Tbilisi’s city government has approved the demolition of a concert hall that cost the public roughly forty million euros to build and never once opened its doors. The Italian firm that designed it, Studio Fuksas, says it spent a year trying to reach city officials and the building’s owners before the permit came through, and nobody wrote back.
The fight over the tube shaped Rike Tubes has drawn architecture critics worldwide into an argument about heritage and waste. Less visible is who actually owns the site today: a chain of companies that has changed hands three times since 2022, one of them allegedly directed on behalf of a sitting Georgian Dream member of parliament, for a fraction of what the public originally spent.
A Year of Letters Nobody Answered
Studio Fuksas, the Rome based practice run by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, went public this month after Tbilisi’s Architecture Service signed off on tearing down its Music Theatre and Exhibition Hall, the twin steel tubes known locally as the Rike Tubes. In a statement sent to the architecture publication Dezeen, the studio said it had made repeated attempts to contact Tbilisi officials and the building’s owners over the past year, but had received no response.
“Over the past months, the studio repeatedly offered to work with the Georgian authorities to explore alternative solutions that could preserve and repurpose this iconic building, avoiding what we believe would be a premature and irreversible demolition,” the studio said. It added that the proposals “received no response.”
The firm called the situation unprecedented. “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,” it said, adding that “neither the public authorities nor any other stakeholder has engaged with the studio despite our repeated willingness to cooperate.”
Studio Fuksas argued the building could still become “a concert hall for classical music and a major venue for contemporary art,” and said Tbilisi “still has the opportunity to transform an unfinished project into a symbol of regeneration, innovation and international openness.” It urged that the chance not be wasted. The practice, known for a planned vertical park on Monaco’s waterfront, framed the loss in blunt terms too: demolishing an “internationally recognized and award winning work of architecture would represent a significant cultural setback.”
Fifteen Years Behind a Fence
The building’s story began under a very different Georgian government. President Mikheil Saakashvili’s administration commissioned the tubes as part of a broader push, launched after the 2003 Rose Revolution, to rebrand Tbilisi with landmarks by internationally known architects. The concert hall was meant to anchor that image alongside foreign investment and rapid construction.
- 2010: Construction begins in Rike Park on the Kura riverbank, with Studio Fuksas spending roughly six years on the design and build.
- 2012: The tubes are largely finished, but Georgian Dream’s election win that year halts the launch, and the venue never opens.
- 2020: Mayor Kakha Kaladze says no investor will take the site even at a symbolic price, since finishing it would need another GEL 20 million (about $8 million), according to the outlet OC Media.
- 2022: After six failed sale attempts, the state auctions the property to Global Victory Trust, a company owned by businessman David Khidasheli, for GEL 10.02 million (about $4 million).
- 2025: A teenager dies accidentally inside the abandoned complex, drawing fresh scrutiny; Rike Dom LLC takes over the property; a government decree ties the site’s future to a hotel project.
- 2026: Tbilisi’s Architecture Service issues a demolition permit with a December 25 deadline, and Studio Fuksas goes public with its objection.
By the time of the 2022 sale, the fact checking outlet FactCheck.ge estimated that GEL 75 million (about $29 million) had already gone into the project, according to OC Media’s reporting. The original asking price at auction had been reduced from GEL 95 million (about $36 million) after buyers stayed away for years.
Who Actually Owns the Rike Tubes Now?
Ownership of the Rike Tubes has moved through at least three companies since 2022, and a Georgian watchdog says the paperwork does not fully explain who benefits. Global Victory Trust bought the site at auction, then transferred it to a new entity, Rike Dom LLC, which a civil society group says is directed on behalf of a sitting member of parliament. The company that ultimately controlled Rike Dom sold it in 2025 for a sum far below the property’s public construction cost.
David Khidasheli, the businessman behind Global Victory Trust, has been described in Georgian reporting as close to Georgian Dream founder and honorary chairman Bidzina Ivanishvili. Under the 2022 auction terms, Khidasheli’s company was required to invest at least GEL 20 million within three years and build a museum devoted to wine, digital art and technology. That never happened. Instead, the property moved again.
- What we know: Rike Dom LLC is the entity named on the 2026 demolition permit, and it acquired the site from Global Victory Trust in 2025. Its former owner, a company called N.G.B., sold Rike Dom to the developer Maqro Property for $2.84 million later that year.
- What’s unconfirmed: Irakli Abesadze, a lawyer who heads the NGO Civil Participation Center, has alleged that Rike Dom’s director, Mikheil Tkeshelashvili, an employee of Georgia’s Business Ombudsman office, manages shares on behalf of Georgian Dream MP Giorgi Barvenashvili, and that N.G.B.’s shareholder is a manager at the development firm Archi Group. Archi Group has denied any connection to the purchase.
