainable revitalization breaks the tension between the building and the river, transforming the site into an urban sanctuary

The materials tell a narrative, woven from environmental and consolidation principles. We preserve Ignatov’s mosaic façade, emphasize interior murals through spatial narratives and introduce new mosaics born from his sketches. The complex speaks through its raw materials—concrete, limestone tuff, and timber—as a carbon-negative element. Flood management strategy establishes an idea of our main material.

As Vere partially returns to its initial course, now flowing through adjacent parks, the challenge of flood containment leads us to “bioregional architectural” solutions— where vernacular materials are revealed through the fluvial landscape itself. Sediments extracted from the embanked floodplains—waste that, if neglected, could trigger future floods—are recycled into a new material. By binding river clay with cement, slag, sand, and through compaction and curing, a geopolymer sludge block is created, assembled in a mosaic-like configuration for pedestrian streams within the building

Since the city envelops the building but does not interact with it, an idea emerged: bring the city inside—to the terraces and beneath. The design features two streams that echoe inside: Where the river once forced its path, now courses metaphorically through the stripped structure, outlining what once was, while shaping what will be; Promoting inclusion and multifunctionality. One stream embeds the urban-social realm: bars, skatepark, and courts. The other encompasses the sports complex, transitioning through wellness areas and café-lounges, reaching pool zones.

At the heart of this complex lie two defining identities: pools and grandstands. Their interplay creates a superposition of states, where the pool awaits the grandstands’ gaze to reveal its true nature. During off-seasons, the pool transforms into a modular stage, hosting diverse events. Laguna Vere once pulsed with athletic energy—bodies in motion and cheering crowds. Today, it transforms: from a place of forgetting, to reconnection. Physical activity expands in meaning—now encompassing relaxation and social. The sports community hub becomes a cultural common that is fluid, just like a river: transformative, versatile with the wavelength of creativity.

“The project demonstrates a strong depth of research into the site’s history and context, which is clearly expressed in the proposal articulated with the water flow – reminding us lost riverbed of the Vere. The integration of drawings, graphics, and architectural language results in a successful and well-composed adaptive reuse.”

“Good quality graphic representation and an effective interpretation of adaptive reuse principles.”

Once known as Laguna Vere—a site of Olympic glory and public spectacle—the building stood for decades as a dried-out vessel of memory. Our aim is not to restore it nostalgically or preserve it as a relic. Instead, we reimagine it as a living urban organism: evolving, responsive, and purposeful. We rename it Vere Works. Laguna no longer fits its function. The water of the past becomes the energy of the future. Vere—the river still flowing below—grounds the project in its origins. Works speaks to its hybrid rebirth: a place that works, produces, supports, and belongs to the people.

In a city shaped by growing academic institutions and young urban communities, Vere Works becomes a civic engine: a co-working, co-learning, co-living platform. Our transformation is both spatial and symbolic. The former tribune becomes the platform to be observed. Water flows over the stairs, turning them into a cascading spectacle. Three colorful pipes—green, red, and blue—emerge from the concrete like exposed organs: vertical circulation cores and symbols of transformation. This is no longer a swimming pool. It is anatomical architecture—where structure becomes story.

The building’s three swimming pools are reimagined as vital organs:

These three zones are activated by vertical and horizontal pipe-arteries—staircases, elevators, and connectors that guide users across the building like blood through a system. Vere Works functions as a machine of collaboration and creativity: with co-working spaces, private pods, offices, workshops, seminar and podcast studios, a library, café, lounges, and full back-of-house facilities.

A defining moment is the surgical cutting of the original rear slab, introducing a double-height, light-filled workspace. This dramatic intervention reveals the building’s inner depth—an architectural moment of clarity, openness, and reinvention.

We do not restore Laguna—because Tbilisi doesn’t need another empty monument. It needs space to think, meet, and build. With its location surrounded by universities and research centers, Vere Works becomes an adaptable infrastructure for a new civic and academic generation.

Concrete is preserved—brutal, honest, monumental. Stainless steel pipes reflect sky and time—narrative infrastructure. Water returns—flowing with symbolism and function. Glass slabs frame memory and modernity in one.

Vere Works is an organism of memory, reanimated by purpose.
It flows. It grows. It works…

“The insertion of the tubes proves to be a gesture capable of connecting, both visually and physically, the various elements of the existing structure, without altering its appearance but making it more playful. The idea of bringing water onto the stands is highly appreciated, though it would have been interesting to further emphasize the relationship with the visitors.”

