Places are never static. They evolve through social change, technological innovation, climate challenges, shifting identities, conflict, development, and the continuous reinterpretation of heritage.
Places in Transition explores how architecture can respond to these transformations, not simply by creating something new, but by questioning, adapting, preserving, rebuilding, and reimagining what already exists.
TAF 2026 brings together architects, designers, urbanists, thinkers, institutions, and voices from beyond the profession to examine how our built environment changes and how we can shape that change responsibly.
Read the programme→Architecture begins with people. We explore how places shape identity, belonging, behavior, memory, and everyday life, bringing the human concept back to the centre of the architectural conversation.
Every place carries the past while facing a changing future. From heritage and adaptive reuse to urban transformation, displacement, reconstruction, and new development, we question how places can evolve without losing what makes them meaningful.
No single profession can shape the future alone. TAF connects local, regional and international professionals — architects, designers, urbanists, policymakers, cultural voices, researchers, and communities — creating dialogue where different perspectives meet and new collaborations begin.
The opening day transforms the forum from an event to attend into a space to participate.
Through interactive workshops, roundtable discussions, open conversations, and smaller collaborative formats, participants are invited to explore urgent questions shaping architecture and the built environment.
From AI and emerging technologies to professional ethics, regulation, heritage, reuse, identity, and the challenges rarely discussed openly within the profession, Day One creates space for experimentation, disagreement, shared knowledge, and unexpected connections.
The day concludes with an evening business reception hosted by the British Ambassador in Georgia, bringing together invited speakers, partners, institutions, and professionals in an informal setting for international exchange and relationship-building.
The second day brings the conversation to the Main Stage at Expo Georgia, connecting internationally recognized architects and thinkers with diverse voices from architecture and beyond.
Through keynote presentations, interdisciplinary conversations, and provocative panel discussions, the programme explores architecture in relation to some of the defining questions of our time — from transformation and technology to identity, heritage, displacement, reconstruction, spirituality, and the future of existing buildings.
Rather than presenting architecture as an isolated discipline, the Main Stage creates encounters between different perspectives, encouraging audiences not only to discover new work, but to question how and why we shape the places around us.
The final day moves beyond formal discussion and into direct connection with people, practice, and place.
Through curated B2B meetings, architects, studios, organizations, partners, and international guests will have opportunities to build professional relationships, explore future collaborations, and turn conversations initiated during the forum into tangible possibilities.
Alongside these meetings, curated city and architectural tours will offer participants a chance to experience Tbilisi through its architecture, exploring the layers of heritage, transformation, contemporary development, and urban identity that make the city itself part of the forum.
The forum concludes not with an ending, but with new relationships, ideas, and collaborations that can continue beyond TAF.
18 Sept – Rooms Hotel Tbilisi & Stamba Hotel
19 Sept – Expo Georgia
All 3 Days: 18–20 Sept, including city tours & exhibitions
All 3 Days
Valid student ID required at entry.
All 3 Days
Places are never static. They evolve through social change, technological innovation, climate challenges, shifting identities, conflict, development, and the continuous reinterpretation of heritage.
Places in Transition explores how architecture can respond to these transformations, not simply by creating something new, but by questioning, adapting, preserving, rebuilding, and reimagining what already exists.
TAF 2026 brings together architects, designers, urbanists, thinkers, institutions, and voices from beyond the profession to examine how our built environment changes and how we can shape that change responsibly.
How can we design through change while preserving identity, strengthening communities, and creating places that remain meaningful for generations to come?
Tbilisi Architecture Forum is a platform for open dialogue, shared knowledge, and meaningful collaboration across architecture and the wider fields that shape our built environment.
TAF brings together different professions, generations, institutions, cultures, and perspectives and creates a space where complex and often unspoken questions can be discussed openly, critically, and with mutual respect.
Instead of seeking for a single answer, the forum encourages us to listen, question, challenge ideas, and learn from one another, transforming disagreement into dialogue and dialogue into new possibilities for collaboration.
Through this exchange, TAF aims to strengthen professional culture, build lasting connections, and contribute to more thoughtful, inclusive, and responsible places.
Create a trusted space where different perspectives can meet, difficult questions can be addressed openly, and disagreement can become a starting point for constructive conversation.
Connect architecture with urbanism, design, technology, culture, psychology, policy, heritage, and other fields, encouraging shared knowledge and new ways of thinking.
Build meaningful relationships among local and international professionals, institutions, businesses, emerging talent, and international networks that extend beyond the forum itself.
Challenge assumptions about how we design, preserve, transform, and inhabit places by opening conversations about the most urgent questions that shape our built environment.
