The Writer’s House in Lake Sevan, Armenia. Former writers resort built in early 1930′s by the Writers’ Union of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic who hosted many famous writers. Architects Gevorg Kochar and Mikael Mazmanyan designed this modernist masterpiece.

Right after the opening of the resort Kochar and Mazmanyan were arrested and deported to the Arctic Circle, They would spend 15 years in the arctic city of Norilsk before they were “rehabilitated” after the death of Stalin.

In 1963, Kochar was once again commissioned to design a new café wing for the Resort he’d designed 30 years earlier with Mikael Mazmanyan

Soviet avant-garde architects like Kochar had dreamed of using new technology to create almost weightless, precipitous structures of concrete and glass. The new café wing, a long, curved glass volume is cantilevered right out above the rocks overlooking the lake, with the whole construction balanced on one thick concrete leg allowing café customers panoramic views of the lake and the mountains. 

The Writers’ Resort now, still owned by the Writers’ Union of Armenia, is a former ghost of itself. The building has this abandoned feeling. The facility is run down and I found myself without a working shower and hot water in my room. In the cafe, I had the trout grilled on an outdoor open flame the same described by Simone de Beauvoir as “delicious” mine was subpar.

I spent my hours sitting on the curved balcony like so many before me reading, writing and studying poetry. Immersing myself in the written word of those before me. Taking breaks to stare at the water to contemplate. In the night I slept like a baby with the cold breeze moving through the mountains and the blue water sleeping like a baby.