Laguna Vere, a modernist swimming complex once vibrant with a public life, now stands as an abandoned relic of Tbilisi’s urban history. This proposal reimagines the site as a living, breathing eco-machine that honors its architectural memory while projecting it into a sustainable future. Rather than demolishing or replacing the existing structure, the intervention acts as a soft, reversible layer – a second skin that revitalizes the complex through ecological productivity, adaptive architecture, and public engagement.
The functional concept transforms Laguna Vere into a self-sustaining urban oasis. The neglected pools are repurposed as hydroponic gardens floating on inflatable cushions, where nutrient-rich water supports the growth of vegetables and herbs. The stepped seating along the former spectator stands becomes home to aeroponic capsules, lightweight spheres that grow plants in the air. Both techniques use 90% less water than traditional soil-farming. Along the abandoned slides and railings, spiraling algae tubes act as living bioreactors, absorbing CO₂, producing oxygen, and contributing to air purification. Together, these systems create a closed-loop eco-machine, where water is collected and reused, air is filtered through vegetation, and local food production supports an experimental café that reconnects visitors to the landscape.
To complement this forward-looking vision, a ground-floor showroom invites the public to engage with these innovations firsthand, displaying the core technologies behind the site’s transformation, including the algae harvesting system, hydroponics and aeroponics infrastructure, and the tensile structures supported by helium-inflated balloons. A museum located on the first floor archives the site’s rich past, Laguna Vere’s former period of glory, through carefully curated photographs, journals, newsletters, illustrations, and other memorabilia. This layered spatial narrative bridges the historical identity of the place with its new ecological role.
The architectural concept focuses on lightness, adaptability, and respect for the original structure. A network of tensile membranes is stretched over the pools, held aloft by helium balloons and soft-robotic mechanisms that allow the surfaces to breathe and move. By adjusting balloon heights, the membranes change shape to provide shading, collect rainwater, and create a dynamic play of light and shadow. This kinetic, inflatable architecture acts as a reversible soft skin, touching the brutalist concrete only where necessary, leaving the original structure entirely intact. The result is an architecture that is alive and responsive, one that adapts to the environment while celebrating the site’s modernist heritage.
When combined, the two layers of functional productivity and soft architectural transformation, generate a new typology for urban ecological renewal. Laguna Vere becomes a public eco-machine: a place where leisure, education, sustainability, nature and technology coexist in harmony. This approach not only preserves the memory of the past but also projects a hopeful, regenerative future, turning a forgotten swimming complex into a living symbol of ecological resilience in the heart of Tbilisi.

“The building’s current state serves as a clue for developing research within its very context. Laguna Vere was built in the river’s floodplain, disregarding both the river and the city through human use. The proposal points toward an inquiry that extends before and beyond the building itself—analyzing the intertwined ingredients of ourselves and our environment.”

LATENT INFRASTRUCTURES: RE-STAGING THE CONCRETE COMMONS

A former socialist complex. Not re–made. Requestioned. An urban readymade, transformed into a space of hesitation.

Across Georgia, and more broadly throughout the former socialist world, the mid20th century city was furnished with a dense network of statesponsored social infrastructures: Palaces of Culture, youth centres, workers’ clubs, sports complexes. The post‑socialist transition disrupted this ecosystem. The urban result is paradoxical: cities grew more market‑active yet poorer in truly public, low‑threshold places where different groups can spend time without paying or performing specific consumer roles. In a contemporary civilisation where free social time and space are shrinking, these inherited structures represent a latent endowment,waiting for a new brief. That brief is the third space: not home, not workplace, but a civic stage for informal activities. The enabling premise is already present on site. The architecture itself works as connective tissue, unfolding in vertical layers and mediating level shifts between streets and topography.

At its core, the sports complex pairs a field of action with a field of view – the water pool and the amphiteather. Laguna Vere complex was structured by two dominant elements: the diving tower and the monumental grandstand. Complementary, the image of the water slide adds the ludic component to this brutalist frame. Our main proposal aims to challange the typical stage-audience duality, enabling positions to shift and overlap and reframes the whole as a graduated field of functional zones calibrated by intimacy, noise level, and time of day.

Less about making new and more about adjusting the existing, our way of working was mainly by looking at the transitory spaces. On that basis, the project gives back to the public realm through a sequence of open, intermediary spaces: the main entrance wall is opened and becomes a passage way, enclosed with a wind‑break curtain, offering passers‑by a measured glimpse inside. The lateral ramps lead to an elevated, intimate garden that becomes a quiet forecourt to the library, but also a green public space itself. The area of the former pools is doubled via two superposed slabs acting as a recto-verso element generating an elevated piazza above and a covered piazza below. The pools become rooms; their once-submerged basin floors are brought within reach, underfoot. Making use of the fifth façade, the inclined slab works in two registers: it reintroduces the ever-flowing, always-present water element in symbolic form, and it mirrors the grandstand at a more human scale, while the flat slab works as a scene.

Conceived as an assemblage for play and free expression, the upper piazza can host debate, music, or a Sunday market; the piazza below – furnished only with water, wind, and structure– can become a legal graffiti ground and a platform for other lowthreshold civic uses. While the project introduces new functions to activate the site (café, florist, bookshop, indoor swimming pool, athletics club, exhibition spaces), the process remains open-ended and reinterpretable over time, because we believe that indeterminacy is a feature, not a flaw.

““Latent Infrastructures” stood out for its ability to reveal and reimagine the hidden systems that reshape our collective environments. I was impressed by the project’s conceptual clarity, rigorous integration of ecological and social infrastructures, and its sensitive balance between large-scale strategy and human experience. Through thoughtful representation and visionary design, the proposal not only uncovers what is often invisible but transforms it into a framework for resilient, equitable, and inspiring urban futures.”

