The Soviet housing system operated within a framework in which demand consistently exceeded available supply. Although conceived as universal in principle, allocation was organised through administrative mechanisms, with access structured around established distribution channels rather than market exchange. In practice, housing was closely linked to institutional affiliation, with enterprises and state organisations playing a central role in its distribution alongside municipal authorities.
Factories, ministries, and state organisations functioned as primary providers and managers of residential stock. Housing formed part of the broader welfare apparatus of employment, binding tenure security to labour participation. As noted in analyses of socialist urban structure, enterprise-based allocation was structurally embedded in industrial systems and shaped settlement patterns in republics such as Armenia (Szelenyi 1983; Szelenyi 1987; Hirt 2012).
Within this framework, assets held on enterprise balance sheets were, in certain instances, reassignedfor residential use and allocated to families formally recognised as կարիքավոր (“needy”). These allocations frequently took the form of collective accommodation (հանրակացարան) rather than self-contained apartments, reflecting prevailing administrative practices and prioritisation of broad access within existing material constraints—often resulting in minimal compliance solutions.
Chronic housing scarcity—further intensified by the 1988 Spitak earthquake—normalised practices that stretched planning norms. Non-residential buildings were repurposed, spatial standards were relaxed, and zoning designations became secondary to social stability. This pattern reflects the pragmatic elasticity of late socialist governance, where formal regulation coexisted with negotiated adaptation (Stanilov 2007; Hirt 2012).
Arevik kindergarten: typological dislocation and legal lag
The Arevik kindergarten, situated in Nor Nork’s Mayak 26 district, provides a concrete illustration of this institutional mechanism. Constructed according to a standardised Soviet kindergarten design in 1973, the building belonged to the Bazalt factory and was never intended for habitation. Nevertheless, by the late Soviet period, families of the factory’s “needy” workers had already been residing there for years, occupying the structure as collective accommodation.
The building’s formal re-registration as residential in 1997 did not transform its function; rather, it constituted a retrospective legalisation of an existing social condition. At that point, the structure comprised 23 apartments designated as temporary dwellings, despite their evident permanence. The case exemplifies what post-socialist property scholars describe as legal lag — the temporal gap between lived spatial practice and its eventual codification (Bruszt & Stark 1998; Verdery 2003).
Internally, the building bears the marks of typological mismatch. Corridors originally designed for classroom circulation have evolved into narrow, winding passageways forming a dim and labyrinthine interior, particularly on the upper floors. Small residential units are accessed through elongated internal routes lacking adequate natural light or ventilation, and in some apartments, certain rooms do not feature any windows at all. The resulting spatial experience reflects neither the building’s institutional origins nor the logic of purpose-built housing, but rather an improvised condition suspended between the two.
Each household reorganised its allocated space independently, inserting kitchens and sanitary facilities into layouts never intended for such uses. These interventions were informal yet structurally inevitable, given the absence of institutional reinvestment and the incompatibility between childcare infrastructure and domestic requirements. In this sense, Arevik reflects what Tsenkova terms household-led adaptation — a defining feature of early post-socialist urban restructuring (Tsenkova 2009).
Internal courtyard defined by the perimeter configuration of the Arevik Kindergarten blocks.
Photo: HfX housing studies centre, 2025
Layout of one of the ground-floor apartments at the former Arevik Kindergarten.
Diagram: HfX housing studies centre
Master plan of the former Arevik Kindergarten site, 2008.
Source: Nor Nork Administrative District administration
Exterior appropriation and incremental enclosure. If the interior reflects functional improvisation, the exterior reveals territorialisation. Most ground-floor apartments have established semi-private courtyards, leisure areas, and in some cases garages, enclosing portions of the surrounding land with masonry walls or metal fencing. What was once a collective kindergarten plot has gradually fragmented into micro-parcels, signalling the transition from shared institutional property to de facto individual possession.
This process mirrors broader post-Soviet patterns of spatial appropriation described by Hirt (2012) and Gentile (2018), where weak enforcement and fragmented governance allow private territorial claims to consolidate through practice rather than formal subdivision. The site has thus shifted from a unified educational facility to a patchwork of domestic territories without undergoing coherent planning recalibration.
Risk, ownership, and constrained agency. Under the Soviet system, structural and legal risk was largely institutionalised. With the collapse of enterprise-based welfare provision in the early 1990s, that risk became progressively individualised. Residents inherited not only tenure but also liability—structural, financial, and regulatory.
Today, ownership within Arevik provides a paradoxical form of security. Many residents arrived after prolonged periods in communal accommodation or unstable rental arrangements. Possessing an apartment—regardless of condition—represents stability hard won. This explains the ambivalent attachment to the building: gratitude for ownership coexists with recognition of physical inadequacy.
Resident-organised outdoor space along one of the façades of the former Arevik Kindergarten.
