Picture here The architectural beauty and aesthetics of the building taken on their own will definitely confirm the architects' talent and professionalism however, it cannot be considered without reference to its context. Tashkent's context is everyday life. To illustrate this, we could admire the design and the structure of the Kh. Alimdjan Square, its solid geometric forms and its symmetry. However, without participation from the public, who understand and experience what hides inside these strong solids of buildings, on the pathways, streets and behind the dark corners, it will still be divorced from its circumstances and surroundings. People who live inside those high-rises, who work in banks, shops and small cafes and restaurants around the square face different realities, based on the activities they perform in the place.
For a square keeper, who swipes the tiled floor of the square, the place changes according to season, time of the day, etc. His square is never the same, as it is constantly altered by the activities of others. And it still remains his job, the duties that he has to do, rather than something he loves doing.
For a boy, who lives in one of those buildings with his parents, the place becomes the heart of the city, where he feels at home and where his memories reside. The fountain in the middle of the square is where he played with his friends after school. The path along the road reminds him of a girl he likes from school, who let him carry her school bag for the first time.
For an Uzbek business man, who visits the bank here the place is about money, interest rates and taxes. For him, it has nothing to do with intimacy or memories, which might live on the opposite side of the city, where his family is.
Buildings are places of human activities: some buildings are used for work, some for leisure, some become our homes. Through the signs they communicate to us and influence our lives. Different places suggest different possibilities. A transposition of the human plane onto an architectural site takes a place immediately to a different dimension of intimacy, memories and dreams.
Memories are another way of personalizing space, creating unique experiences, belonging to individual people, appropriating architecture to their individual purposes and needs. Memories of a place, through time influence people's perception of a place. For Laurier memories play an important part in commuting around the place. He mentioned that through memories the past is folded into the present (Laurier 1995: XXX), and influence our trajectories of traveling through a space.
Childhood determines the practices of space, arguments its effects and defaces their readable surfaces and creates in the planned city a 'metaphorical' city or a city of movement. A city built with accordance with all the rules of architecture and suddenly shaken by an unpredictable and incalculable force. (Blonsky 1985: 145)
A person of the present is subjectified to the places and subjects of the past, revisiting and re-evaluating them, through the different eyes however the past significance, the memories and values of those rarely change. To employ space is to repeat the joyous and silent experience of childhood. (Blonsky 1985: 144) A long forgotten, but familiar smell, or sound may trigger complex emotions and memories related to places.
We lived in an average Soviet apartment block that did not differ much from the others, only by the decorative ornament on the side. I remember men playing chess on the bench, surrounded by young then trees. And us, young children running around them, excited about the butterfly that suddenly appeared in this concrete jungle, like a ray of light or a sign of hope for a better future. I came back to that place, 17 years later, the trees are now higher than the buildings, camouflaging the raw concrete surfaces, but the men still sit on that bench finishing the chess match, like they've never left their sits.
Another thing that stayed with me from my childhood till today is the smell of bread. I remember my mother, sending me across the road to a local bazaar to buy some bread. Uzbek loafs of freshly baked bread, that I held in my hands, so impatiently, just to get back home and let my mother cut it, waiting until she got to the middle and gave me the crusty bit.. (Natalia Serga)
Uzbek Bread - Lepeshka
(Photo by Alexey Burlak)When visiting certain places in Tashkent, we always know whether we respond positively or negatively to it and we can recognize the presence or absence of a sense of place. Although places can be very different, their environments have a sense of place, which makes them individual and memorable. For example, wisdom and harmony that can almost be seen in a silence of narrow winding streets of the old Islamic towns have a very different sense of place and order as well as effect on people than the drama and scale of skyscrapers in the modern part of Tashkent, which present a powerful overwhelming and grand experience of the sense of place.
For the average people in Tashkent modern glass architecture, is used as an escape from the everyday. Most people cannot afford this lifestyle on the regular basis, and when they can, to go and visit that building becomes an event of the month, and treated with the same level of importance as a wedding or other important occasion. They dress in their best outfits and give in to the grandiose experience. Waiters and Servants, Customer Service People, who attend to the slightest wave of their finger to avoid any dissatisfaction, are what they don’t usually experience in the everyday life. For the tourists and Tashkent’s foreign visitors such buildings are also important, as they feel familiar with such city; it represents their value system and lifestyle.