Laguna Vere: Animal rescue and rehabilitation center

Laguna Vere is a rare example of monumental brutalism, located at the confluence of the Vere and Mtkvari rivers. The Vere river, which gives the site its name, descends through forested valleys before reaching Tbilisi—where it disappears beneath the streets. Laguna Vere itself is embedded in the gorge, suspended above the river, a relic both isolated and exposed.

This proposal reimagines Laguna Vere as a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation center, reversing the degradation of the Vere Gorge and positioning the structure as a new hub for ecological care in the city. Its proximity to rivers, green slopes, and the urban core makes it an ideal anchor for a resilient urban-nature interface.

To confront the site’s vulnerability—exposed by the destructive 2015 flood—an urban sponge park is proposed around the complex. This landscape strategy includes ponds and native vegetation designed to absorb runoff and reduce flood risk. Existing industrial uses nearby would be relocated, making way for public green space and ecological continuity.

How, then, to intervene in this brutalist monument? The strategy follows three steps.

First, the removal of secondary architectural elements—glass, masonry walls, and debris—reveals the bare concrete frame, restoring the building’s spatial clarity while preparing it for adaptive reuse.

Second, the existing pools and spectator stands are transformed into the five biomes—grassland, forest, river, mountain and cave—through the introduction of soil, water, and vegetation. These habitats physically root the structure into its landscape.

Third, a modular system of lightweight, prefabricated units is introduced to house the new program: animal care, education, research, and visitor amenities. These modules, made from recycled and sustainable materials, reference the relevant metabolism movement and adapt easily over time.

Access to the site is restructured. Visitors arrive via a new path through the Vere Gorge or through the original two side entrances. These two pairs of access points, on the pool and street levels, are linked by new staircases and lifts. The press building becomes the public face: a visitor center with reception, shop, and exhibition spaces. Food and volunteer kiosks activate the entrance plazas.

The functional core of the rescue center lies beneath the spectators’ seats, invisible to the public. Here, veterinary and quarantine modules are clustered alongside staff offices and storage—ensuring smooth operations. Animals recovering from injury pass through quarantine before transitioning to open biomes.

Above, visitors move along elevated walkways through the three biome pools, witnessing the recovering wildlife in naturalistic enclosures. The aviary, situated on the slope, is accessed via the original audience gates. The final biome—the cave—is nested under the stands, a darker, quieter space with restricted access.

“The project is a striking manifestation at the end of the Vere Gorge. The gorge has long held the potential to become a central green artery for the city. Its natural force revealed itself dramatically in the context of Laguna Vere through a devastating flood. The proposal urges recognition of the riverbed, currently forced underground, as both a symptom and an opportunity—reintegrating it with people through cultural, recreational, and educational significance.”

Revitalizing a Monument of Modernist Strength

Laguna Vere stands as one of Tbilisi’s most iconic modernist sports complexes. Years of abandonment have stripped the building of its original vibrancy and urban presence. The proposed redevelopment is not merely a renovation but a redefinition of the building’s role within the city—transforming it into a contemporary hub for aquatic sports, wellness, rehabilitation, and community interaction while preserving its architectural identity.

The key architectural intervention is the Ring, a unifying element that replaces the original four ramps with a single continuous gesture. The Ring functions as:

Respecting the original structure: The robust concrete frame and monumental scale of the building are preserved and celebrated. Opening the building to the city: The south-facing public functions—exhibition areas, lecture halls, and a food court—extend into the park, creating a civic interface.

On the ground floor, the southern wing serves as the primary gateway for daily users, providing a dedicated. entrance and exit for the wellness center and direct connection to the exterior pools. This level integrates the core wellness program – thermal pools, saunas, hydrotherapy rooms, and relaxation areas – while also accommodating a poolside bistro, a wellness bar, and an external café that opens toward the park, reinforcing the building’s relationship with the public realm. The northern entrance retains its monumental character and functions as the civic face of the building. It houses the main lobby and information center, welcoming visitors to a cultural program that extends to the upper levels, where flexible community halls, workshop rooms, and event support spaces enable concerts, lectures, and seasonal open-air cinema. These programs activate the grandstand, transforming what was once an underused sports seating structure into a dynamic cultural stage. On the second floor is a large lounge with panoramic views, a public fitness center, and a rehabilitation suite. From here, visitors move seamlessly between sport, wellness, and community functions. In the center of the grandstand, a new glazed volume creates a striking visual intervention: a year-round viewing pavilion overlooking the pools, equally suited for casual visitors, wellness guests, and VIP hospitality during events. Together, these layers of public, recreational, and cultural functions are unified by the Ring, which organizes circulation and binds the project into a single architectural experience. By merging wellness, community, and event spaces within a clear and monumental framework, the design redefines Laguna Vere as a civic landmark – a place where the strength of its original structure is not only preserved but elevated into a new symbol of accessibility, cultural vitality, and urban identity for Tbilisi.

The Ring transforms Laguna Vere from an abandoned relic into a hybrid public and recreational complex. It is both an infrastructural solution and a symbolic architectural gesture, amplifying the building’s historic presence while introducing a new civic identity rooted in accessibility, fluidity, and urban openness. This approach allows Laguna Vere to become once again a catalyst for public life in Tbilisi—a place where sport, wellness, culture, and community intersect within a bold architectural framework.

