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 the need for Ukrainian architects and companies to play a central role in the rebuilding, in addition to outlining its general direction.
The entire statement reads as follows:
THE KHARKIV MANIFESTO
I undertake to assemble the best minds with the best planning, architectural, design, and engineering skills in the world to bear on the rebirth of the city of Kharkiv. In the spirit of combining a planetary awareness with local action, I would seek to bring together the top Ukrainian talents with worldwide expertise and advice.
The first step would be a city masterplan linked to the region, with the ambition to combine the most loved and revered heritage from the past with the most desirable and greenest elements of infrastructure and buildings — in other words to deliver the city of the future now and to plan for its life decades ahead.
At the height of the pandemic, London updated a masterplan, the roots of which was a plan commissioned in the darkest days of World War II. A masterplan is an act of confidence in the future for generations still to come.
Lord Foster of Thames Bank OM
President
Norman Foster Foundation
18th April 2022
17 Comments
Nice Lord War Profiteer
I was thinking it was starting to sound like the plot to a new Avengers movie!
Lord Foster from Londongrad- land of the oligarchs, to save Ukrainian town planning with his hubris
An unbelievably cynical approach toward getting architecture commissions, from the guy who gave us a glass-roofed Notre Dame within days of that disaster....
Nice idea, though it will just make Russia embarrassed again and prone to plunder.
Prosperity will always be the shame of medievalism.
couldn't wait like.... at all? seems opportunistic
I don't know ... if he is being idealistic or opportunistic? Probably a bit of both. Architects have never shied away from publicizing their purported (and sometimes uncalled for) grandoise plans, often after a tragedy - all the masters of yore have had this playbook. Yet some were acclaimed as visionaries and other derided as delusional opportunists.
Obviously he is being opportunistic. An idealistic move would have been to let the Ukrainians rebuild their own cities. Though he talks about "assembling the finest minds", we all know what this ends up being - a foreigner's imprint created as a result of a war. Hence a war profiteer.
When Ukraine is rebuilt—and let us look forward to when this happens—perhaps we can learn from the country how to rebuild ourselves. We need it.
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.”
Answers won't come from the future, or our abstract and suspect vision of the future, but from the present, from the past.
how about they rebuild Ukraine so that it looks like Ukraine again. Just a thought.
Build Back Same?
Build back Urkranian.
I get worried when I read stuff like: “…assemble the best minds with the best planning, architectural, design, and engineering skills in the world to bear…”. What could go wrong?
Make it Right, anyone?
Ukrainians have experienced trauma, loss and isolation that is unprecedented in Europe since World War Two. To sustain a society in the "after war" people must hold a job, raise a family and develop as a whole human being, people must have an opportunity to heal. Healing Environments that are guided by design principles for the healing of the mind, body and spirit are not a luxury but a necessity to sustain well-being in the "after war." The ultimate rebirth of Ukraine must be guided by Ukrainian architects. We were the prime consultant for the Department of Veteran Affairs Healing Environment Design Guideline that can be applied to civilian hospitals, clinics and all building types:https://www.wbdg.org/ffc/va/de...
Norman Foster is not Baron Haussmann.
Everybody wants to rush in and be a Savior. After the fact.
The "New Ukraine '' will be whatever the Ukrainian's decide.
I hope the U.S. will support their effort, which is bathed in blood.
I hope the World will support Ukraine's rebirth.
Any writing, let alone, a "manifesto" with the word "master" seems antiquated at best.
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