Fourteen Years Unopened, Five Months to Remove

Tbilisi's glass-and-steel "Rike Tubes" were built to host concerts and art shows. The government that inherited them never opened the doors. Now they are coming down.

A 10,000-square-metre building in the middle of Tbilisi is being taken apart, and almost nobody ever got to use it. Dismantling began at the end of July and the owner has until December 25 to finish, per Reuters.

The building is the Rike Park Music Theatre and Exhibition Hall, which everyone calls the Rike Tubes. Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas were asked to design it in 2010, for concerts and contemporary art. Construction started in 2011 under Mikheil Saakashvili's government. In 2012 Georgian Dream took power and froze the work, and it was never finished, Hyperallergic reports. bne IntelliNews puts the money already spent at about $25 million.

In May the prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, said “This ugliness does not befit our beautiful capital.” The architects say nobody told them it was coming. Massimiliano Fuksas: “You cannot cancel buildings, you cannot cancel memories.”

Do the arithmetic, because the story is the arithmetic. It sat for fourteen years in a state of being not-quite-built, and the part where it stops existing is scheduled to take about five months.

The most useful line in Reuters comes from a woman named Elene Tsetskhladze, who says she doesn't like how the building looks and is against tearing it down anyway: the state's priority should be construction, not destruction. She points out that the demolition money could pay for school meals. Tourists, meanwhile, are photographing it while they still can.

The owner didn't respond to Reuters. Nobody has announced what goes on the site.