Maqro Property, also known as Maqro Development, is a real, established Tbilisi developer, not a shell. A GlobeNewswire announcement describes it as the developer behind Green Budapest and Green Diamond, two of Tbilisi’s larger residential projects. Whatever the truth of the ownership claims further up the chain, the company now poised to profit from the Rike Park site has a long record of finishing what it starts.
The Money Trail Behind the Rike Tubes
Set the numbers side by side and the gap is hard to miss. Tbilisi’s municipal budget covered construction; a fraction of that amount changed hands at resale; and the company that now controls the site was itself bought and sold for less than three million dollars.
| Year | Transaction | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 to 2012 | Construction, paid from Tbilisi’s municipal budget | About €40 million (about $43 million) |
| 2022 | State auction to Global Victory Trust, after six failed attempts | GEL 10.02 million (about $4 million) |
| 2025 | Revised investment floor tied to the hotel decree | At least GEL 44 million pledged |
| 2025 | N.G.B. sells Rike Dom LLC to Maqro Property | $2.84 million |
Run the arithmetic and the 2022 buyer paid under a tenth of what the public spent building the place. Studio Fuksas made exactly this point in its statement, arguing that demolition would pile new public costs onto old ones. “The building was constructed with public funds, and its demolition would require additional public expenditure instead of evaluating the potential for its reuse and regeneration,” the studio said.
Kaladze Calls It a Garbage Dump
Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, who is also Georgian Dream’s secretary general and a former defender for AC Milan and Georgia’s national team, has defended the demolition in blunt language. “This is private property,” he said, describing the tubes as being in poor condition for years and “completely non functional.” He added that the building “did not fit into the existing space in any way,” and said the private owner made the call to tear it down.
Kaladze has said the decision followed a positive review from Tbilisi’s Cultural Heritage Protection Council, which cleared the demolition project on April 16, 2026, according to the Georgian outlet Interpressnews. The Architecture Service then issued the formal order, number 7977401, on June 25, 2026, and separately agreed the demolition project for the site in its published response. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze reportedly said in May 2025 that the building’s appearance did the capital no favors, according to ArchDaily.
Not everyone in Tbilisi accepts that framing. Abesadze, the civil society lawyer, called the sequence of events something else entirely.
This is large scale corruption.
Abesadze wrote on social media that the arrangement effectively handed one of Georgia’s best investment plots to insiders at almost no cost, and predicted the site would end up hosting a hotel, a casino and restaurants rather than any cultural use. City Hall has confirmed only that a hotel is envisioned under the 2025 decree; no casino or restaurant plan has been officially announced.
Rike Park’s Other Unfinished Dreams
The Rike Tubes were never Studio Fuksas’s only Georgian commission. The practice also designed Tbilisi’s Public Service Hall nearby, completed around the same period and still open to the public today, a detail that undercuts any suggestion the firm’s work in Georgia has simply failed to age well. The concert hall’s fate looks more like a casualty of politics than of design.
ArchDaily has traced the demolition to the same 2012 handover of power that stalled the concert hall’s opening in the first place, noting the government’s earlier ambition to pair landmark architecture with privatization and foreign investment. Abesadze has raised similar alarms elsewhere. He has separately criticized a plan to relocate Tbilisi’s ministry buildings to a new site, arguing it amounts to rapid privatization of some of the capital’s most valuable public real estate. The Rike Tubes, in his telling, are not an isolated case.
No Blueprint, but a Deadline
As things stand, Rike Dom LLC has until December 25, 2026 to finish tearing the structure down. Kaladze has said repeatedly that no design has been filed for whatever comes next. “There has been no proposal, no project yet,” he told reporters, adding that the public would be informed once one is submitted.
Studio Fuksas’s request for a pause has gone unanswered so far, and the demolition permit remains in force. Barring a change of course, the tubes that once symbolized Tbilisi’s bid for a Western facing skyline will come down before a replacement design exists.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Does “Rike Tubes” Actually Refer To?
It is the informal Tbilisi nickname for the Music Theatre and Exhibition Hall in Rike Park, also called the Rike Docks or Rike Jugs in different Georgian press translations. The twin glass, concrete and stainless steel volumes were designed to resemble a periscope, framing views of Old Tbilisi across the Kura River.
Has Studio Fuksas Designed Anything Else in Tbilisi?
Yes. The practice also designed Tbilisi’s Public Service Hall, completed around the same period as the concert hall, which opened and remains in active public use today, unlike its unfinished neighbor.
What Will Replace the Rike Tubes?
No design has been filed publicly. The site’s new owner, Maqro Property, has previously built and operated Accor managed hotels in Tbilisi, including the Mercure Tbilisi Old Town and Ibis Styles City Center, giving it a track record in hospitality even though no brand has been announced for Rike Park.
Can Tbilisi Residents Still Influence What Happens Next?
Not through any announced formal process. Mayor Kakha Kaladze has said City Hall will review a new proposal once the owner submits one, but no public consultation period has been scheduled ahead of that filing.
