“Firdus: The Memory of a Place” is a memory-book about the Firdusi street, the last vernacular district in the center of Yerevan. This is a memory-book where architectural peculiarities, family histories, and multiethnic past is revealed through deep research of oral stories, archival and visual materials.
Authors from different fields have studied the different forms of memory functioning in this small fragment of the city center of Yerevan. In addition to research articles, the book includes stories of local residents and family photo archives.
In the post-Soviet period, an Armenian-Iranian bazaar was formed on Firdusi Street, which had later grown into the neighborhood. Over the decades, almost all the houses and families here had acquired a dual identity: external (trade) and internal (residential).
Firdus is the last district of the city center having preserved vernacular and folk architecture, but this automatically creates a conflict with the city gentrification policy. The neighborhood is on the verge of vanishing. Without the status of a cultural monument, yet saturated with multicultural memory, the neighborhood is gradually dissolving in time.
Firdus: The Memory of a Place — collective monograph ed. by T. Amiryan, S. Kalantaryan — CSN lab, Yerevan,2019.
ISBN 978-9939-1-0934-3