Built in 1972 and rising 274.5 metres above Mount Mtatsminda, the Tbilisi Radio and TV Tower has served for decades as the city's main broadcasting mast, operated by the Georgian state broadcaster Teleradiocenter — its silhouette of three vertical sections joined by a circular and a triangular technical volume has become an inseparable part of the Tbilisi skyline, visible from the Old Town, Rike Park, Narikala Fortress and many other points across the centre. In 2018, Teleradiocenter invited KOKO architects to prepare a concept for renovating the ageing structure and giving the tower a new, publicly accessible function alongside its continued use for broadcasting.
The tower stands on the upper plateau of Mount Mtatsminda, within the same complex reached by Tbilisi's historic funicular, alongside Mtatsminda Park with its viewing terraces and amusement park. A visibility study confirmed that the tower is visible from virtually anywhere in the Old Town — from the narrow streets of Rustaveli Avenue, from Rike Park on the Metekhi cliff, from the walls of Narikala Fortress, from the roof of the Tbilisi Radisson Blu, and from in front of the Sameba Cathedral. This visibility was one of the reasons KOKO judged the +70 metre level the most fitting location, proportionally, for the tower's new public function: above this height the volume reads clearly against the sky rather than "sitting" on the ground, preserving the tower's existing vertical rhythm. The work began with an on-site survey. In May and June 2018, KOKO representatives (Andrus Kõresaar, Lembit-Kaur Stöör, Aleksandr Marmuljov) joined the Georgian engineering firm Progresi to assess the tower's technical condition, climbing through its internal platforms all the way to the top. On the second visit the team was joined by Vladimir Pasechniuk, chief engineer of the V. N. Shimanovsky Ukrainian Institute of Steel Construction in Kyiv — the same institute that had carried out a comprehensive structural expertise of the tower in 2007, and whose specialists had been involved in the tower's original design. This collaboration proved essential: through the structural engineer, KOKO gained access to the tower's original design documentation and long-term observation records, providing a reliable basis for the architectural solutions that followed. During the same visits, KOKO carried out a 3D point-cloud survey of the tower, its grounds and buildings, forming the basis of an accurate volumetric model for further design work.
The survey made the tower's condition clear. The 1994 fire, which broke out in the technical building rooms at levels +155 to +159 metres, significantly damaged the load-bearing structure in the zone between +140 and +274.5 metres — windows shattered, allowing rainwater into the structure, and mineral-wool insulation that absorbed moisture without drying out triggered years of active corrosion. The most severely affected sections (151–170 m, 223–230 m and 252–257 m) were identified by KOKO as requiring detailed further inspection, weld checks and restoration of protective coatings. It was also noted that the tower had been built, in the spirit of the 1970s–80s, with generous reserve space for technical equipment that today's digital broadcasting technology no longer requires — Tallinn's TV Tower was cited as a comparison, where equipment that once needed over 700 m² of technical space now fits into a cooled, climate-controlled server room of roughly 60 m². This reassessment opened up an opportunity: space freed from technical use within the tower could be given over to public functions without interfering with the broadcaster's core operations. KOKO analysed several options for how to organise the tower's new content. The triangular technical volume at +70 metres — the most distinctive element of the tower's original silhouette — was envisioned as a public level, combining a bar, a small stage, a food preparation area and a restaurant space, while retaining the existing diagonal bracing as part of the load-bearing structure. In the upper, circular volume at roughly +150 metres, a viewing platform and a themed exhibition space were proposed, where visitors could learn about the tower's construction history and the history of Tbilisi before continuing on to the observation deck. An additional 750 m² spa-hotel extension on the tower grounds was also considered, since initial calculations showed that the restaurant and viewing platform alone would not recoup the investment within a ten-year horizon; at the same time, it was noted that Tbilisi currently lacks high-level wellness-spa accommodation, representing a clear gap in the market.
To resolve visitor circulation, KOKO designed a new core within the tower's existing steel shaft: two firefighting-rated visitor lifts (cabin size 2.1 × 1.1 m, capacity 1000 kg, speed 3 m/s, reaching 75 metres in 20–30 seconds), a separate food lift for restaurant and kitchen service, and an evacuation staircase capable of clearing 300 people in 15 minutes. This entire solution was designed physically separate from the tower's technical core, which retained the Teleradiocenter's equipment and future cable shafts — the technical space was isolated with fire barriers (EI120 protection level, a fire-protective layer around the load-bearing steel column, and a separate cable shaft with chemical gas suppression), so that there is no direct connection between the visitor areas and the broadcasting infrastructure, even in an emergency. Fire safety was designed by Vassil Hartshuk, senior fire marshal at the Estonian Rescue Center's technical engineering bureau, who had previously created the fire safety and evacuation concept for Tallinn's TV Tower ahead of the opening of its 175-metre viewing platform in 2010 — the solution was checked against the Law of Georgia on Public Safety by Mr Tornike Todria in Tbilisi. A water-fog sprinkler system was proposed for all rooms and levels (using half the water of conventional systems with equal effectiveness and less water damage), together with two electric pumps and a backup diesel generator at ground level, and a dedicated water reservoir so the tower would not depend on city network pressure. Cable routes were routed into a separate shaft with chemical gas suppression, isolated from main rooms by fire-resistant panels, and a dedicated ground-level entrance and control room were provided for arriving fire teams.
The same logic extends to ground level. A new entrance building of roughly 960 m² was proposed at the base of the tower, housing reception, a waiting/exhibition area, a museum shop, a kitchen and a firefighting support point. The functional zoning of the site clearly separates three movement flows: visitors moving from the main entrance to reception and the lifts, a separate kitchen-service route, and the movement of the tower's administration and maintenance staff, routed behind the site past the existing administration building, without crossing the visitor area. The site's existing buildings were also reassessed: several ageing structures (garage, car wash, repair workshop) were proposed for demolition or relocation, consolidating service functions and freeing up space for a generous entrance plaza in front of the new visitor building. The Tbilisi Radio and TV Tower concept illustrates KOKO's approach to historic infrastructure: combining technical rigour — engaging the tower's original structural engineer, a detailed condition assessment, and a code-compliant fire safety solution — with a clear architectural idea: turning a Soviet-era technical facility into a landmark open to the city, without losing anything of the tower's recognisable, half-century-old silhouette.