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Israyelyan, Rafayel (Sarqis)
(b Tiflis [now Tbilisi], 17 Sept 1908; d Erevan, 8 Sept 1973). Armenian architect of Georgian birth. He studied, from 1928 to 1930, in the architectural faculty of the Academy of Arts, Tiflis, and then in the architectural faculty of the Institute of Communal Construction, Leningrad (now St Petersburg), from 1930 to 1932, and at the Academy of Arts, Leningrad, from 1932 to 1934. From 1936 he worked in Erevan, where he designed massive constructions of natural stone combining neo-classicism with Armenian architectural traditions, of which he was a more consistent interpreter than Alek’sandr T’amanyan. He built an intricate complex of wine cellars (1937) for the Ararat Trust, Erevan, its concise volumes blending organically with the rocky landscape. These are constantly undergoing alteration and renovation. Connected to the complex is a stone aqueduct over the River Hrazdan. During and after World War II, continuing the Armenian custom of commemorating the dead at springs, he built monuments in numerous towns and villages. He also revived the ancient Armenian tradition of the khatchk‘ar (see ARMENIA, §IV, 1(ii)), a stele with relief decoration. Larger designs include the monument to Victory in Erevan (1950–67), on the Kanaker Plateau, and the monument to the Battle of Sardarapat (1968), near Hoktemberyan, where a tall, three-bay belfry provides the focal point. The Museum of the Ethnography of Armenia (1968–78), Hoktemberyan, in which Armenian traditions are apparent in the massive outer stone casing and in the complex forms of the reinforced-concrete roofs, achieves its effect in the contrast of the monolithic, blank-walled exterior and the airy lightness of the interior. He also designed the Armenian church of St Vardan (1970s), New York, and a number of residential buildings, in which the unique character of his work, uniting characteristics of the 20th-century professional architect and of a traditional folk craftsman, is also realized.
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