“This proposal achieves a respectful yet bold reinterpretation of Laguna Vere, transforming a modernist relic into a contemporary civic landmark. The central “Ring” unifies sport, wellness, and cultural functions while reinforcing the connection between the building and the city. Its clarity, sensitive material choices, and thoughtful façade treatments result in a consistent and compelling vision.”

Laguna Vere, a massive Soviet-era swimming complex inside Tbilisi, now exists as a vast void, a crumbling material structure, socially isolated but dense in memory and desolate. The site is handled by this proposal as ground enabling critical reuse. It also sees it as a place toward spatial transformation rather than nostalgic restoration or glossy redevelopment. Modular architecture guides the project using adaptive reuse with a conceptual axis, the Line of Memory, which reactivates the pools as spaces of collective reflection, movement, and renewal.

Recognition of the pools as a symbolic terrain begins for the proposal now, not just ruins, structurally intact yet emptied of life. A narrow linear beam cuts through all three basins, and it references the swimming lane as a metaphor of time, transition, and bodily memory. From this spatial gesture, new functions emerge, which are a new architectural axis, both conceptual and physical.

Into this axis, modular cubes are inserted, which include lightweight reversible structures that are sourced from reused steel that was built from dismantling the nearby “Fuksas Tubes” project located in Rike Park. Fuksas originally designed the building as a governmental as well as cultural venue in 2012, but the municipality never activated it and has now officially demolished it. This endeavor favors the recycling of such matter rather than its demise as refuse. It is both an act of circular ethics and critical reclamation. A more grounded, responsive design becomes the source behind an imported, decontextualized architectural gesture’s failure.

The modular units can accommodate a diverse public program for all. This involves stages, yoga spaces, winter gardens, exhibit areas, play areas, and food areas. For drained pools, floating platforms were developed. Tribune-integrated cubes fixed onto the stadium seating were developed too. Minimal intervention defines both of the systems just as it does steel-frame logic. Assembly using bolts permits reversibility. Through rest, circulation, and open-air activity, the stepped tribunes are reactivated as a green landscape.

The design supports multiple use scenarios for everyday public access, large-scale events, and temporary festivals. The design also ensures more flexibility and more sustainable occupation. A conceptual section articulates three symbolic experiences along the Line of Memory: reflection, overcoming, and release. Each segment shows the site’s past, and it can host new forms of public life.

This is a transformation, which is not a restoration. From the convergence of memory and reuse, a new urban ecosystem results where Laguna Vere becomes a platform for civic imagination. The architecture remains light and modular with openness to change, so the site is allowed to evolve within its community.

“A powerful conceptual gesture, the “Line of Memory,” reactivates the pools as symbolic spaces of reflection, overcoming, and release. Modular cubes built from recycled steel host flexible programs such as exhibitions, gardens, and cafés, reanimating both basins and tribunes. With its emphasis on reversibility and circular ethics, the project reframes Laguna Vere as a civic ecosystem open to change.”

where brutalism bllossoms into Landscape Civic Space, Hydrotherapy Revival, Georgian Culinary Traditions & Suspended Hospitality.

“Metamorphosis: Chronotope of Light

At dawn, light pierces the mist over the Kura River, awakening the translucent structure above Soviet-era ruins. The former Brutalist sports complex — Laguna Vere — now transforms into a Creative Hub, its concrete skeleton wrapped in steel lattices and frosted glass. This adaptive reuse project bridges Tbilisi’s architectural past and ecological future.”

The design merges heritage preservation with functional innovation:

1. Landscape Civic Space – Repurposing spectator stands into cascading greenery integrated with the Kura River’s ecosystem. The original structure is preserved using white cement and washed aggregate, optimized for public use. Tiered planters along seating steps host small trees and ornamental herbs, creating a ventilated, sunlit botanical haven.

2. Hydrotherapy Revival – Converting Olympic pools into sulfur baths inspired by Tbilisi’s 12th-century thermal springs. Pool levels are maintained and merged into a sunken space divided into two forest-immersed bathhouses with skylights. The central sunken area is landscaped with mature trees and herbs, reviving geothermal traditions.

3. Georgian Culinary Traditions – Adaptive reuse of abandoned athlete service buildings into gastronomic hubs. The original facade’s monumental mosaic, a treasured artwork by Nikolai Ignatov, employing rare smalti glass techniques, is preserved and framed by a stainless steel border, akin to a canvas mounting. This intervention transforms the mosaic into a culturally resonant frontage for Georgian culinary spaces, while interior subdivisions create coffee roasteries and supra-style feasting halls. Steel walkways connect the revamped structures to the landscape civic space, framing a semi-open atrium that maintains visual access to the preserved diving platform — now a sculptural landmark anchoring the Kurariverside gastronomic precinct.

4. Suspended Hospitality – Steel-truss guest suites crown the ruins, blending seismic resilience with Brutalist heritage. Primary load-bearing columns anchor into original pool foundations and spectator plinths, while 5x5m grid columns support elevated walkways and terraces overlooking the river.