Photo: HfX housing studies centre, 2025
Site plans and administrative discontinuity. The regulatory record reflects this instability. Several site plans were prepared for Arevik—in 2004, 2006, and 2008. The earlier two were subsequently annulled (declared invalid), while the 2008 site plan remains formally valid. However, the current built condition no longer corresponds to the 2008 documentation, as later physical alterations have modified both footprint and plot configuration.
This discrepancy illustrates not merely bureaucratic inconsistency but a structural phenomenon characteristic of post-socialist urbanism: documentation remains static while the built environment continues to evolve.
As is frequently observed in cadastral reform within transitional economies, legality can become archival rather than operative—formally inscribed in documentation yet functionally detached from the material and spatial realities it is meant to regulate (Bruszt & Stark 1998; Verdery 2003).
Staircase at one of the entrances to the former Arevik Kindergarten.
Photo: HfX housing studies centre, 2025
At the same time, residents remain cautious regarding redevelopment proposals. While most would welcome a reconstruction or exchange mechanism allowing them to exchange their current apartments for new dwellings—either on the same site or elsewhere in the city—this openness is tempered by distrust. Past instances of inequitable compensation and opaque municipal practices have generated scepticism towards both public authorities and private developers. This aligns with broader findings in post-socialist cities, where low institutional trust significantly mediates redevelopment acceptance (Hirt, 2012; Tsenkova, 2009).
Market valuation further constrains expectations. With units estimated at approximately USD 10,000–30,000 based on cadastral valuations adjusted to approximate market-equivalent values, residents recognise that their formal ownership confers limited negotiating power. The prospect of receiving an equivalent dwelling in a new development appears improbable within prevailing market logics. Thus, ownership secures presence but not leverage.
Corridor inside the former Arevik Kindergarten, flanked by apartments on both sides.
Photo: HfX housing studies centre, 2025
A comparative trajectory: the Ani kindergarten
By contrast, another kindergarten of the same standardised Soviet design, located within the same administrative district less than three kilometres away and formerly known as Ani, evolved along a different path. It continued to operate formally until the early 2010s, after which it was decommissioned. Approximately a decade later, a private developer initiated a structured redevelopment project to convert the building into affordable residential units.
Unlike the incremental adaptations at Arevik, this transformation was undertaken through a formal architectural and planning process. The project, developed by the design studio Electric Architects, introduced diversified housing typologies—duplex units, apartments with separate external entrances and private outdoor areas, and units with balconies—while ensuring structural reinforcement, compliance with safety standards, and dignified living conditions.
The contrast underscores a key insight from post-socialist urban scholarship: building type alone does not determine outcome. Governance coherence, capital mobilisation, and regulatory clarity are decisive variables (Stanilov 2007; Hirt 2012). Where Arevik reflects adaptive survival under institutional retreat, Ani demonstrates planned conversion within a market-mediated redevelopment framework.
Infrastructure, densification, and post-socialist differentiation. The redevelopment of the Ani kindergarten must also be understood within broader post-socialist urban transformations, where shifts in property regimes, governance structures, and investment patterns have reconfigured both housing provision and neighbourhood dynamics.
In many post-socialist cities, the 1990s were characterised by rapid privatisation of housing stock combined with limited public reinvestment in infrastructure. This produced what is described as “infrastructural lag”: while ownership structures changed quickly, upgrades to utilities, schools, transport networks, and public services did not keep pace (Graham & Marvin 2001). As a result, contemporary redevelopment projects frequently operate within urban systems whose carrying capacity was calibrated for different demographic and economic conditions.The conversion of Ani into residential units may therefore represent not only an architectural intervention but also a node within a broader process of incremental densification. Even when projects are framed as affordable, they insert additional households into districts where social infrastructure—particularly childcare facilities—has already been reduced. In this case, the closure of the kindergarten eliminated a localised public good and redistributed demand across neighbouring areas. From a planning perspective, this is not a neutral change of function but a reallocation of social infrastructure across space.
Reconstruction of the former Ani Kindergarten into residential use: a two-storey vertical extension created mezzanine units while remaining below the height threshold requiring lift installation, lowering construction costs and helping to maintain the affordability of the resulting apartments.
Photo: HfX housing studies centre, 2025
Reconstruction of the former Ani Kindergarten into residential use: the former basement was converted into habitable space by introducing perimeter light wells via regraded external slopes, creating sunken courtyards that provide daylight to the lower-floor apartments.
Photo: HfX housing studies centre, 2025
Post-socialist urban theory has also highlighted the emergence of market-mediated differentiation in formerly more uniform neighbourhoods. Unlike classic Western models of gentrification—often associated with dramatic displacement and large-scale reinvestment—post-socialist gentrification frequently unfolds in subtler, fragmented forms, often described as “soft” or “piecemeal gentrification”, where new developments coexist with older stock, gradually recalibrating local property values and socio-economic profiles without immediate wholesale replacement (Gentile & Sjöberg 2013; Lees et al. 2008).
