Tbilisi Demolishes the Rike Concert Hall for a Hotel

Tbilisi has begun tearing down the unused Rike Concert Hall, a €40 million Studio Fuksas project that never hosted a show. Stainless-steel panels came off the twin tubes in late July, and the owner must clear the Rike Park site by 25 December 2026.

The wrecking work follows a May 6, 2025 government decree that rewrote a 2022 privatisation deal, swapping a promised museum for a hotel that may include demolition. The architects were not asked. Pieces of the hall are already being offered as scrap.

The May Decree That Unlocked Demolition

Tbilisi City Hall’s Architecture Service issued a dismantling permit on 13 July 2026, after the municipal Cultural Heritage Protection Council signed off. Mayor Kakha Kaladze said the private owner had chosen to take the building down and that the architecture office had found the paperwork in order.

Kaladze called the hall a “garbage dump” in “very bad condition,” and said it was “functionally unjustified.” In a longer remark he put the choice on the owner, not on a city redesign of taste.

This is private property. The building has been in poor condition for years and was completely non-functional. The visual appearance of the building is a matter of taste, but it did not fit into the existing space in any way. The private owner decided to dismantle it and implement a new project.

Kakha Kaladze, Mayor of Tbilisi

The legal turn had come a year earlier. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze signed the May 6, 2025 decree that amended the 10 May 2022 sale contract between the National Agency of State Property and the then buyer. The 2022 auction had required a wine, digital-art and technology museum plus exhibition and conference rooms, backed by at least GEL 20 million of investment inside 36 months. That clock ran out in May 2025.

WHAT THE 2025 DECREE CHANGED

• The use: Real-estate development may include a hotel and is not limited to one.
• The works: Construction and demolition are both allowed under the new wording.
• The spend: The holder must put 44,000,000 GEL into the site, not counting VAT.
• The date: The project has to be carried out by 5 May 2030.
• The hotel duty: Once built, the hotel must be kept in operation for at least 10 years.

Kobakhidze had already judged the look. In May 2025 he said, “This ugliness does not befit our beautiful capital.” Kaladze later said no new design had been filed and that City Hall would wait for a project after the tubes came down, because the riverside plot is “a very important place.”

Who Owns the Rike Tubes Now

The registered owner that sought the permit is Rike Dom. Georgian property records list the plot at 14,591 square metres. The company sits inside a short chain of private holders that began when the state finally sold a building it could not give away.

The National Agency of State Property sold the complex in 2022 on the seventh try, after six failed auctions, for 10,020,000 GEL. Global Victory Trust, a vehicle tied to businessman David Khidasheli, took the keys and the museum duty. Khidasheli later said he could not draw other investors and sold on as the 36-month window closed.

Rike Dom, then held by N.G.B. and businessman Tornike Kopaliani, took the property in April and May 2025. On 3 June 2025, N.G.B. transferred its 100 percent stake in Rike Dom to Maqro Property for $2.84 million. Maqro also assumed GEL 10.6 million of Rike Dom’s debts to Global Victory Trust, payable in three instalments.

Maqro Property was registered in April 2025. Its directors are Mikheil Tkeshelashvili and Turkish citizen Ömer Kiracı. The shares sit with Maqro Construction, a 2013 company wholly owned by Emin Uçar, a Turkish national who also holds Georgian citizenship. The parent did not publish a hotel scheme when the cladding started to come off.

HOW THE PLOT CHANGED HANDS

Public money built the hall. Private paper is taking it apart. The 2022 auction price was a small slice of the €40 million on the design sheet, and the 2025 share sale was smaller still, even after the assumed debt is counted.

Two Tubes, 566 Seats, and No Opening Night

Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas designed the complex for the Tbilisi Development Fund as two soft volumes joined at a retaining wall in Rike Park, on the Mtkvari River facing Old Tbilisi. The north volume holds a musical theatre of 566 seats, a foyer, machinery rooms and stores. The other is a 2,000 square metre exhibition hall entered by a ramp from street level. The theatre lifts off the ground so the foyer and cafeteria look at the water. The studio called that view a periscope to the city.

The official sheet lists 9,200 square metres of floor space on a 10,000 square metre site, a reinforced-concrete and steel frame, stainless-steel panels, and double glazing. Permasteelisa was the general contractor. Concept design is dated 5 July 2010, the tender 20 May 2011. The structure was largely up by 2012. The interior fit-out never happened.

THE HALL ON PAPER

• Listed cost: €40 million, on Studio Fuksas’s project sheet.
• Floor area: 9,200 square metres, with a 2,000 square metre exhibition hall.
• Theatre: 566 seats in the northern tube, which never sold a ticket.
• Skin: Square stainless-steel panels over concrete and steel.

