Architectural Development of Baku City

Kamala YUSIFOVA

Abstract: The turbulent period of the oil storm left a noticeable mark on the appearance of the capital of Azerbaijan. The architecture of that era was decidedly individual and personified, as it was conceived, designed and built by brilliant and extraordinary personalities.

Baku architecture of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century is undoubtedly one of the most surprising and unusual events of the first oil boom (1872-1920). The crazy capital of the newly minted oil bourgeoisie, multiplied by the eastern expanse of the soul and the desire to show off, has become a monument of its time, preserving its history, destiny, and sometimes even its appearance in the stones of the houses. At present, the city of Baku can be compared with many famous cities of the world in terms of its architectural appearance.

The formation of the architectural appearance of the city takes place over decades and even centuries. Building trends and architectural decisions of a certain historical period can influence the planning structure and create a uniform style of the city. The article examines the regularities of the gradual development of the planning structure of the city of Baku. The main stages of its development, starting from the initial fortification structure and ending with its transformation into the main center and most important city of Azerbaijan, have been determined.

The article shows the structural analysis of the architectural development of Baku city.

Keywords: city, architecture, development, construction, project.

The modern city is a complex or­ga­nism that combines architectural, planning, engineering, social and eco­nomic principles. For the proper or­ganization of the activities of this or­ganism, city planning decisions should be based on the zoning of its territory according to urban planning types.

The planning structure of the city reflects the relationship of industrial, transport, residential and other zones. A number of factors, including natural conditions, influence its formation. In the case of Baku, the features of the planning structure and architectural appearance of the city are largely de­termined by the unique topography of the city, which has a natural amphi­theater shape near the Caspian Sea and a landscape in the form of three terraces. In the west and east, the relief ends with the peninsular frames of the bay. Altogether they represent an or­ganic composition combined with the natural environment.

The architectural and planning structure of any city must correspond to the dynamics of its development and each new stage of its large-scale construction. Improving planning structures is one of the most urgent problems of the theory of architecture and urban planning.

To assess the current state of the city’s planning structure and determine what stage of development it is at to­day, it is necessary to turn to history and study the transformation of the planning structure throughout the en­tire period of Baku’s development. Numerous mosques and minarets, madrasahs and caravanserais, hamams and ovdans allow us to recreate the general picture of the city’s develop­ment and the evolution of its architec­tural appearance.

Baku was the center of the Baku Khanate until 1806, and after its an­nexation to Tsarist Russia, no special urban planning was observed here. The urban structure of the Old City was typical of feudal Eastern cities: they are characterized by houses with empty facades facing the street and high portal entrances.

The skill of the architects of that time, including the skilful execution of complex drawings and the ability to touch the constructions of national traditions, which attracted the Europe­an architectural school, created condi­tions for the creation of a number of unique buildings in our capital. The invited architects skillfully mixed styles, combined details and elements. As a result, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the original architectural tradition of Baku was formed. This determined the fea­tures of the architectural appearance of the city¹.

The construction of a large number of mansions by order of wealthy oil industrialists’ dates back to this period. These buildings were an example of the practical application of progres­sive construction techniques in unity with national architectural traditions. Using their example, we strangely see that local balconies and “glass veran­das” – glazed verandas – were in the Baroque, Classicism or Modern style. For example, in 1890, the German-born architect John Edel began the construction of two houses for Musa Naghiyev on Birzhevaya Street (now U. Hajibeyov).

The former Winter Club of the Baku Public Assembly was located in one of these houses. The architecture of the building, which is considered the best in the city, was inspired by the works of Italian architects. It is worth saying a few words about the favorable corner location of these houses in the urban structure, which made it possible to have several main facades at the same time. Thus, the construction of Shamsi Asadullayev’s palace-style residential building at Gogol Street, 9 (1896) overlooks three streets at once.

Due to its impressive size and monumental facades, the building occupied an important place in the urban planning structure of the histor­ical center of Baku. The residential building located at Krasnovodskaya Street, 7 (now Samad Vurgun Street) and built in 1898 also occupied one of the main places in the architectural and planning structure.

The monumental facades in classi­cal forms, the jewelry processing of stone details, and the masterful mas­tery of the art of maintaining propor­tions and using elements of the order system made this building one of the important objects of the architectural heritage of that time.

Religious buildings also played an important architectural role in the formation of the city’s planning struc­ture. As an example, the Ashumov Mosque or the Imam Huseyn Mosque can be cited.

Although the formation of the ar­chitectural and planning structure of Baku occurred spasmodically, in gen­eral, the city was steadily rising, grad­ually turning into a large territorial entity.

