From Building Back Better to Urban Transformation — A journey through Azerbaijan’s reconstruction and sustainable regeneration

In 2021, sa_partners was commissioned by Azerbaijan’s State Committee on Urban Planning and Architecture (SCUPA) to rebuild three cities in the East Zangezur region: Zangilan, Kalbajar and Qubadli. They had been destroyed to the ground and stood uninhabited for three decades, leaving Azerbajian with a Herculean task of urban reconstruction unique in scale and complexity.

The mandate was unusually complex : city vision, zoning, detailed neighbourhood planning, and the architecture itself — including all services from conceptual vision to architectural implementation.

Over time the work grew to eight masterplans across three regions across the country and twenty projects under our lead, spanning mountain, valley and Metropolitan and coastal terrain: Post-conflict reconstruction in East Zangezur, heritage-sensitive transformation in Nakhchivan and waterfront regeneration on the Baku Absheron Peninsula at the Caspian Sea within the Baku Metropolitan Region.

The reconstruction approach was just as much about about strengthening history and culture as about introducing new urban solutions. In Zangilan we found a forgotten canal system that had once irrigated a garden city, and made that blue-green network the backbone of the new plan — a compact, walkable and nature-based city built around what was already there. Kalbajar drew on the region’s long tradition of thermal springs to become a health and mountain destination. Lachin’s terrain called for a cable car, which set a workable standard for sustainable mobility and later received the TEMEL 2026 award. Qubadli was planned as a sponge city. In each case the aim was the same: places that feel authentic to the people who live in them, and that hold up over time.

We are a Swiss practice, and the work reflects that — a long tradition of building in mountainous regions, and a habit of seeing a plan through from drawing to monitoring. But the vision is Azerbaijan’s. A country implementing the New Urban Agenda and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, treating reconstruction not as repair but as a chance to building back better. The Congress Centre we designed in Zangilan hosted UN-Habitat’s World Habitat Day in 2023.

Reconstruction after conflict and disaster is gaining unprecedented global relevance. This book is an honest account of what is possible based on great visions, joint effort and bold committment. It's a book of what was there to be discovered, planned and built. Above all it's a book of what we learned along this exceptional journey with deepest gratitude to our partners at SCUPA, our local collaborators, and the people of Azerbaijan.

Available now.