WATERTOWN — Curator Nairi Khatchadourian, visiting from Yerevan, will speak on the Matenadaran garden project on Friday, March 6 at the Baikar Building in Watertown. Her English-language presentation is sponsored by the Armenian Tree Project and the Tekeyan Cultural Association of Boston.
Perched on one of the last remaining hills of Yerevan’s natural amphitheater, the slope of the Matenadaran will soon blossom into a garden. Yerevan’s residents and visitors alike will be able to stroll along the Matenadaran’s terraced green promenades. On November 22, 2025, a co-creation workshop led by the curatorial practice AHA collective brought together 40 artists, architects, urban planners, botanists, Matenadaran researchers, scholars, and local residents to collectively imagine the future of the Matenadaran garden. Organized in collaboration with the Armenia Tree Project and the Matenadaran, the workshop marked a new, inclusive, and interdisciplinary approach to public space design in Armenia.
Khatchadourian’s talk in Watertown will trace the site-specific methodology behind the co-creation, share insights from the workshop outcomes, and introduce the three garden visions that emerged from the process. The exhibition currently on view at the Matenadaran entitled The Sun is Rising: The Matenadaran Garden Vision presents these visions and offers a window into the participatory design process.
Khatchadourian will explain the curatorial framework of the exhibition and explore its key themes: Which conceptual and spatial visions will define the future garden? How will the garden complement the museum experience and enter into dialogue with the Matenadaran’s manuscript legacy? How will it connect to Yerevan’s wider green landscape and public spaces?
Against the backdrop of Yerevan’s rapid urban transformation, this lecture reflects on co-creation as a critical tool for inclusive, culturally responsible, and context-sensitive design.
This special talk takes place during Nairi Khatchadourian’s visit to the United States, offering a rare opportunity to engage directly with her curatorial work and the vision for the Matenadaran garden, a visionary project redefining contemporary Armenian garden and landscape design thinking.