Turn dialogue into long-term value by strengthening professional culture, supporting emerging voices, and encouraging more responsible, inclusive, and human-centred approaches to the future of our cities and communities.
Architecture begins with people. We explore how places shape identity, belonging, behavior, memory, and everyday life, bringing the human concept back to the centre of the architectural conversation.
Every place carries the past while facing a changing future. From heritage and adaptive reuse to urban transformation, displacement, reconstruction, and new development, we question how places can evolve without losing what makes them meaningful.
No single profession can shape the future alone. TAF connects local, regional and international professionals — architects with designers, urbanists, policymakers, cultural voices, researchers, communities, and other disciplines — creating dialogue where different perspectives meet and new collaborations begin.
Co-Founder — Allies and Morrison
Bob Allies is a founding partner of Allies and Morrison, an architecture and urbanism practice based in London, with offices in Cambridge, Manchester, Dublin, Toronto and Jeddah, where it is engaged in the restoration and regeneration of the World Heritage Site. Allies and Morrison have won fifty RIBA Awards for their work. Recently completed buildings by the practice include the new London College of Fashion in the Olympic Park, shortlisted for the 2025 Stirling Prize. Current projects include new innovation districts for the universities of Oxford, Manchester and Imperial, London. Allies and Morrison is also extensively involved in housing and urban regeneration across the UK, and is the masterplanner for many of London’s major regeneration projects including Kings Cross (shortlisted for the 2024 Stirling Prize), Canada Water, Brent Cross Town, Woolwich Arsenal and the Olympic Legacy. Since 2024, Bob has held the post of Architect in Residence for Bath and North-East Somerset, and is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Bath. Bob is also Chair of the Faculty of Architecture and a member of the Council of the British School at Rome.
Co-Founder — Alcova
Partner and Head of Strategy and Innovation — Carlo Ratti Associati
Luca is a partner at CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Head of Strategy and Innovation. He works at the intersection of vision and delivery, identifying emerging trends, shaping long-term initiatives, and translating research-driven ideas into concrete, actionable projects that guide the practice’s future direction. He was also part of the core team working on the Biennale Architettura 2025. Trained as an architect and licensed engineer, Luca completed a double Master’s degree with honors in Architecture at the Politecnico di Torino and the Politecnico di Milano, with academic experience at ENSA La Villette in Paris and TU Delft. He also holds a post-degree Diploma in Innovation Management from Alta Scuola Politecnica. Luca joined CRA in 2018 and has since represented the studio in professional and academic contexts, including international conferences and public programmes.
Founder — Groupwork
Wei Yap Architects
Wei Yap, Ooi is an Australian-registered architect, Chair of the International Chapter and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects, and an Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University, Australia.
With over 25 years of international experience spanning Australia, Asia, and the Middle East, Wei Yap has led award-winning architecture, urban design, and large-scale complex mixed-use projects across diverse markets.
Based in Tbilisi, Georgia, Wei Yap Architects offers a distinctive perspective on connecting international design expertise with local delivery capability. Through direct access to a global network of leading architecture, urban design, landscape, engineering, and specialist consultancy firms, his practice helps clients deliver commercially successful, contextually responsive, and technically rigorous projects.
Wei Yap Architects is the first foreign architecture firm to establish a permanent presence in Georgia, offering full Architect-of-Record (AOR) capability across architecture, interiors, and masterplanning.
Land srl
Dr. Michael Gräf is Managing Partner of LAND Consulting Austria in Vienna and Lecturer at BOKU University Vienna. His work focuses on the strategic development of Green Infrastructure and Nature-Positive Cities. As a certified mediator, he specializes in collaborative planning and stakeholder engagement. He advocates for a human- and nature-centered approach, creating landscapes that strengthen ecological resilience while improving people's quality of life.
Founding Director, COAC ARB — Myaa
PhD / Doctoral candidate — University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Amber is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests include anthropological approaches to built environment, material culture, affect, and narrative as embodied phenomena. Methods of photovoice and sonic ethnography are often centrally figured in her work. Amber is currently a PhD candidate within the Faculty of Design and Society at University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Her research project examines hydro-social narratives of water architecture.
Partner — OMA
Kaveh Dabiri is a Partner at OMA. Kaveh joined OMA in 2009, and he has since contributed to and led a broad range of architecture, masterplanning, preservation and exhibition projects in the Middle East and Europe. His recent work includes the design of Concrete, an exhibition and events venue at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai; the Al Daayan Hospital of the Future prototype; the scenography of the 2023 and 2025 editions of the Islamic Arts Biennale at the Hajj Terminal in Jeddah; and the expansion plan for JAX, a cultural district at an industrial heritage site in Riyadh. Born and raised in Tehran, Kaveh studied and practiced architecture there before moving to the Netherlands in 2007 to study Urbanism at TU Delft.
