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MASSA_ ABOUT US

MASSA_ Architecture + Planning Workshop is a territorial laboratory operating at the intersection of spatial design, ecological science, and historical memory. Headquartered in Tbilisi, we redefine the role of the architect in the post-Soviet context, moving beyond the production of isolated objects to establish a "Teaching Practice", a model where the professional studio acts as the operational arm of the university research lab.

Under the direction of Vakhtang Kasreli, our work rejects the false dichotomy between "preservation" and "innovation." Instead, we operate as the industry anchor of the Institute of Advanced Architecture and Landscape (IAAL), a Quadruple Helix consortium that unites elite European research centers with the complex realities of the Caucasus.

Our practice spans the full vertical and historical gradient of Georgia. We work simultaneously in the high mountain systems of Kazbegi, designing metabolic shelters for the Anthropocene; along the Black Sea coast, engineering resilience for the Blue Economy; and in the historical landscapes of Telavi and Eastern Georgia, where we excavate the layers of viticultural and urban memory. We view cultural heritage monuments not as frozen artifacts, but as living systems that must be metabolically integrated into a new future. For MASSA_ architecture is an act of Radical Regionalism, a methodology that heals the land, empowers the community, and safeguards the ancient spirit of the place while deploying the technologies of tomorrow.

MASSA_ MISSION

Our mission is to operationalize Radical Regionalism.

We refuse the "universalizing" tendency of global modernism and the "sentimental" tendency of faux-historic pastiche. Our Radical Regionalism is scientific, metabolic, and deeply contextual. It seeks to solve global challenges climate change, energy transition, and cultural erasure, through hyper-local interventions.

MASSA_ executes this mission through four distinct "Living Labs" that serve as our primary sites of investigation and construction:

1. The Alpine Lab (Kazbegi): Resilience in the Sublime.
   We pioneer Metabolic Architecture in extreme environments. Our mission is to design autonomous, off-grid structures (like the "Glacial Sentinel") that generate their own energy and process their own waste, proving that high-performance design can coexist with the fragile ecosystems of the High Caucasus.

2. The Blue Lab (Grigoleti / Black Sea): The Soft Edge.
   We champion the Blue Economy. Our mission is to navigate the friction between transnational infrastructure (the Black Sea Submarine Cable) and coastal ecology. We use "soft engineering" and marine spatial planning to design coastal defenses that protect biodiversity while enabling economic connectivity.

3. The Urban Lab (Tbilisi): The Sponge City.
   We practice Regenerative Urbanism. Our mission is to retrofit the dense, post-Soviet urban fabric of Tbilisi. By treating spaces like Vera Park as hydrological machines rather than static scenery, we manage flood risks and mitigate heat islands, using Digital Twin technology to validate our ecological performance.

4. The Cultural Landscape Lab (Telavi): The Living Palimpsest.
   We practice Deep Mapping and Adaptive Reuse. Located in the heart of Georgia’s wine region, this lab investigates historical cities and settlements. Our mission is to protect the "genetic code" of Caucasian urbanism. We do not just restore stones; we design interventions that revitalize the cultural functions of historical settlements, ensuring that heritage monuments remain vital, productive parts of the contemporary landscape rather than museum pieces.

MASSA_ VISION / GOAL

Our vision is to establish MASSA_ as the primary agent of Territorial and Cultural Resilience in the wider Caucasus region.

As the Global Gateway strategy transforms Georgia into a critical corridor between Europe and Asia, the pressure on our physical and cultural landscapes will intensify. Our goal is to ensure that this development is not extractive, but regenerative. We envision a practice that serves as the "Guardian of the Corridor", setting the standard for how global infrastructure interacts with local soil and history.

We strive to produce a canonical body of built work that bridges the gap between ecological urgency and cultural continuity. By utilizing our labs to test solutions for everything from glacial retreat to the revitalization of medieval urban fabrics, we aim to export a new model of "Georgian Regionalism" to the world.