The Telegraph Hotel Tbilisi by Neri&Hu: A Brutalist Landmark Reconnected
The Telegraph Hotel in Tbilisi transforms a once-essential public building into a contemporary meeting place. Designed in the 1960s by Georgian architects Lado Alexi-Meskhishvili and Teimuraz Mikashavidze, the former central post and telegraph office was completed during the Soviet era and long served as part of the city's communications infrastructure. Neri&Hu's intervention, completed in 2025 for Silk Road Group, seeks to recover something of that civic role rather than merely preserve a recognisable Brutalist facade.
Working with the memory of a public building
The architects inherited a structure whose social meaning had changed after decades of neglect. Its existing concrete grid and monumental street presence were valuable parts of the project, but a successful hotel also required more generous connections to everyday city life. The design responds by accepting the contrast between old and new. Contemporary interiors are set against preserved surfaces, allowing traces of the former building to remain legible instead of presenting a fabricated version of its past.
The ground floor as a continuation of Tbilisi
Rather than keep all hotel activity behind a single reception desk, the ground floor is organised around a network of passages and public destinations. The pattern suggests the experience of moving through Tbilisi's smaller lanes: one encounter leads to another, and routes offer multiple points to stop. The reception, restaurants, bars and library are part of a connected composition, with the courtyard becoming an important shared centre.
This organisation acknowledges that the building was once more than an office. People came here to communicate, meet and participate in urban life. Its new uses are different, but carefully placed gathering rooms, visual connections and publicly accessible venues allow the architecture to continue hosting encounters. Preservation is therefore expressed as a renewed programme as much as a material decision.
A varied landscape of hospitality interiors
The interior design does not impose a single atmosphere across every venue. Reception lounges establish a quieter introduction to the building; restaurants and the library offer more concentrated experiences. Some areas draw warmth from timber and richly textured materials, while others preserve a more austere architectural backdrop. The contrast keeps each space distinct without severing its relationship with the original structure.
Food and beverage interiors range from intimate settings for conversation to livelier social rooms. Carefully shaped furniture, lighting and partitions offer flexibility between dining and lingering. The project invites visitors who are not staying at the hotel to become part of its daily rhythm, preventing the building from operating as a sealed object in the centre of the city.
The courtyard as an urban room
At the heart of the plan, the courtyard acts as an outdoor counterpart to the public interiors. It offers a moment of openness within the surrounding built mass and gives different parts of the hotel a shared orientation point. The building's earlier public purpose is reimagined here through hospitality: the courtyard is not just a view from adjacent rooms, but an important destination in its own right.
Guestrooms and the rhythm of travel
Upstairs, guest rooms follow the inherited structural grid. Their circulation moves in a linear sequence from entrance to lounge and window. Neri&Hu relates this progression to the experience of travel: a compact, ordered journey through distinct zones, with the city beyond as the final view. The approach gives architectural form to the transition from public life to personal retreat.
The hotel's interiors balance the building's monumental legacy with human-scale comfort. New furnishings and carefully considered surfaces introduce warmth, while the retained concrete framework helps guests understand where they are. This connection between historical continuity and everyday occupation is what makes the renovation more than an exercise in heritage branding.
Project details and photography
Project: An Urban Artifact | The Telegraph Hotel, Tbilisi, Georgia. Original building: architects Lado Alexi-Meskhishvili and Teimuraz Mikashavidze, designed in the 1960s and completed during the 1970s. Adaptive reuse, architecture and interiors: Neri&Hu Design and Research Office. Client: Silk Road Group / Silk Development. Gross area: 30,608 m². Completed: June 2025. Photographs in this feature are individually credited in the image captions to Grigorii Sokolinskii or Pedro Pegenaute, as identified in the official studio archive.
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