An important point in this devel­opment was the preservation of the stylistic unity of the center due to the commonality of stylistic solutions, architectural techniques and building materials used. This was explained, first of all, by the passion of most pri­vate customers for European architec­ture and the simultaneous use of sev­eral stylistic elements in the facade decoration of buildings.

In general, the development of this period reflects the building traditions of the Absheron settlements of that time. Baku’s neighborhoods usually consisted of one or two-story houses and a small community center with a mosque. The first change in the fate of the city occurred after the 1859 earth­quake in Shamakhi and the transfor­mation of Baku into a provincial city.

The planning situation at that time was quite complicated. The huge space of the Baku Bay consisted of three administrative-territorial parts that were not independent of each oth­er: the central part of the city, the southern part – the Bayil district, and the eastern part – the industrial zone known as the Black City.

A few decades later, in 1898, the General Plan of Nikolai von der Nonne was adopted. During its devel­opment, the neighborhoods located north of the fortress formed a clear rectangular grid.

Significant changes in the planning structure of the city occurred at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The catalyst for this process was the oil boom. It was dur­ing this period that the process of forming a center took place, which significantly differed from the periph­ery in the style and type of buildings. Gradually, the central district of Baku approached the Old City with dense neighborhoods consisting of two- and three-story buildings, completely oc­cupying the esplanade.

The construction of Baku Boule­vard, a kind of sea facade of the city, which became a favorite vacation spot for Baku residents in the middle of the 20th century, was an important city-forming element and a real decoration of the city. The boulevard as a whole helped to significantly improve the architectural, planning and aesthetic design of both the coastal and central parts of the city.

It led to the creation of the Bayil residential area. After the establish­ment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, one of the most urgent tasks was housing construction. Because as a result of the industrial development of the city, the housing stock did not meet the needs of the growing popula­tion.

Since 1923, workers’ settlements have been built in the areas surround­ing Baku. The development of the city continued during the Soviet period, and in fairness, it should be noted that it was during this period that great constructive work was carried out to preserve the heritage of Baku archi­tects at the turn of the 19th-20th cen­turies. This has also become an active element of modern Baku architecture².

Architects A.P. Ivanitsky and L. Ilyin played a major role in the for­mation of the planning structure of Baku of that period. It was they who laid the foundation for its formation on the basis of natural and climatic factors and people’s living traditions in Absheron.

To this day, projects have been considered the most favorable in terms of taking into account natural and climatic conditions, providing comfortable conditions in apartments, and providing development with ser­vice facilities. The main trends affect­ing the architectural and planning structure of the city during this period include mass industrialization, the growth of workers’ settlements, the creation of microdistricts on the out­skirts of the city, and the construction of large-scale residential buildings in connection with landscaping.

During this period, more gardens, parks, and squares appeared in the capital. Naturally, landscaping led to a significant improvement in the city’s landscape. By 1965, the total area of ​​green spaces in Baku and its surround­ing districts was already about 2.2 thousand hectares. In subsequent years, construction work was mainly associated with the creation of new types of buildings with panel facades, that is, reinforced concrete structures, based on new social requirements³.

At the end of the 20th century, natural relief factors particularly influ­enced housing construction. The larg­est areas of the amphitheater are Ahmadli, Narimanov, and Dagly districts. The outer part of the amphi­theater is covered by Badamdar, Bilajari, Sabunchu, and other residen­tial areas.

In general, experimental design was preferred in these years. Depend­ing on the characteristics of the relief, which differed in various remote are­as, various planning methods were used. For example, in the eastern resi­dential area, unlike the northwestern one, a rectangular plan was used in­stead of a free plan. Active construc­tion was carried out on the eastern and western slopes of the Baku amphi­theater.

Ancient Baku was founded on a hill near the sea. Starting from the 12th century, the city began to be sur­rounded by fortress walls along its entire perimeter, and these walls ex­tended towards the sea, forming a harbor. This area, which is approxi­mately 22 hectares, limited by the for­tress walls of the ancient city, is now called the “Icheri Shahar”. “Icheri Shahar” is a rare monument of urban art included in the UNESCO list of protected monuments⁴.

The oldest “developed” part of the Baku fortress was its coastal area. The oldest monuments – the minaret of the Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr mosque (“Sınig-qala”, 1078) and the “Gız Qalası” fortress – have been preserved here.

