Authors
Leyla Sayfutdinova1; 1 The University of St Andrews, UK Discussion
This paper examines the practices of remembering and forgetting of the first oil boom through one of the earliest and the most celebrated layers of Baku’s ‘palimspestic petroleumscape’ (Hein 2016): the oil baron architecture. Comprised of the private mansions and some public buildings constructed by the oil industrialists, this architectural legacy partially survived both the Soviet renovation and largescale post-Soviet urban redevelopment. Yet in the course of these transformations many buildings changed not only owners, but also functions, architectural details, and narratives assigned to them. In the post-Soviet period, the preserved buildings became memory devices through which stories of Baku's pre-Soviet past and the first oil boom are being narrated, and connections with both the present and the outside world are being forged. 
