Why the work exists
Nino Beridze spent evenings in her aunt’s grocery counting how many people touched the bread, then put it back, then bought a bottle of water at the door. The till said the shop was “fine.” The floor said the bread table was in a draught and the water was the only thing a hurried person could grab. The first drawings were pencil on the back of supplier invoices. Neighbours started asking for the same kind of looking-at.
Cloud Layerpoint is that looking-at, given hours, a name, and a table at Level 11, 34 Pekini Avenue. We still refuse to pretend a shop is a laboratory. Guests keep shopping. Staff keep serving. We take notes.
How we work
One named person is responsible for a location. They introduce themselves to the shift, sit where they do not block a queue, and mark pauses rather than personalities. Records you already keep — till rolls, booking lists, stamp cards — come later, on the desk, so the drawings can hold both the watched hour and the counted hour. The briefing is short on purpose. If a finding cannot be said while a kettle boils, it is probably too ornate to use.
We take Georgian seriously as the language of the floor even when this site is in English. Briefings can run in Georgian or English; the sheets are labelled in whichever the shift reads faster.
People
Nino Beridze still takes the first walk through a grocery or a bakery. She cares about draughts, door swings, and the shelf that everyone touches and nobody buys.
Giorgi Kapanadze sits with till extracts and reservation books. He is the person who will tell you that Thursday looks busy only because a single tour group paid in cash at 11:40.
Tamar Gelashvili runs the briefings. She used to manage a small hotel desk in Sololaki and still hears when a “finding” would only annoy a night auditor.
Place
Tbilisi is not one kind of visitor. A courtyard boutique off the tourist path and a bakery that feeds the same street every morning do not share a pattern. We say no when a chain wants twelve identical reports in a fortnight; the rooms will not be identical, and neither should the drawings.
If you want to talk
Write to us with the address of the rooms. If you would rather know how a week of watching is sequenced, read Method.