In addition to the Icheri Shahar, a significant part of Baku residents lived in the suburbs, united in the “Bayır Shahar”, which included some small settlements. In connection with the change in the socio-political structure of Baku and the increase in its eco­nomic importance, these settlements were united into a single urban plan­ning organism – “forshdadt” starting from the second half of the 19th cen­tury.

The transfer of the regional center to Baku in 1859, as well as the rapidly developing oil industry, led to the rap­id development of the city. Baku quickly became one of the largest cit­ies in Russia⁵.

The city, which at the beginning of the 19th century was kept within the fortress walls on an area of ​​only 22 hectares, began to occupy more and more vacant areas of the suburbs. In 1806-1881, the area of ​​the city grew to 1.3 thousand hectares. The growth of the city’s population was equally rapid, surpassing all the largest cities in Europe and even New York in terms of growth rates⁶.

During this period, the develop­ment of the first complex master plans of the city of Baku began. For this, starting from 1859, civil engineers and architects were hired. Among them, the work of Gasim bey Hajibababeyov, whose countless pro­jects led to the improvement of vari­ous parts of the city, holds a special place. His student Gafar Izmailov built more than a hundred one- and two-story residential buildings, many shops, a mosque and a bathhouse.

One of the most interesting archi­tects of pre-revolutionary Baku, Ziver bey Akhmedbeyov, later became the first chief architect of the city during the Soviet period. The architects invit­ed to work, mainly graduates of the Petersburg Institute of Civil Engi­neers, worked a lot and fruitfully in Baku during this period. Examples of these include I. Goslavsky, I. Ploshko, E. Skibinsky, K. Skurevich, I. Edel, A. Eikhler, N. Baev and others. The first, most detailed, complete and profes­sionally drawn-up Master Plan for the development of the city of Baku was created in 1898 by the civil engineer Nikolai von der Nonne.

Part of the incredible income from the exploitation of the Baku oil fields was invested by oil industrialists in the construction of mansions and the im­provement of the city. The architec­tural styles and methods used in the construction of buildings were diverse and often depended not on the profes­sionalism of the architects but on the wishes of the customer.

In Baku, buildings in the styles of “neo-renaissance”, “neo-gothic”, “neo-ba­roque”, “classicism”, “em­pire”, “modern” can be seen. The buildings were built in a pseudo-oriental style called “Moorish” and attempts were made to use national architectural elements. Despite the fact that the buildings built at that time were in different styles, they were united by the high quality of construc­tion work, the correctly found scale of the structures, the processing of white stone and the beautiful lines of the details. The commonality of architec­tural techniques and forms, the unity of the facing material – warm-toned, fine-grained limestone – contributed to the formation of the individual ar­tistic appearance of the city. In gen­eral, regarding the architecture of Baku during the capitalist era, it should be noted that in a relatively short historical period, the city experi­enced one of the most turbulent peri­ods of its development. Thanks to the work and talent of the architects and builders who created it, Baku acquires a unique and inimitable appearance, which deservedly earned it the fame of the “Paris of the East”.

However, at the same time, the de­velopment of industry and the influx of people into the city worsened the already difficult living conditions of the population. The outskirts of the city, its industrial buildings and oil fields, as well as the industrial districts where the settlements of Baku work­ers were located, were in a particularly terrible state.

1. Gorky, describing the difficult conditions of the Baku proletariat, called them “a vivid picture of a gloomy hell”. The situation worsened, especially during the First World War and the Civil War, when the flow of refugees to Baku increased and con­struction almost completely stopped.

After the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, one of the main tasks was the reconstruction of the city, improving the living conditions of Baku workers, especially oil work­ers. For this purpose, the best archi­tects of Soviet Russia were sent to Baku: academician A. Shusev, profes­sors L. Ilyin, A. Ivanitsky, L. Rudnev and V. Vesnin⁷.

During this period, numerous con­struction projects began to overcome the acute housing crisis. Residential, administrative and public buildings, clubs, and cultural centers were built not only in the suburbs of Baku, but also in its historical center, as well as in the immediate vicinity.

Since 1923, a large-scale program of construction of workers’ settle­ments began. By listing the settle­ments built in the oil-mining regions of Baku, one can get an idea of ​​the pace and vol­ume of construction.

On May 1, 1923, the first workers’ settlement named “Razin” with a pop­ulation of about 25 thousand people was built. In 1923-1925, a settlement was also built in Binagadi.