This transformation creates a Chronotope — a spacetime dialogue between Soviet concrete permanence and Georgian craftsmanship. Like Koka Ignatov’s mosaics, the project layers history into a luminous continuum, proving adaptive reuse can unlock unforeseen potential.

“Although the proposed design radically transforms the original shape of the building, it preserves traces of its former aesthetics. The adaptation responds to contemporary community needs and fulfills the city’s future aspirations, while still acknowledging and respecting its history.”

Concept and Vision

This project envisions Laguna as a reclaimed civic platform that embodies the urgent social and political realities of Tbilisi. Rather than preserving the site as a static relic, the design embraces its transformation into a dynamic space of expression, assembly, and resistance. The proposal reflects a collective response to the ongoing urban crises, where citizens actively reclaim their right to the city through architecture as an act of spatial defiance.

Context and Justification
Laguna, once a symbol of public health and a monument to modernity and progress, now stands suspended and marginalized. The proposal recognizes the site’s complex history and fractured present, addressing the need for a new type of public space that is open, flexible, and capable of hosting unpredictable civic interactions. In a city marked by political tension and rapid change, the interventions serve as both a refuge and a stage for emerging voices, reflecting the community’s desire to break free from imposed silence.

Design Approach
The design consists of layered architectural volumes and programs that respond directly to the site’s physical and social fabric. New structures–such as open stages, broadcast tower, and informal gathering spaces–are introduced not to repair or complete the existing building, but to activate the site as a living, contested urban forum. These volumes are intentionally varied, fragmented, and adaptable, reflecting the chaotic energy of grassroots movements and the complexity of urban dissent.

Program Overview
The Forum: Central open arena hosting debates, performances, and assemblies, serving as the heart of civic engagement. The new volumesi n this areaw e r e defined by these programs.
The Stoa: Perimeter gallery providing flexible spaces for exhibitions, displays, and informal exchange. The Archive of Urban Crimes: Adedicated area preserving memory through documentation of the city’s transformations and losses.
Rave Below: Anocturnal gathering zone characterized by music and dance, fostering communal solidarity.
The Broadcast Tower: A vertical element facilitating alternative media transmission and amplified voices.
The Garden: An overgrown, informal green space offering shelter and moments of pause amid urban chaos.
The Workshop: A collective repair and creation space emphasizing action and self-reliance.
The Commons: A communal kitchen and dining area encouraging social bonding and sustained presence.
The Shelter: A modest hostel for those who occupy Laguna and resist in place. Not a retreat, but a frontline dwelling – housing activists, artists and outcasts, who build, speak, and stay
The Free School: An open learning zone with n curriculum, no credentials, and no gatekeepers. Ideas are traded, tools are shared, and knowledge flows horizontally – education as resistance.

Conclusion
This proposal challenges traditional notions of public space by prioritizing active participation, unpredictability, and resistance. Laguna becomes a spatial manifesto—where architecture does not simply accommodate life but engages with it critically, amplifying voices otherwise silenced. The project balances respect for the existing fabric with a radical vision for urban reclaiming, positioning Laguna as a vital platform in the city’s evolving narrative.

To keep the rich heritage of Laguna Vere, the ruins and intricate mosaics remained centric to the architecture of its rebirth. The project celebrates both past and present, and puts the wants of Tbilisi’s residents at the forefront of its duties.

Laguna Vere is a colossal complex, a large playground with many design options to explore, especially in the confines of the stands’ space. Even if the main purpose is leisure, each space holds many potential atmospheres to explore, and that is exactly how we decided to approach the structure. We have transformed the Olympic pools into a community hub for its people as they will be the ones using the space. Nowadays, it has somehow been repurposed into a space for selling machine gear. So, we thought why not capitalize on that and celebrate this architectural upcycling of the fallen?

We refashioned Laguna Vere to been contemplated. For example, fromthe diving towers, turned into a break spot which oversees the surrounding area: three pavilions, of the three swimming pools, repurposed respectively into a library, a gallery/museum and an auditorium.

The stands in front became themselves a recreational space and a hanging garden thanks to flexible and movable structures we implemented. From the top of these stands, visitors might wish to observe the rest of Tbilisi’s cityscape through urban binoculars. The stands’ continuity has also inspired the creation of a new suspended pool from which water spills unto the mosaic roofs of the repurposed pools. This was a shout out to the monumental main mosaic at the Laguna Vere’s entrance, placing it at the very core of the visitors’ experience.

To descend, one could use the large ramps characteristic of this project, which also serve as an open-air showroom for the sale of cars, motorcycles, and other such vehicles. These spaces, as well as the terraces behind the stands, serving as coffeeshops, could be redecorated to suit each season’s guises, especially in winter, when they might be transformed into Christmas markets. In this period even the suspended pool could be an ice rink, making it relevant year-round. To weave a connection between the elements, we ensured the presence of a visual breakthrough that starts from the entrance to the stand’s structure.

Project Statement: Reimagining Laguna Vere Through Senses, Wellness, and Connection

The project aims to transform the site through new interventions while preserving its architectural memory and atmosphere, avoiding total erasure of its original spirit.

Our intervention at the Laguna Vere site proposes the transformation of a former recreational complex into a multi-sensory, inclusive, and continuous public landscape — one that engages the body and mind through movement, rest, and perception.

