L’architecture des villages ruraux en Arménie centrale: relevés et interventions pour une stratégie de développement durable

The project explores the issue of villages and neighborhoods at risk of abandonment, focusing on the rural villages of central Armenia, in the internal region named ‘Vayots Dzor’. This reading highlights the study of a territory and its architectures, aiming to propose some potential sustainable development strategies respecting the local tradition and facing the most recent phenomena of abandonment that hit the territory. The output of this work is part of the university research mission promoted by the School of Architecture DIDA and the Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Florence SAGAS. The research is focused on the medieval architecture in Vayots Dzor region, developing both archaeological works and architectural drawings obtained from surveys. In this paper, we propose the study and the analyses of the territory and the architectures of Yegheghis, a village in Vayots Dzor. In the first part, we explain the ancient history of this place to better know its current structure and to understand the reasons of this recent phenomena of migration. It shows the village’s architectural and urban characteristics and analysis obtained through the architectural surveys we made. The final aim is to achieve the architectural local knowledge to suggest some possible strategies of safeguard, restoration and revitalization of these places, giving them the tools to develop their own local autonomy improving the work’ and study’ possibilities, thanks to a land management based on the concept of sustainable development.