«Հայկական ճարտարապետությունը» - Կոստան ԶԱՐԵԱՆ

Konstantin Zaryan's article is devoted to understanding Armenian architecture as the highest form of the spiritual and artistic self-expression of the Armenian people, as well as to determining its place in world art history and thought.

Introduction and Methodology. The author's starting point is the notion of art as an "antifatal" force, opposing non-being and chaos through the act of creation. A genuine work of art is regarded as the result of a people's collective unconscious, and the highest degree of spiritual development, embodied in a stable style, gives birth to Culture. The Armenian people, in Zaryan's thinking, belong to the few who have succeeded in embodying spirit and thought in stone, making architecture their principal "weapon" for preserving their national countenance through centuries of destruction.

Key Thesis. The author asserts that Armenian architecture is the only fully preserved and precise language in which the Armenian spirit has expressed itself, since:

the song tradition has lost its purity;
the church subordinated thought to theological tasks;
poetry and folklore have survived only in fragments due to the selectivity of copyists.

It is precisely for this reason that architecture is recognized as the principal source for understanding the national spirit, being at the same time interpreted as an abstract, "silent," and therefore immediate art.

Geometry and Number as the Foundation of Style. The central feature of Armenian architecture is named as its geometricity, understood not as a formal device but as a manifestation of a "mathematics of the spirit" that changes together with the epoch. Zaryan traces a historical line from Pythagorean mathematics through the Alexandrian schools to the discoveries of Diophantus, who broadened the concept of number and laid the foundation of a new worldview synchronous with the formation of Armenian Christian architecture (in particular, with the construction of the Etchmiadzin Cathedral).

Arayakan/Armenakan as a New Classicism. In contrast to the Spenglerian scheme of cultures, the author introduces the notion of a special, "Armenian" classicism—Arayakan—which synthesizes the Dionysian-Promethean heritage with a Christian worldview. Unlike Greek classicism, enclosed within the visible and measurable (the principle of "to me on"), the Armenian tradition unites the earthly and the heavenly, the finite and the infinite, which is symbolically expressed in the figure of intersecting lines directed toward infinity.

The Nature of Architecture and Its Forms. Architecture is defined as the organization of space, endowing it with corporeality and spiritual life. Unlike Greek building, oriented toward external appearance, Armenian architecture develops interior and exterior space equally, drawing the individual into a holistic spiritual experience. The principal geometric symbols of this language are:

the cube—a sign of truthfulness and stability;
the circle—an image of equilibrium and the measure of being;
the arch on two supports—a symbol of movement toward the boundless, which determined the subsequent development of the Romanesque style and the Renaissance.

Conclusion. The article's key conclusion is that Armenian architecture represents an independent type of classicism, historically and metaphysically grounded, standing between the Doric temple and the Gothic cathedral, and expressing a new, spiritually charged language of humanity's interaction with the cosmos.