At the heart of the project is the sensory transformation of the site: we shift from the traditional image of a sports facility toward a wellness-driven, nature-immersive experience. The main swimming pool is reimagined as a manmade forest, inviting visitors into a calm, shaded environment designed for rest, yoga, breathing, and reflection. The forested area replaces water with a multisensory landscape, guiding movement through light, shade, sound, and scent to foster slower rhythms and deeper spatial connection.

Complementing this is a series of new sauna units, some of which are embedded directly into the existing stadium staircase — reactivating a once-passive structure and layering it with heat, scent, silence, and social ritual. Nearby, a cold plunge pool offers contrast therapy, extending the sensory journey through thermal variation. Together, the sauna–forest dialogue becomes a key experiential axis of the site. A key intervention is the integration of modular sauna units along the preserved stadium staircase. These insertions are not only functional but symbolic, drawing inspiration from the dense, layered character of Old Tbilisi neighborhoods, where public and private spaces coexist vertically, often along stepped terrain.

To create fluidity and cohesion, we introduce a system of new connections:

These layered circulations ensure the site is not fragmented, but instead experienced as a continuous and open spatial field.

By reactivating existing structures and adding new layers, the project blends architecture, nature, and sensory experience to transform Laguna Vere into a living public space where memory and modernity meet. Laguna Vere is no longer a closed, aging relic — it becomes a living, evolving place of public encounter, where memory and modernity meet through careful design, sensual experience, and meaningful reconnection.

A forgotten icon embedded in concrete, Laguna Vere stands today not as ruin, but as a moment suspended. The project does not aim to rebuild or redesign. Instead, it listens – to material, to memory, to climate.

During a personal site visit, the absence was palpable. Barred gates, hollow stands, pools filled only with still air – the building seems to have stopped breathing. Yet in its silence, it speaks: of water once in motion, of sunlight once refracted through waves and glass, of an urban heartbeat long gone still. This project seeks to revive that pulse – not by constructing anew, but by carefully working with what remains.

The intervention embraces the existing architecture as both frame and actor. The monumental geometry of the grandstand, the diving tower’s raw elegance, the layered sequence of thresholds are all preserved – not only physically, but spatially and atmospherically. A lightweight network of bridges and nets spans across the voids, floating just above the terrain. Like a suspended veil, this structure reactivates the space between, hovering instead of landing.

Behind the grandstand, the project introduces a new skin — a permeable climatic layer that filters light, carries mist, and breathes with the wind. It nestles into the rear of the structure without penetrating it, allowing for a transformation without intrusion. The open mesh leads to a series of shaded paths and platforms — informal tribunes, observation decks, thermal corridors — providing new access to the structure from above and behind. For the first time, one can encounter Laguna Vere without descending directly into the pools. The complex becomes open to all: a civic landscape rather than a closed facility.

Water, no longer held in chlorinated basins, returns as an atmospheric element. Through vapor, mist, and reflection, the old pools become stages for microclimatic performance. Shade becomes gathering. Humidity becomes memory. Vapor becomes architecture.

The former stage of athletic performance evolves into a layered and inclusive public terrain— part observatory, part bath, part forum. Below, former gym and training spaces are turned into open studios, cultural rooms and wellness areas — always in resonance with the brutalist structure above.

By revealing and expanding the potentials of what already exists, the project resists both nostalgic preservation and tabula-rasa design. Instead, it becomes a gentle reawakening — grounded in the present, shaped by the past, and open to a shimmering, shared future.

Vita Nuova means [new life] in Italian. Our project is a metaphor for renewal, where traditions of the past become a strong monumental foundation for a better future. To revive the old, giving it a new image and identity – this has become our defining mission in the design approach. Laguna Vere will become a social hub, meeting place, and sports venue.

The original structure of Laguna Vere – a complex system of pools – allowed us to manage visitor flows efficiently while introducing diverse new functions.

Functional integrations:

  – Artificial surf wave – a unique feature for Tbilisi

  – Thermal pools connected to Georgia’s bathhouse traditions

  – Fitness area and tennis courts – for land-based sports

  – Children’s play zones for family recreation

  – Waterfront hotel – encouraging longer stays

  For Tbilisi’s hot climate, we landscaped the stands into “hanging gardens” (preserving the terraced structure while referencing Georgian mountain landscapes)

  – Maintained some open concrete seating for potential mini-competitions

  – Enhanced the green framework with trees and vertical landscaping to improve microclimate and combat dry summers

Laguna Vere is no longer abandoned territory – it’s an architectural hybrid where sport, leisure and nature form a new urban ecosystem. This Brutalist masterpiece has been reborn with a fresh interpretation and new identity.

The Other Land is our attempt to give new life to a forgotten Soviet-era aquatic center in Tbilisi, transforming it into a space where architecture supports cultural renewal.

Georgia is one of the oldest winemaking regions in the world, with traditions dating back to 6000 BCE. Wine here is not just a product but a symbol—interwoven with myth, ritual, and national pride. The story that God gifted Georgians the finest land because they drank “for Him” speaks to a deep-rooted culture of celebration and sincerity. But over time, this identity was weakened. Under Soviet rule, winemaking became industrial and centralized, losing its craft and locality. Later, global market pressures left Georgian wine culturally adrift.

