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UNESCO survey verifies 341 damaged cultural sites across Ukraine

2024-02-15T17:35:00-05:00

UNESCO has verified nearly 30 dozen damaged cultural sites across Ukraine in a new survey meant to shed light on the extent to which the cost of war has left an impact on the nation’s spiritual landscape and intellectual heritage over the past two full years.

Kharkiv and Donetsk led the list of regions with the most damaged sites, totaling 56 and 87, respectively. The list counts a total of 341 sites, another 39 of which are in the Kyiv capital region. UNESCO officials compiled their tally from a number of on-the-ground sources. This is apparently meant to be a preliminary damage assessment that will hereafter be updated on a regular basis once the process for reporting is established.

The new survey counted 126 religious sites, 150 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, 31 museums, 19 monuments, 14 libraries, and one archive. Among the most significant damaged sites are the National Palace of Arts in Kyiv and many buildings in the endangered historic city center of Ode...

A new Kharkiv School of Architecture student project delivers valuable design solutions for rebuilding schools in Ukraine

2023-09-06T18:43:00-04:00

A new project aimed at improving the educational experience of Ukrainian schoolchildren is helping students at the Kharkiv School of Architecture participate in their country’s concerted response to an infrastructure crisis that began in February 2022 and has seen the destruction of an estimated 331 educational institutions nationwide, thus far.

The "First-Aid Spatial Kit" initiative is being taught as part of the school’s first-year construction practice curriculum and allows students to develop copyable designs for various interventions (furniture, pavilions, play spaces, etc.), which, in turn, can be implemented using readily-available materials by affected school districts looking for “self-help” solutions in rebuilding.

Photo: Zlatoslava Kryshtafovych & Oleksandr Holovashkin, courtesy Kharkiv School of Architecture

Over the course of four weeks, students developed a suite of six solutions that were also marked by a consideration for accessibility and universal design. Each of t...

The Ukrainian architect who showed Norman Foster his Kharkiv

2023-04-10T14:05:00-04:00

Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, announced that Foster and his nonprofit, the Norman Foster Foundation, had agreed to work on such a plan in collaboration with the city. Max, who had never imagined he’d hear the words “Kharkiv” and “Foster” in the same sentence, was asked to join Foster’s working group. He was one of only two architects selected who were still physically in Kharkiv—the only people in a position to “show” Kharkiv to Foster.

The New Yorker contributing writer Masha Gessen tells the story of Maxim Rozenfeld, a Kharkiv-native, Ukrainian architect and historian with special expertise in the high-tech-style oeuvre of Norman Foster, who ended up briefing a Foster-led team when the city's mayor Ihor Terekhov announced an ambitious rebuilding plan for the heavily-damaged Kharkiv one year ago in April (new details emerged in December).

New details emerge for Norman Foster's Kharkiv rebuilding plan

2022-12-29T12:27:00-05:00

New details are emerging on Norman Foster’s proposed master plan for the besieged Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Popular German outlet DW has some information on the plan, which Foster and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov have yet to make publicly available following an initial announcement in April.

For now, the plan reportedly entails at least five “pilot projects” and an interior overhaul of the city’s destroyed House of Regional Administration building that is similar to the firm’s reconstruction of the Reichstag by leaving only its existing facade remaining over a modernized interior.

Among the pilot projects, a new science and technology center will be enacted in addition to an unspecified “architectural landmark” at the city’s center and new 6-kilometer (3.72-mile) pedestrian park at the confluence of the city’s Kharkiv and Nemyshlya rivers. Further “Industry” and “Housing” pilots will involve the adaptive reuse of surviving residential buildings and a coal-fired power plant, provid...

Despite stigma and war, preservationists are fighting to keep Ukraine's Soviet-era architecture intact

2022-05-10T12:45:00-04:00

Attitudes towards Soviet-era architectural heritage are divided in Ukraine. Some value the country’s modernist, post-modernist and brutalist buildings for their sharpness and conciseness of form, for their functionality and concrete simplicity. But for others they stand as an unwanted reminder of Ukraine’s Soviet past, and much of this built heritage has come under threat in recent years.

Ukraine’s pre-WWII cultural infrastructure has been a focus of the press and comprises the vast majority of listed buildings in Ukraine’s state database. Examples of Soviet-era architecture are, however, systemically less protected. Their plight is being well-documented by social media activists like ukrainemodernism and has reignited a debate amongst preservationists inside Ukraine as to their rightful place in a country some feel is under threat of losing its national identity.

“Any way you put it, it’s our heritage,” photographer Dmytro Soloviov told Al Jazeera of his personal philosophy. “Regardless of your political affiliation, these are buildings and art objects that were created by Ukrainians.”

The preservationist cause is also being folded into the country’s plans to rebuild following the cessation of hostilities. Some hope they will include the Stalinist and Soviet-era s...

Norman Foster releases manifesto outlining his vision for Kharkiv, Ukraine as a 'city of the future'

2022-04-20T14:07:00-04:00

As the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine grind on, the leadership of one of the country’s most affected cities is already planning future rebuilding efforts after taking a special meeting with Norman Foster.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov met with the architect Monday to discuss his vision for rehabilitating a city that is now almost completely unrecognizable after two months of brutal shelling.

In the meeting, Terekhov laid out his vision for a reborn city defined by a new “high-tech architecture” and master-planned by Foster to “provide a framework for the creation of Kharkiv as a city of the future.”

The pair were joined by senior Ukrainian economic officials Igor Abramovych and by Olga Demyanenko, academics Ian Goldin of Oxford University and Harvard professor Ed Glaeser, and the Norman Foster Foundation’s Co-Heads of the Design, Architecture and Technology Unit Diego Lopez and Alberto Cendoya. Foster prepared a short manifesto for the meeting, which in part addresses th...