Gaianè Casnati is a young and talented architect in love with Armenia, its ancient churches and monuments, and her Italian fiancé — but not necessarily in that order.
She credits her love of everything Armenian to her grandfather, the late Onnig Manoukian, a man with a singular passion and life-long commitment to promoting international recognition of Armenia's rich Christian architectural heritage.
It was the financial backing of the Manoukian family, and the direct involvement of Gaiane's uncle Armen Manoukian, along with a number of Italian and Armenian experts, led by Prof. Adriano Alpago Novello, that made the publication of the famous series of historical Armenian churches possible. But more on that later.
"My grandfather was 100 percent Armenian. My father is Italian, and my mother is half Armenian and half Italian. As for me, w ell... I am both," she says in Armenian, which she first started learning to speak as a teenager, a year after her grandfather's death in 1983.
As a young student of architecture, Gaiane chose Armenian subject matters for her research papers and graduate studies. But it was learning Armenian that opened a whole new chapter for the young architect. Things Armenian no longer mean schoolwork or the few ethnic songs and dances she had learned as a child.
"Armenian architecture became part of my being. I was fascinated by the art and science of ancient Armenian churches," she said.
And then came the devastating earthquake of 1988 in Armenia. A national calamity which killed more than 25,000 people and destroyed entire villages and towns — along with such treasures as ages-old churches which are some of the strongest links to Armenia's nearly 1,700 years of Christian heritage.
The calamity mobilized entire Armenian communities in the Diaspora, including Italy — one of the first European countries to rush not only emergency teams, but planeloads of supplies and hundreds of experts and relief workers.
As hundreds of relief workers rushed to Armenia and thousands of tons of medical and humanitarian aid arrived to help the earthquake victims, Ms. Casnati's thoughts were elsewhere.
"Relief work was very important, and I like many others in the community was involved in fundraising and other activities to help meet the immediate needs of the victims. But I was also thinking about the historical monuments ... the churches. Some were in the earthquake zone and we were getting reports of major damage to these monuments," she said.
Ms. Casnati traveled to Armenia in 1989, along with other Italian experts, to evaluate the damage caused by the earthquake on the nation's old historical churches and monuments. That initial visit, which lasted one month, paved the way for many more and triggered a love affair between the young architect — who, at the time, was still a student — and the land which is often referred to as one of the world's best open-air museums.
"I went back in 1991 for another month with an Italian professor to start the scientific and architectural survey of the nearly 1000- year-old church of Marmashen, near the town of Gyumri," she said.
This meant taking specific measurements of each crack, each stone, each shift in the foundations. She took dozens of photographs, and brought back bags full of soil, stone and other vital samples for laboratory analysis.
Since then, Marmashen has become Gaiane Casnati's pet project. If she is not writing about the old church, she is lecturing about it, rallying support for the next major task: renovation.
"My family has for many years been associated with numerous publications on Armenian church architecture. Their major concern then was to highlight the beauty of these historical monuments: to sort of _____ educate other people and help them see our national treasures. "What we need now is more than that. We need to concentrate on ways of restoring and saving the dozens of old Armenian churches across Armenia," she said. "These are part of our history, or heritage, we need to save them for future generations," she said after yet another recent visit to Armenia.
Ms. Casnati, in collaboration with fellow architect Maria Mimmo, has written her first book titled La Chiesa Di Marmashen - Un Progetto Di Restauro Per L'Armenia, which outlines in great detail what should be done to save the church from further damage.
Financial and technical support for the book and her research has come from the Armenian Community Council of Milan, the Milan Polytechnic, and the Centro Studi e Documentazione della Cultura Armena of Venice — the publishers of the world-renowned series of books on Armenian church architecture and historical monuments.
Ms. Casnati's book also serves as the cornerstone of a major exhibition of hundreds of architectural drawings, photographs grouped in 30 large panels which have been displayed in Rome and Venice.
But Ms. Casnati says sharing the Armenian architectural wealth with the rest of the world should not be an objective in its own.
"In today's Armenia, there is a shortage of funds to spend on restoration. There also some flaws in the techniques used. Italy is one of the world's most advanced countries when it comes to restoration techniques and I hope to introduce that to Armenia," she says with great enthusiasm.
"Some of the methods used date back to the 1950's. Preservation and restoration are not exactly the same. The first is not as refined as the second. In Italy, we have the technology which can be applied in Armenia. We need the money to do the work," she adds.
Ms. Casnati has already started lobbying UNESCO, which has recently published its first major report on the "Cultural sites and their conservation in Armenia" by David Michelmore.
"A UNESCO mission spent about two weeks in 1995 surveying the important sites in Armenia and as a first step, has decided to provide a grant for an Armenian architect to come to Venice and study the special techniques involving stone repair," she said
A good first step, which Ms. Casnati hopes will be followed by the allocation of international funding to restore the Church of Marmashen.
"UNESCO is looking for outside sponsors, and I hope an Armenian will be one of them. Armenians should also get involved in the restoration of their own historical churches and monuments," she said.
"We need more people to fall in love with Armenia's architectural past ... just like they loved their finances," she said with a smile.
