Pirimze

Overview

The story of Pirimze is told through the architecture of a building in Tbilisi known as Pirimze. The building touches upon the 1970s, when this luxuriously designed edifice served as an exemplary design in Georgia. In the 1980s the building became the site of incredible amount of wealth creation. It also talks about the 1990s, when it decayed and operated in an improvised and chthonic way. After the independence of Georgia, just as the Soviet Union collapsed and broke up into different countries, Pirimze ‘exploded’ and smaller workshops with identical names sprung up in the surrounding neighbourhood, where the ‘debris fell.’ We visit these workshops and observe fascinating skills performed by craftsmen who used to work in the Pirimze. We also visit the newly renovated business centre Pirimze Plaza, which replaced Pirimze and question the need and motives of this transformation.