Architect Jürgen Mayer-Hermann was invited to Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, in 2004 after the country’s recently elected president Mikheil Saakashvili saw his work in a book. Saakashvili had decided to embark on a program of investment in infrastructure that Mayer-Hermann, in a Dezeen profile, likens to post-war Germany. Over the next decade, Mayer-Hermann’s practice — J. Mayer H. — went on to design a range of rest stops, border checkpoints, airports, and other public buildings for Saakashvili’s government. Saakashvili is no longer president but the buildings he commissioned will stand as a legacy of his term and the country’s rapid modernization.