In this light, the Ani project may contribute to a gradual socio-spatial re-stratification. Newly built units compliant with contemporary safety and comfort standards—even if positioned as affordable—often attract households with relatively greater financial stability or access to credit. Over time, this can alter neighbourhood consumption patterns, commercial activity, and expectations of service provision. Property price differentials between regulated new developments and adjacent legacy housing may widen, reinforcing uneven investment patterns.
Importantly, such shifts do not necessarily produce direct displacement in the short term. However, they can generate exclusionary displacement: rising entry thresholds that limit access for lower-income households without requiring their immediate removal (Marcuse 1985). In districts already marked by ageing housing stock, limited public services, and fragmented governance—as exemplified by Arevik—these dynamics may intensify perceived inequality between adjacent built forms. Against this broader structural backdrop, Arevik can be re-read not only as an isolated anomaly but as a crystallisation of these overlapping transformations.
3D visualisation of a lower-ground-floor apartment with an adjacent sunken courtyard
(light well).
Source: Electric Architects
Transitional housing and the politics of permanence
Arevik challenges conventional housing categories. It is neither an informal settlement nor a standard apartment block. It represents transitional housing that became permanent, produced at the intersection of enterprise allocation, earthquake-era pragmatism, and post-socialist legal fragmentation.
Its interior darkness, exterior enclosures, annulled site plans, and cautious ownership culture are not isolated anomalies but interconnected manifestations of governance discontinuity.
The juxtaposition of Arevik and Ani thus encapsulates two intertwined post-socialist trajectories. On the one hand, adaptive, resident-led incremental adaptation persists under conditions of legal ambiguity and infrastructural under-provision. On the other, selective reinvestment—mediated by private capital and formal planning instruments—introduces regulated improvement into the same urban fabric. Together, they demonstrate that urban restructuring in post-socialist contexts rarely unfolds through comprehensive, system-wide redevelopment; rather, it proceeds unevenly, generating islands of regulated improvement alongside zones of deferred maintenance.
The comparison, however, also suggests a normative lesson for future interventions. Improvement projects—whether publicly initiated or privately financed—should be embedded within deliberate, anticipatory planning rather than reactive regularisation.
Where new housing replaces a prior public good, such as a kindergarten, the decision must follow explicit capacity calculations and be reflected in parallel infrastructural provision. Spatial substitution cannot be treated as a neutral functional shift; it entails redistribution of social infrastructure across the city.
Well-executed adaptive reuse projects, such as the redevelopment of Ani—with its structural reinforcement, typological diversification, and compliance with contemporary safety standards—demonstrate that conversion need not entail degradation. Under conditions of regulatory clarity and accountable governance, privately financed redevelopment can operate as a blueprint for similar sites. The question is not merely one of capital availability, but of institutional design: whether redevelopment is framed as an isolated architectural act or as part of an integrated urban strategy.
In this sense, the lesson of Arevik and Ani is not simply comparative but programmatic. Incremental survival and planned transformation need not remain parallel logics. The challenge lies in translating isolated examples of regulated improvement into replicable models—anchored in infrastructural capacity, equitable compensation, and long-term social safeguards—so that redevelopment strengthens, rather than fragments, the post-socialist urban condition.
Spatial subdivision of the former Arevik Kindergarten into discrete residential units: the diagram illustrates the fragmentation of the original institutional structure into individually organised dwellings, some with associated outdoor spaces. Over time, ncremental ad-hoc alterations have progressively transformed and effectively erased its original spatial configuration.
Diagram: HfX housing studies centre
References
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Gentile, M. (2018). West-East differentiation and socio-spatial segregation in post-socialist cities. Urban Geography.
Gentile, M., & Sjöberg, Ö. (2013). Spaces of priority: Gentrification in post-socialist cities.
Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering Urbanism. Routledge.
Hirt, S. (2012). Iron Curtains: Gates, Suburbs and Privatization of Space in the Post-Socialist City. Wiley-Blackwell.
Lees, L., Slater, T., & Wyly, E. (2008). Gentrification. Routledge.
Marcuse, P. (1985). Gentrification, abandonment, and displacement. Housing Policy Debate.
Stanilov, K. (Ed.). (2007). The Post-Socialist City. Springer.
Szelenyi, I. (1983). Urban Inequalities Under State Socialism. Oxford University Press.
Szelenyi, I. (1987). Cities under socialism — and after.
Tsenkova, S. (2009). Housing Policy Reforms in Post-Socialist Europe. Springer.
Verdery, K. (2003). The Vanishing Hectare. Cornell University Press.