Mikheil Saakashvili’s government had hired foreign architects to restyle the capital after the Rose Revolution, and this hall sat in that programme. Georgian Dream won the 2012 parliamentary election the same year the tubes were all but finished. Work stopped. For 14 years the building sat closed beside the river, used at times as informal parking, and never opened to the public.

The Hall Next Door Still Works

The same studio’s still-open Tbilisi Public Service Hall stands on Sanapiro Street, also on the Mtkvari, and still handles civic business under its leaf-like roofs. Fuksas lists that building at 42,000 square metres, designed between 2010 and 2012 for the civil and national registry agencies, with the National Bank of Georgia and the energy ministry in the same complex. It opened. People use it.

The glass Bridge of Peace still crosses the river at Rike Park. Tourists were still photographing the tubes in August 2026 while crews peeled the panels. The concert hall is the Saakashvili-era piece on this bank that never got a second act, and it is the one being removed.

Architects who actually walked the unfinished halls in the mid-2010s have described a shell that was already poorly put together and cut off from the park, a building designed with little feel for local labour or money. That reading sits beside the later claim that the empty tubes were an icon. Both can be true of the same unused object: costly, distinctive, and never made to work.

Studio Fuksas Was Left Out of the Talks

Studio Fuksas spent months trying to reach City Hall and the owners with reuse ideas and said it got no reply. In the studio’s July press statement the practice called the plan a premature and irreversible demolition and a significant cultural setback, and noted that the hall was built with public funds. It argued that tearing the building down would cost more public money instead of testing whether the shell could be used again.

In more than sixty years of professional practice, this is the first time Studio Fuksas has faced the demolition of one of its projects without ever being invited to discuss possible alternatives. Neither the public authorities nor any other stakeholder has engaged with the Studio despite our repeated willingness to cooperate.

Studio Fuksas, July 2026 statement

Massimiliano Fuksas later said the firm had been given very little information and learned of the demolition from a flood of messages. “You cannot cancel buildings, you cannot cancel memories,” he said. Doriana Fuksas added, “You cannot cancel history.” He also asked why a city would spend money to build something only to spend money to destroy it. The studio said it had received thousands of emails calling the tubes Tbilisi’s most iconic building.

WHERE EXPERTS DISAGREE

• City Hall and the prime minister: Kaladze calls the hall non-functional and a dump; Kobakhidze calls it ugliness that does not suit the capital.
• Studio Fuksas: The tubes are an award-winning public asset that could still hold classical music and contemporary art if given a new programme.
• The carbon reading: Philip Oldfield, professor of architecture and head of the School of Built Environment at UNSW Sydney, called the demolition “an obscene waste of materials, emissions and money.”

Oldfield’s line is the objection that travelled farthest among architects: the steel and glass already paid for, and already emitting, are being thrown away after 14 dark years. Fuksas wanted a reuse study. The owner wanted a clear plot under the 2025 hotel terms. Those are different jobs.

Iron From the Tubes Goes on Sale

TV footage in late July showed square stainless-steel panels coming off and the frame underneath. By September, posts in a Georgian construction-supply group advertised scrap from the site. A subcontractor who said he was stripping materials at Rike Park told a Georgian television channel the aluminium and glass had already been sold, leaving the iron. He asked $720 a tonne and said the metal was not welded. One listing claimed 2,000 tonnes. The posts were taken down after the broadcast.

FROM DRAWING TO SCRAP

1. 5 July 2010: Studio Fuksas completes the concept design for a music theatre and exhibition hall in Rike Park.
2. 20 May 2011: The tender phase opens; construction follows under the Tbilisi Development Fund.
3. 2012: The structure is largely complete; Georgian Dream takes power and the fit-out stops.
4. 2022: The state sells the complex for 10,020,000 GEL after six failed auctions, with a museum duty attached.
5. 6 May 2025: A government decree allows a hotel, demolition, and 44,000,000 GEL of new investment by 5 May 2030.
6. 3 June 2025: Maqro Property takes 100 percent of Rike Dom for $2.84 million plus assumed debt.
7. 13 July 2026: City Hall issues the demolition permit, with a 25 December 2026 clear-by date.
8. Late July 2026: Crews start removing the stainless-steel cladding.
9. September 2026: Scrap iron from the tubes is advertised for sale.

Rike Dom still has until 25 December 2026 to finish the takedown. The 2025 decree still requires a developed site, which may be a hotel, by 5 May 2030. Kaladze said the public will see a scheme when one is filed. Until then the riverside job is simpler than a concert: pull the tubes apart, sell what will sell, and leave a plot where a 566-seat hall never played a note.