The first steps along this path were taken back in 2019 during the development of the “Mahalla: Urban and Provincial Life” project at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021.

The debut participation of Uzbekistan in the biennale played a crucial role, as the project dedicated to the mahalla became the subject of international discussion at one of the most famous forums in the world of art and aroused great interest among the participants, as well as experts and foreign media.

Professors at ETH Zurich, Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein, curated the exhibition project, while Dutch photographer Bas Prinsen documented the mahalla phenomenon.

Further, the Art and Culture Development Foundation, with the assistance of the National Commission for UNESCO and the International Institute for Central Asian Studies, organized a unique team of leading scientists, experts, architects and researchers who carried out a large-scale study of mahallas in the city of Tashkent.

The mahalla, traditional in our understanding, aroused the interest of the international community and was perceived by experts as a way to revive eco-architecture, a method of preserving community, social values, and at the same time as a solution to the problem of mass urbanization of modern cities.

The inclusion of Tashkent mahallas in the Tentative List will allow them to be nominated for the UNESCO World Heritage List in the future.

UzA