Konstantine Hovhannisyan (; December 19, 1911 – 1984) was an

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and

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. He was the head of an excavation team that was responsible for the excavations of the ancient Urartian city of Erebuni (situated on Arin Berd, or Blood Fortress, in

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Biography

Hovhannisyan was born in

Tbilisi Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი, ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), ( ka, ტფილისი, tr ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Georgia (country), largest city of Georgia ( ...

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in 1911. He graduated from the Yerevan Polytechnical Institute in 1932 and immediately began to work under the Armenian architects Alexander Tamanian and Nicholas G. Buniatyan (from 1933 to 1934 and 1934–1941, respectively). Anon. ''«Հովհաննիսյան, Կոստանդին»'' (Hovhannisyan, Konstandine). Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia. vol. vi. Yerevan: Armenian SSR:

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, 1980, p. 570. As an architect, Hovhannisyan designed many of the Soviet-style apartment buildings and community facilities that sprang around the city of Yerevan. In 1950, he was appointed the director of an excavation team that dug up the ancient Urartian fortress of Erebuni, located to the southeast of modern-day Yerevan. It was Hovhannisyan who had initially identified Arin Berd as the location of Erebuni, based on

inscription Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

s found adjacent to the city. Hovhannisyan used what was left of Erebuni as a basis for reconstructing the fortress and how it would have looked like when it was built in 782 B.C.Guzsik, Tamás
Selected passages from the history of the Armenian Architecture I. – Prehistoric Era, Antiquity
. ''Periodica Polytechnica '', p. 43. October 11, 2006. Retrieved July 24, 2008. Excavations of Erebuni continued for several decades and he remained its director until 1969. Hovhannisyan served as Director of Ancient Monuments in the

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from 1952 to 1979. He was also a professor at his ''

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'', teaching at the Yerevan Polytechnical Institute from 1955 to 1971.

Published works

* Oganesian, K. L. ''Arin-Berd I. Arkhitektura Erebuni po materialam raskopok 1950-59 (Arin-Berd I. The Architecture of Erebuni according to excavated materials from 1950–59)''. Yerevan: Akademi Nauk Armianskoy SSR, 1961. * ''Karmir Blur IV. Arkhitektura Teishabaini''. Yerevan, Akademi Nauk Armianskoy SSR, 1955. *''The Wall Paintings of Erebuni''. Yerevan, 1973. * ''The Restoration of Architectural Monuments in Soviet Armenia''. Yerevan, 1978. * ''Ocherki po istorii arkhitektur drevney i srednevekovoy Armenii''. Yerevan, 1978.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hovhannisyan, Konstantine 1911 births 1984 deaths Architects from Tbilisi People from Tiflis Governorate National Polytechnic University of Armenia alumni Archaeologists from Tbilisi Armenian architects Soviet architects Soviet Armenians 20th-century Armenian architects Academic staff of the National Polytechnic University of Armenia Soviet archaeologists