The Other Land responds to that disconnection.

We reimagine the stadium’s bleachers as terraced vineyards, linking architecture with cultivation. Beneath them, we open new semi-underground spaces for wine exhibitions and educational displays. The old swimming pool is sealed and excavated, becoming a subterranean tasting hall. Above it, a new public square forms—a place of light, gathering, and open-air festivity.

Visitors enter through a reconfigured path that unfolds like a divine gesture—walking from a narrow, shaded entry into an open, generous space. The experience mimics a ritual transition: from earth to sky, from history to celebration.

In The Other Land, architecture becomes a quiet mediator between past and future. It does not loudly declare, but gently restores. Through this project, we hope to help Georgian wine culture reclaim its narrative—not as nostalgia, but as a living, growing tradition.

A Bigger Splash! is the title David Hockney gave to one of his masterpieces, depicting a dive, a diving board, a seat: Where has humanity gone? Everything seems designed to immortalize that fleeting moment, triggered by the violent yet erotic action of the body plunging into the water. The sensation of a suspended moment that the painting conveys to us immortalizes precisely the limbo in which the Tbilisi swimming complex finds itself: a place where dives and collective events have already taken place, deposited and consolidated in the memory of the area and those who experienced it. Today, the infrastructure that gave rise to these events has fallen into oblivion, in a state of ruin, redesigned by the most capable architect: the time.

Firstly, an analysis was carried out on the urban context ni which Lagune Vere is located, an area rich in leisure and cultural services: circuses, basketball courts, small theatres, concert halls, singing schools… These places are sometimes too fragmented and difficult to reach due to their location along the hillside, and today they lack a meeting point, a space that can bring together the different needs of the community its memory and culture. A large urban stage where different cultural and exhibition functions allow different actors to take turns, who today shape the diverse network of the Georgian capital. The second interpretation of the area concerns infrastructure as a major support for adaptive reuse, in which there is the possibility of giving new meaning to old signs, allowing them to express themselves toreach their full potential. What we can admire today of architect Shota Kavlashvili’s brutalist masterpiece is the result of a project that integrates the territorial context with functional needs; the slope that stands out behind the project area is complemented by the inclination of the stands, which become part of the landscape, designed in the project as a concrete continuation of a larger hillside park, which finds in Lagune Vere its equipped area capable of offering a varied biodiversity just a few steps from the city center and directly connected to the ecological corridor on the banks of the Kura River. Infrastructure plays another key role in the redesign of the site: greater importance will be given to the grandiose mosaic on the façade facing the road, which will be open to visitors on four wheels, who will find a temporary exhibition area and a refreshment point inside; finally, the motorway will allow all visitors and participants in future events to flow quickly.

If the dive is the initial act, the waves and jets of water are the next act. The three pools have been redesigned as three interiors, preserved in their integrity and image, one intended for the main entrance with a staircase, one redesigned as a large library/study room, and the last one prostrate in front of the diving board, the true landmark of lashvili’s masterpiece, a museum area dedicated to Georgian brutalism and the history of Laguna sheet of water perforated on one side and a large wave of steel and glass on the other give life to square that showcases the life that revolves around the different spaces.The lower part of the steps is partly designed as a space for various events, which will take place above the large wave, and partly as an area dedicated to physical and mental well- being, with a large gym, alongside a restaurant area and a rehearsal room for singing, dancing and creativity workshops.

The materials and geometries used fully reflect the principle of distinctiveness, a cornerstone of restoration culture. The various existing structures will be treated in such a way as to fully preserve the wrinkles and signs of ageing. Reinforced concrete with bold shapes combined with light steel and glass structures will breathe new life into a site that is finally returning to the center of urban and, above all, urban experience.

This project reimagines Laguna Vere, the decaying modernist swimming complex in Tbilisi, as a multi-cultural civic destination. This new proposal implements the spatial threshold between body and city; ruin and ritual; past and potential. Instead of preserving the structure as a static monument or simply for redevelopment, the design critically engages the site’s architectural legacy to regenerate it through a model of adaptive reuse, transforming it into a scaffold for healing, performance, and everyday gathering.

We have interpreted Laguna Vere as a product from Constructivist modernism’s instrumentalization of the body. The building was a machine for propaganda: a choreography of pools, spectator decks, and circulation paths with rigid geometrical forms that rendered physical discipline into state spectacle. Health was not personal, but performative. The body was not cared for, but controlled as an idealized figure staged to fulfill Constructivist idea. Today, deconstruct its original function, the structure stands in ruin.

This proposal neither restores nor erases the complex. Instead, it introduces a floating steel-framed intervention within the drained pool housing a sequence of new programs: a black-box theatre, wellness and meditation areas, and multi-purpose rehearsal spaces. These volumes are composed of prefabricated modules and translucent polycarbonate panels suspended on minimal footings that respect the brutalist geometry while reprogramming the void as ecological system and park.

Former spectator decks — once instruments of passive observation — are transformed into stepped green terraces reframing sites of spectacle into terrains of recovery and exchange. Circulation becomes choreography: a diagonal descent into the pool void reorients movement as ritual. Stillness is recast as program. The body, once monitored for performance, now wanders, rests, and recovers not for ideological fulfillment, but for cultural consumption and communal resilience.

