House of Culture, Gyumri (unbuilt, 1974)

Approved in 1974, tendered in 1975, cancelled in 1977. No architectural drawings survive.

What survives is a structural calculation, a materials schedule and eleven pages of correspondence between the design institute and the regional ministry about a roof span. Petrosyan reconstructed the building from those documents, which specify a great deal about load and almost nothing about appearance.

Roughly a third of what is on this sheet is her decision rather than the archive’s. The proportions of the main hall are specified. The treatment of the entrance canopy is not, and she has invented it. As with every drawing in the series, the sources and the inventions are listed on the verso, so the sheet carries its own correction.

Worked over seven weeks. Supplied unframed, with a full transcription of the source documents.