Baku (Azerbaijan)
Azerbaijan’s capital Baku (or Bakı in Azeri) is the design love offspring of Paris and Dubai… though with a lot of Soviet qualities gliding half-covered up out of sight. Barely any urban communities on the planet are changing as fast and no place else in the Caucasus do East and West mix as flawlessly or as clamorously. At its heart, the Unesco-recorded Old City exists in an outlandishly crenelated circular arc of the fortress wall. Around this are effortlessly lit up stone manors and pedestrianized tree-fixed boulevards loaded up with elite boutiques. The subsequent oil blast, which began around 2006, has transformed the city into a pot of compositional experimentation and probably the best new structures are stunning magnum opuses. In the meantime, couples canoodle their way around lush stops and clasp hands on the Caspian-front bulvar (promenade), where greens and opal blues contradict Baku’s desert-ringed area.





