The project expands beyond the central pool to activate the southwest corner of the building: a zone long abandoned and disconnected. Here, new volumes are introduced, housing a exhibition, gym, and community studios, and archives and library —supporting a wider cultural program that repositions Laguna Vere as a public anchor for Tbilisi’s evolving urban life and a case study in post-socialist urban regeneration.

At the second-floor deck, a new open-air market is proposed — a porous-elevated platform for local food vendors, seasonal events, and informal exhibitions. This addition stitches the interior and exterior together, serving as both balcony and civic commons, thresholding Laguna Vere to the rhythms of the street and the collective memory of its citizens.

Architecturally, the intervention resists mimicry. It embraces contrast and coexistence between heavy and light; ruin and insertion; memory and speculation. Its palimpsest character allows the past to remain visible while new futures unfold within and around it.

Ultimately, this project positions Laguna Vere not as a nostalgic relic, but as a civic threshold where the authoritarian body of modernism gives way to the plural fragmented bodies of today. A place where urban resilience with parks, cultural performance, and spatial healing converge; mot to reproduce ideology, but to metabolize it into something open and enduring.

Laguna Vere today is largely used as a parking lot, with the building oriented toward the highway, making pedestrian access difficult. The back of the building reveals a striking brutalist structure, yet remains hard to reach and disconnected from the city’s urban fabric. Our project redefines this relationship by prioritizing pedestrian connectivity and activating underused spaces. By improving access through the back facade, visitors can reach the site more easily on foot or via public transport, connecting Laguna Vere with nearby cultural spaces and the city.
Akey challenge is the height difference between the building’s valuable spaces and the street, creating physical and psychological barriers. We introduce a prominent, welcoming staircase linking street level to the new extension, inviting pedestrians to engage with the building and transforming Laguna Vere into an accessible cultural hub.
Facing the city, a transparent ETFE-wrapped extension envelops the brutalist structure, turning the raw back facade into an intimate interior feature. The lightweight, curved ETFE veil complements the building’s bent form and allows minimal structure, while its exposed frame echoes the original exposed construction. The extension serves as agallery for discussions, talks, and exhibitions, anchored by a “Wall of Memory* a- glass surface where visitors share ideas and stories, fostering public dialogue.
The extension connects via a balcony to the transformed pool area, now a lively city square with flexible amphitheater seating. Movable furniture and umbrellas make the square adaptable for gatherings, performances, or protests.
Nearby buildings house creative workshops, while ground-floor commercial spaces including a gym and bistro activate the square. A mobility hub to tackle the parking problem is proposed underground. Thus, the backstage pavilion transforms a neglected site into a vibrant cultural and civic heart for Tbilisi.

At the conflux of two rivers, where the Vere flows into the majestic Mtkvari, lies an abandoned relic lost to a politically and geographically tumultuous history. The city of Tbilisi is anentity beloved by the water, even violently so at times, causing Laguna Vere to become nothing more than an ardent memory trapped under the guise of an informal car park.

Prototyping Resilience: Laguna Vere seeks to reimagine the legacy of its iconic pools— where water once brought recreation, it now builds resilience. In a city shaped by its rivers as well as their detrimental floods, Laguna Vere now prototypes adaptive solutions made with and informed by the community, and transforms these aquatic spaces into a living laboratory for agricultural innovation and collective strength. It aims to turn water from athreat into a proactive resource. Laguna Vere and its pools continue to bring people together through water, now by equipping Tbilisi to face its hydro-based challenges. When facing frequent and destructive floods, the below grade interiors must be tertiary programs that can be lost during an emergency making all valuable programs be built up inconsideration of a climbing flood plain.

The pools are filled once again with water. Not for swimming, but for farms that float –Laguna Vere’s first and main prototyping initiative. These farm pavilions grow many types of hydroponic plants and herbs which are then distributed to the community through the on-site pantry at the front. These farms are meant to withstand the detrimental effects of flooding and provide necessities otherwise lost in times of natural disaster and food shortage.They give new meaning to the site, while continuing to honor its connection to water.

Atop the monumental concrete bleachers meant for spectating, now lie co-working pavilions meant to facilitate research and prototyping initiatives, as well as community education.These forms are elevated using stilt-like structures to reflect flood resistant vernacular architecture found in many countries where flooding is abundant. Utilizing fluted roofing, a rainwater collection system is implemented underneath all co-working pavilions. This system builds the resilience of the site, enabling self-sufficiency for the farms and aid stormwater management.

Encircling the entire site is a converted low-line park open to the public for all hours of the day and patterned with green spaces and seating. Placed along the back of the site are wooden stalls for markets, bazaars, festivals, etc. to foster social resiliency and community building. The park pavilions are modular, flexible spaces to adapt and change to the needs and wants of an evolving, diverse community.

All three pavilion types facilitate and encourage resilience in Tbilisi through the provision of necessities, learning, and social ties. Laguna Vere’s prototyping initiatives are designed for systemic potential and eventual city-scale adaptation to serve Tbilisi for years to come.