Second Skin Yerevan

Much of Yerevan lives in apartment blocks from the Soviet decades. Their facades have aged into a patchwork: balconies closed in every material, mismatched windows, air-conditioning units and cables hanging across the street front. Demolition is neither affordable nor desirable. These buildings are homes, and part of the city's memory.

Second Skin Yerevan proposes a lightweight, prefabricated layer that wraps the existing facade without touching the structure or moving the residents. Behind it, mineral wool insulation cuts winter heating demand; in front, a family of precast panels in crushed pink tuff and white cement gives the building a calm, unified face in the colour of the city.

The panels are generated in Grasshopper from each building's own window grid, so every opening stays where it is. Three types do all the work: flat panels with a fine relief, deep chamfered window frames, and perforated screens that hide air-conditioning units and shade the loggias. Where a building has a feature of its own, such as the round windows of some late-modernist towers, the system frames it instead of erasing it: renovation without wiping out memory.