A critical reflection on Armenia’s national pavilions at the 2025 Triennale Milano and Venice Biennale of Architecture, Maria Gunko explores how they navigate themes of heritage, technology and everyday architecture, offering contrasting visions of authenticity, identity and the politics of representation.

Tucked away in central Yerevan, 13:20 Ruin Bar is a hidden sanctuary for spirits, both distilled and human. Blending DIY aesthetics, cultural preservation and underground allure, it is redefining heritage through decay, experimentation and quiet defiance.

A work trip to Sisian unfolds from dreary mediocrity into an unexpected revelation. Through the evocative paintings of Armen Hakobjanyan, Sisian’s stark landscapes transform, revealing a timeless beauty hidden beneath the town’s crumbling surfaces, and quiet melancholy.

A journey through Syunik’s cities reveals overlooked details: laundry lines, rustwoven structures, and abandoned railways, that tell richer, more intimate stories of place than tourist checklists ever could. Maria Gunko’s reflection on memory, materiality and urban meaning.

Maria Gunko explores the city’s transformation after dark, where familiar spaces shift, new rhythms emerge, and urban night pulses with secrecy, revelry and uncertainty. From hidden bars to shadow economies, it captures the mystery, intimacy and contradictions of Yerevan’s nocturnal self.

Metsamor embodies a complex interplay of post-Soviet deindustrialization, utopian aspirations, and organic transformation. Once a symbol of Soviet modernity, it now reveals a layered reality—marked by decay, resilience and the unplanned vibrancy of everyday life.

Delving into the rich cultural legacy of Venice’s San Lazzaro degli Armeni island, Maria Gunko reflects on the enduring significance of Armenian heritage around the world, the beauty of discovery, and the philosophical charm of places seemingly untouched by time.

In this month’s column, Maria Gunko explores how the pronouns "they" and "we" are used to navigate narratives of destruction, complicity and survival. She examines the shifting boundaries of agency and the struggle for meaning in a post-socialist, post-truth landscape.

In the forests of the Armenian Highlands, lies a small town stripped of Soviet modernity with no more than metal corpses left of industrial buildings. For the past 30 years, the town has been reclaimed by a tide of greenery and with it, wildlife has returned. Now the howls of jackals echo through the streets.

Many have heard of the concept of the "sixth sense" but does it truly exist? Through stories of survival tied to an inexplicable sense of danger, Maria Gunko delves into how intuition may serve as a powerful, unacknowledged survival mechanism.