Lead research coordinator — Library For Architecture (LFA)
Meri Pepanyan is an architect and researcher with a Master’s in Architecture and Urban Design from the Polytechnic University of Milan (2023). She completed her Bachelor’s studies at the National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia. Since 2024, she has been a research coordinator at the Library for Architecture (LFA), where she contributes to the development of the Live Archive platform, a growing repository of urban and architectural research-based works on Armenia. She also participates in curatorial and research projects, including the Armenia Room of the “Countryside: A Place to Live, Not Leave” exhibition by AMO/OMA in Doha. Meri also serves as a student mentor for “From Data to Change,” a project by HYPHEN4, an architectural and urban studio. The project addresses gaps in data from rural areas of Armenia and engages university students and community members in spatial data collection and rural mapping.
Associate Director — A IS FOR ARCHITECTURE
Jack is Associate Director of A IS FOR ARCHITECTURE. He graduated as an award-winning student from the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow in 2015 with a B.Arch (Hons) and Dip.Arch. Between 2015 and 2021, he worked at ACME on a variety of projects, most notably the ‘REWE Green Building’—an integrated supermarket and aquaponic urban farm in Germany—a timber-structure office building in London, and various projects as part of the Folkestone Seafront Masterplan. Before joining ACME, Jack worked at Sauerbruch Hutton Architects in Berlin, contributing to a wide range of cultural, residential, and commercial projects. In 2020, Jack was a sessional tutor for the BArch at Canterbury School of Architecture, UCA, and he is an ambassador for the Architects Benevolent Society. Beyond academia and professional practice, he has led architecture construction workshops in Cadiz and Helsinki with the European Architecture Students Assembly (EASA). He is also a keen architectural traveler, having undertaken a research trip entitled ‘Silk Steppes’ to the Silk Road in Central Asia and Mongolia. Jack is a creative and energetic designer, involved in all of A IS FOR ARCHITECTURE’s projects, while also leading international business development for the practice.
Project Leader / Project Manager /Design Lead — Bofill Taller de Arquitectura
Pablo joined the Taller in 2020 and has since contributed to projects across the Middle East and Iberian Peninsula, focusing on the cultural, hospitality, and residential sectors. More recently, his projects in Benin, Georgia and the broader Balkans and Caucasus region have furthered his exploration of materiality in both building envelopes and interiors. Pablo embraces the classical orders and proportions as the foundation of his design approach, aiming to advance the Taller’s legacy through active research and development.
Founder — Tbilisi Architecture Forum
Natia didn’t study architecture. But she has always been fascinated by it as one of the most human-centred forms of aesthetic expression.
And she knows a thing or two about bringing ideas to life.
With 12+ years of experience in creative campaigns, brand strategy and marketing, Natia has worked across major international campaigns and led teams behind award-winning work.
Her creative journey includes 100+ international awards, including recognition at Cannes Lions, Eurobest, London International Awards, Epica, Golden Drum, ADCE and many more. Besides her passion for architecture She is running international Tech and Design Festivals at Touch Platform and CMO at Cityzen.
But for Natia, Tbilisi Architecture Forum is about something more personal: bringing people, ideas and disciplines together around the future of our built environment.
Landscape Architect, Associate Professor. — BSAC and Landmark Studio
Landscape Architect, Associate Professor at Caucasus University, and Co-Founder of BSAC and Landmark Studio.
With 15+ years of experience, Gvantsa has worked across landscape architecture, sustainable planning and public realm projects in the South Caucasus and internationally. 🌿
She’s passionate about connecting academia, practice and industry — and creating spaces for people to exchange ideas and collaborate.
As Co-Founder and Co-Organizer of the Tbilisi Architecture Forum, Gvantsa is helping bring together architects, landscape architects, urban planners and industry leaders to spark dialogue, innovation and new ideas for the built environment.
Different perspectives. One shared space to connect.
Co-organizer — Tbilisi Architecture Forum / Co-Founder of the Black Sea Architecture Community (BSAC).
Mariam is the Dean of the School of Architecture and Design at Caucasus University, a RIBA Visiting Board Member, and a member of the RIBA Europe Team.
Her work connects education, practice and research, with a strong focus on architectural education, international collaboration and knowledge exchange.
For Mariam, it’s all about one thing: bringing people and ideas together to strengthen the architecture community.
And that’s exactly what she brings to the Forum.
xyz
