** Applications are currently open. Numerous scholarships are available! **
This year will begin a multi-year programme aimed at building a series of structures within the historic fabric of Oshakan, a rural village 26 km northwest of Yerevan. During the first multi-week residential workshop in July 2024, students will set up an office in a Soviet-era culture house and work with local residents to survey existing heritage sites, identify local material resources and techniques, and propose sites for interventions that utilise reclaimed and locally sourced materials.
The course will begin with a series of visits to heritage sites and resources, complimented by a series of talks. Students will be introduced to the key principles of sustainable construction and will produce a map of local resources and heritage. They will then design proposals for a community building to be constructed in the following year’s Visiting School.
Oshakan’s dramatic scenery will provide the backdrop for experiments in heritage and sustainable construction; the village sits between an ancient Urartian fortress, an ecologically diverse gorge, the Soviet-era astrophysical laboratory of nearby Byurakan, where the students will be staying, and the burial site of the 4th-century inventor of the Armenian alphabet, Mesrob Mashtots.