In 1924-1926, small villages named Vorovskiy, Artyom, and Yeni Ramani were founded. In 1923-1929, workers’ settlements were built in Aq Sheher, Zabrat, Surakhani, Shubani, etc. In 1930, the villages of Yeni Surakhani were founded, and in 1932-1934, Bina and Lokbatan. Several types of one- and two-story houses with extremely simple and unpreten­tious facade architecture were widely used in the construction of settle­ments. Along with the development of residential buildings, socio-cultural facilities were also designed: shops, clubs, culture houses, hospitals, etc.

The northwestern suburbs of Baku at that time, built up from the shacks of the poor, became one of the most important, rapidly developing areas of the city. This was the first experience of the complex development of an entire residential area in the USSR. The area was divided into small but well-planned neighborhoods. Greeneries framed the streets of the district and filled a significant part of the large areas within the neighbor­hood.

Among the most characteristic public buildings of that period, it is worth noting the electric railway, the Palace of Culture, the Palace of Print­ing, the State Bank, the Intourist hotel, the buildings of the physiotherapy hospital, and the complex of buildings of the Dynamo sports society.

A lot of landscaping work was car­ried out in those years. With the man­datory participation of thousands of Baku residents in numerous cleaning days, gardens, squares, and parks were laid out both in the historical part of the city and in its new areas. In 1923, in order to provide the city with plant­ing materials, a nursery was first es­tablished in Baku, which expanded over the years and played an im­portant role in the greening of the city⁸.

At that time, the work carried out by leading Soviet urban planners on the development of master plans for the development of Baku was signifi­cant in scale. Thus, from 1924 to 1937, three versions of the city’s Mas­ter Plan were developed.

The mid-1930s were a period of serious changes in Baku architecture. A systematic, in-depth study and use of the national architectural heritage of Azerbaijan began. The establish­ment of the Union of Architects of Azerbaijan in 1934 created conditions for the successful development of na­tional architecture.

In the first years after the estab­lishment of Soviet power in Baku, the Faculty of Architecture and Construc­tion was organized under the Azerbai­jan Industrial Institute. In the 1930s, this faculty had already graduated a significant number of architects and builders. One of the first graduates of the Faculty of Architecture and Con­struction was S. Dadashov and M. Useynov, who later became famous architects. The works of these archi­tects most fully reflect the entire de­velopment path of Azerbaijani archi­tecture of the Soviet period. As a re­sult of their joint creativity, a number of beautiful buildings were created that beautify Baku.

The late 1930s-1950s are called the period of “Stalinist architecture”. In the pre-war and early post-war years, Baku’s architectural practice was dominated by construction on accidentally vacant lots. Most of the constructed facilities were concentrat­ed in the central part of the city.

Since it was necessary to resettle a large number of residents in this part of the city, the demolition of old and unusable buildings was not carried out. This made it difficult to organize new development. Nevertheless, a num­ber of major urban planning measu­res were carried out. For exam­ple, Sovetskaya Street (Narimanov Avenue) literally turned into a moun­tainous part of the city with an ex­tremely dense and spontaneous popu­lation.

In the 50s, a project was imple­mented to reconstruct Neftchilar Ave­nue. At that time, serious work was also being carried out to reconstruct Gusi Hajiyev Street.

The search for originality and na­tional expressiveness prompted Azer­baijani architects to create a number of very significant public and residen­tial buildings with an individual archi­tectural appearance. These were resi­dential buildings of the “Azneft”, “Buzovnaneft”, “House of Artists”, “House of Scientists” trusts, the build­ing of the State Public Library named after M.F. Akhundov, etc.

In the central part of the city, one- and two-story houses built at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries were built at the same height. At the same time, the design features of these buildings were not taken into account. On the contrary, the proportionality of each specific structure with neighboring houses, the preservation of stylistic features and its harmonious combina­tion with the existing environment were taken into account. In a fairly short period of time, it was possible to transform many important city high­ways, previously covered with unusa­ble buildings.

The role of architects – a large group of national cadres formed by that time – was very large on such a scale of construction. Among them, M. Useynov and S. Dadashev, who had deservedly received the title of masters of Azerbaijani architecture by that time, were especially noted. Their creativity was characterized by the fact that in their works they skilfully synthesized the architectural heritage of Azerbaijan with the basic laws of classical European architecture.

The creative team of the Baku State Design Institute developed the next master plan for the development of the city for the period until 1976, approved by the decision of the Coun­cil of Ministers of the Republic in 1958⁹.

