From Centre to Periphery: Organisational and Stylistic Regulations of Architecture in Early 19th Century Tbilisi

The era beginning with Peter the Great's reign is widely recognised as the onset of Russia's modernisation. In this period, the Russian Empire sought to institutionalise architectural uniformity through centralised administrative reforms, codified construction legislation, and the dissemination of model designs rooted in Russian Classicism. However, implementation of the designs in the periphery produced outcomes that were neither uniform nor fully controlled.The peripheral city of Tbilisi came under Russian domination at the beginning of the 19th century and became the centre of the Caucasus Viceroyalty. Following the city's integration into the empire, Tbilisi's public buildings closely mirrored the formal vocabulary of the imperial capital, reflecting the effectiveness of bureaucratic oversight in the civic sphere. Conversely, residential architecture emerged as a key site of hybridisation, where local building traditions, spatial practices, and topography produced a distinctive idiom in the 1840s, reflecting a complex, integrative form of imperial urbanism shaped by the interaction between central authority and local conditions.Drawing on archival documents, the study examines how imperial authorities regulated the built environment to consolidate power in the South Caucasus. The findings demonstrate the emergence of a hybrid architectural style in Tbilisi and reveal the limitations of imperial standardisation and the negotiated character of peripheral modernisation.