Tbilisi central station
Encyclopedia
Past and Present
The Tbilisi central station is the central railway station of TbilisiTbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
with an adjacent shopping mall. The first central station in Tbilisi was built in 1872, with trains to the black sea port of Poti
Poti
Poti is a port city in Georgia, located on the eastern Black Sea coast in the region of Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti in the west of the country. Built near the site of the ancient Greek colony of Phasis, the city has become a major port city and industrial center since the early 20th century. It is also...
. In the 1940 the building was demolished and replaced with a building in the style of the Stalinist architecture
Stalinist architecture
Stalinist architecture , also referred to as Stalinist Gothic, or Socialist Classicism, is a term given to architecture of the Soviet Union between 1933, when Boris Iofan's draft for Palace of the Soviets was officially approved, and 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev condemned "excesses" of the past...
. In the early 1980s the 1940s building was demolished and replaced by a building in the style of the Brutalist architecture
Brutalist architecture
Brutalist architecture is a style of architecture which flourished from the 1950s to the mid 1970s, spawned from the modernist architectural movement.-The term "brutalism":...
. The architects Bairamashvili, Kavlashvili, G. Shavdia and Jibladze won a State Prize for their work in 1992. In 2010 the station was rehabiliated and transformed into a combined railway station and shopping mall. The transformation was designed by Zwarts & Jansma architects.
Future of the Central Station
The direct TbilisiTbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
crossing railroad line will be replaced by a bypass connection north of Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
in the coming years. The Tbilisi central station will be closed and stay a shopping mall
Shopping mall
A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version...
. It not more served by passenger trains, existing infrastructure will be dismantled.
Instead of a central station the Didube
Didube
Didube could refer to:* The Didube Pantheon* The station Didube...
station in the east and the Navtlugi station in the northwest of Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
become dead-end stations and were just served by passenger trains. Because of this a throughout connection for passenger trains and direct passenger transfers are no more possible in future. Instead of the expected reduction of environmental and traffic problems the axing will cause more traffic problems. Because the public transport and underground transport system of the capital is optimized for the central station. Differently to the American consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton
Booz Allen Hamilton
Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. , or more commonly Booz Allen, is an American public consulting firm headquartered in McLean, Fairfax County, Virginia, with 80 other offices throughout the United States. Ralph Shrader is its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. The firm was founded by Edwin Booz in...
, the project is therefore very much disputed by Western European transportation specialists and railway companies.