In the mid-1950s, the decisions “On measures for the further industri­alization of construction, improving its quality and reducing its cost” and “On the elimination of redundancies in design and construction” adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the USSR Council of Ministers laid the foundation for mass housing construction. These decisions, aimed at providing the majority of the Soviet people with housing and creating rela­tively comfortable living conditions for them, generally led to the faceless­ness and dullness of mass housing. The quality of not only architectural projects but also construction work fell significantly. A new stage in Ba­ku’s architecture began in the 1960s-1980s. The widespread use of con­crete, metal and glass contributed to the development of new architectural forms based on the design features of new building materials. During this period, fundamental work was carried out in Baku in the direction of hous­ing, household and cultural construc­tion, as well as the development of engineering and transport systems and the improvement of the city.

New housing construction was car­ried out both in residential areas that had already been built by that time, for example, in the “Eighth Kilome­ter”, and in new areas, mainly located in the southeastern part of the Baku Amphitheater. This new residential area, located in the Ahmadli area of ​​the city, in turn consisted of two mi­crodistricts – Ahmadli and Gunashli, as well as adjacent development dis­tricts concentrated near the villages of Zigh and Hovsan.

The architectural appearance of the republic’s capital was enriched with a number of objects that were interest­ing in terms of design, large in size and very important from the point of view of urban planning: the building of the Presidium of the Supreme So­viet, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan (now the building of the Presidential Ad­ministration), the Lenin Palace (now the Heydar Aliyev Palace), the “Moskva”, “Azerbaijan”, ”Intourist” (now ”Karabakh”) hotels, as well as sea and railway stations.

The increase in capital investments in the city’s economy, its housing con­struction and service infrastructure necessitated a revision of the Master Plan for the Development of Baku until 2000, drawn up in the early 1970s. It was developed in 1982 by a team of the Baku State Project Insti­tute. At that time, Baku was becoming one of the largest, most important in­dustrial and cultural centers of the former Soviet Union¹⁰.

The beginning of the collapse of the Soviet empire plunged the entire country, including Baku, into a period of prolonged chaos and instability. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, con­struction in the city practically stopped. At the same time, the transi­tion of Azerbaijan from a planned socialist economy to a free market economy affected the process of plan­ning its development. The “Master Plan for the Economic and Social De­velopment of Baku until 2005”, ap­proved in 1987, envisaged the devel­opment of the city within the frame­work of a strictly planned economy. Unfortunately, many provisions of this plan were violated during the transition period. Therefore, today the Master Plan is outdated as a legisla­tive document and cannot be imple­mented in practice.

Today, our ancient but ever-changing city is experiencing a new page in its architectural history. The current stage of development was marked by the large oil contract signed in Baku in 1994 and called the “Contract of the Century”. The favor­able investment climate in the country has created ample opportunities for the construction of modern buildings. Today, the architecture of the city is enriched with the construction of high-comfort residential buildings, modern hotel complexes that meet world standards, large supermarkets, bank buildings, etc.

A vivid example of this is the suc­cessfully operating “Park Residence”, “Park Royal”, “Istanbul Houses”, “Ugur-97” complexes. A new genera­tion of professional architectural per­sonnel plays an active role in the im­plementation of the modern transfor­mation stage of Baku. F. Yuzbashev, R. Seyfullayev, Kh. Amirkhanov, N. Valiyev, A. Abdullayev, S. Sultanov, M. Shugayev and others are quite con­fidently and successfully contributing to changing the face of the capital of the republic.

Notes

• https://www.window2baku.com/006development.htm.
• https://dzen.ru/a/YEN5D0TtxmaBHHiv.
• https://baku-eto.az/main/4073-arhitektura-baku.html.
• https://bakucity.preslib.az/ru/page/AiVHDYfSav.
• https://www.hisour.com/ru/architecture-of-baku-31362/.
• https://azerbaijan.az/ru/related-infor-mation/175.
• https://dzen.ru/a/YEN5D0TtxmaBHHiv.
• https://www.hisour.com/ru/azeri-style-31825/.
• https://azmiu.edu.az/upload/ckeditor/90773015.pdf.
• https://azerbaijan.az/ru/related-infor-mation/47.

Bibliography

Online resources

https://www.window2baku.com/006development.htm.
https://dzen.ru/a/YEN5D0TtxmaBHHiv.
https://baku-eto.az/main/4073-arhitektura-baku.html.
https://bakucity.preslib.az/ru/page/AiVHDYfSav.
https://www.hisour.com/ru/architecture-of-baku-31362/.
https://azerbaijan.az/ru/related-informa-tion/175.
https://dzen.ru/a/YEN5D0TtxmaBHHiv.
https://www.hisour.com/ru/azeri-style-31825/.
https://azmiu.edu.az/upload/ckeditor/90773015.pdf.
https://azerbaijan.az/ru/related-informa