In the heart of Tbilisi, on the gentle slope between the Old Town and the Mtkvari River, two monumental tubular structures lie dormant like half-awake sentinels of a future that never came. Dismissed by some as “ugly” and “non-functional,” the Rike Tubes—as they’ve come to be known in the public imagination—are once again under threat of demolition. But to reduce these architectural gestures to debris would be a civic and cultural failure, a betrayal of memory and ambition.
Let’s be clear: these are not “tubes.” They are an unfinished symphony in steel and glass. They are not eyesores, but lenses—portals through which Tbilisi once imagined its entry into global architectural discourse.
And they were designed by none other than Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, architects of global acclaim, whose oeuvre includes the Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport Terminal 3, the Zenith Music Hall in Strasbourg, and the Milan Trade Fair towers. These are not disposable assets: they are part of an international architectural lineage.
The Rike Tubes were commissioned in 2011 under the administration of then-president Mikheil Saakashvili as part of a broader agenda to modernize Georgia’s capital. They were meant to house a concert hall for 600 people and a contemporary art and exhibition space—two civic institutions that Tbilisi has long lacked at scale and accessibility.
The choice of the Fuksas Studio—a rare move toward integrating Tbilisi into the sphere of European avant-garde architecture—was deliberate. The design echoes deconstructivist traditions, but refuses chaos. The asymmetrical steel curves converse with the mountainous skyline; the polished surfaces reflect the light and dust of the Caucasus in ever-changing hues. In other words, the Tubes were meant to be modern, yes—but modern in a way that bends toward Tbilisi’s unique spatial and historical character.
The architectural language used is that of movement: the metallic forms spiral, curve, and lean into each other like bodies in dialogue. This is not aesthetic excess: this is sculpture-as-architecture. The fact that the buildings have remained inaccessible should not lead to their misrecognition as “non-functional.” The problem lies not in design, but in governance, political discontinuity, and urban mismanagement.
Over €30 million were invested in the Rike project before 2013. Its completion stalled due to political shifts and changing urban priorities. Subsequent governments—eager to distance themselves from the Saakashvili era—chose symbolic rupture over continuity. In 2016, the site stood completed externally but unfinished within. By 2020, it had been auctioned off in a series of failed attempts, until it was finally sold for a fraction of its cost to businessman Davit Khidasheli.
Since then, the structure has suffered from neglect, speculation, and tragedy. The tragic death of a teenager who fell into a pit at the neglected site this January is not an indictment of the architecture, but of the absence of maintenance and the abdication of responsibility by successive stakeholders.
The failure to utilize the “tubes” does not make them worthless. On the contrary, they have come to symbolize a type of suspended potential that is rare and valuable in any city: they are unfinished, yes, but not failed. They embody a moment when Tbilisi dared to imagine itself as part of a contemporary global cultural scene. Why would a city destroy its dream merely because it has not yet awoken?
Across the world, buildings once decried as eyesores have become iconic. The Centre Pompidou in Paris was derided as an “oil refinery” when it opened in 1977. Today, it’s an indelible symbol of French artistic life. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao—a shining titanium fish by Frank Gehry—was once thought absurd for an industrial city in decline. Today, it has not only redefined Bilbao’s economy but global conversations about what cultural architecture can do.
Tbilisi stands at a similar crossroads. Will it repeat the old provincial reflex of rejecting what it does not immediately understand, or will it take the harder, wiser road of rehabilitating and adapting? Demolishing the Rike Tubes would not be an act of urban renewal, it would be an act of amnesia.
There have already been proposals—serious ones. Wine museums, digital art spaces, international conference halls. The location in Rike Park, just steps from the Peace Bridge and the old Presidential Palace, makes the Tubes ideally positioned for a multi-functional public and cultural use.
Rather than replacing them with a hotel—yet another unmemorable structure driven by real estate speculation—why not engage in a public competition for adaptive reuse? Why not invite Georgian and international artists, curators, and architects to imagine their futures within the existing frame? Why not let the very process of saving the Tubes become a new kind of public urban ritual?
Architecture is not merely infrastructure. It is narrative. It is memory. It is projection. The Rike Tubes are part of a story about Tbilisi’s turn toward the future in the early 21st century. To destroy them would be to erase a chapter, to insist that the future has no place here unless it conforms to the lowest common denominator of profitability.
Yes, the Tubes have been mismanaged. Yes, they have stood unused. But cities are allowed to make mistakes. The mistake is not in building them. The mistake would be in destroying them now. Because, in the end, the Tubes are more than structures. They are a test. Of taste, of memory, of urban courage. Let Tbilisi pass that test with imagination, not demolition. Let the Tubes Speak. They’ve waited long enough.
Blog by Ivan Nechaev
