A snappy seek for main architects in recent Ukraine will inevitably convey you to Oleg Drozdov, the primary architect of Drozdov&Companions (shaped in 1997) and a co-founder of Kharkiv Faculty of Structure (KHSA), the primary and most effective non-public structure faculty in Ukraine, in operation since 2017. Each entities had been began in Kharkiv, the second one largest town within the nation after its capital, Kyiv. In March I talked to the architect in regards to the faculty and his imaginative and prescient for Ukraine after the struggle, and this month we mentioned the transfer of his follow and faculty to Lviv, the intentions in the back of a few of his tasks, the present state of Ukrainian structure, and who’re the rustic’s maximum influential architects. A portion of our dialog follows a brief creation.
Oleg Drozdov used to be born in 1966 in Volgodonsk, Russia, lower than 250 kilometres east of the Ukrainian border. He studied structure at Civil Engineering Institute in Kharkiv, and graduated in 1990, following army carrier within the Russian Some distance East. Upon his commencement, Drozdov went to Sumy in northeastern Ukraine to follow structure for 2 years prior to leaving for Prague the place he tried to pursue an inventive occupation as a painter, experimenting with rusted surfaces in a form of discussion with nature. He returned to Kharkiv a number of years later to restart his occupation as an architect.
In his previous architectural tasks, Drozdov experimented with gesso, taking part in with two opposing concepts — uncompromising contemporaneity and patina of time. Those most commonly inside design commissions incorporated model boutiques and eating places that had been the primary in Ukraine to include frameless glazing. Those strikingly trendy areas driven the speculation of transparency, openness, and exhibitionism. Ultimately, his paintings transitioned from celebrating new and brilliant surfaces to what could be extra agreeable with the passing of time. He persisted to experiment with blurring obstacles between the home and lawn, inside and external, and discovering commonalities between non-public and public, industrial and public areas. His present focal point is on returning structure to its essence via underlining structures’ tectonics.
The architect’s maximum well known tasks come with VG Horse Membership, a number of industrial centres, and rental structures — all in Kharkiv — in addition to properties throughout Ukraine and Café Très in Montreux, Switzerland. For the reason that Russian invasion, the place of job collaborated with Lviv studio Replus Bureau and Ponomarenko Bureau from Kharkiv on designing and construction 17 shelters inside colleges and sports activities amenities, serving no less than 15,000 other folks. The architect’s theatre — Teatr na Podoli in Kyiv — became Drozdov right into a public character within the nation because of an enormous quantity of discussions about this construction’s appropriateness within the town’s ancient center. It changed into a undeniable Rubicon of Ukrainian structure, attracting intense debates. This engagement of Ukrainian electorate in scrutinising the standard of the constructed setting will without a doubt be essential within the upcoming large rebuilding procedure.
Vladimir Belogolovsky: Ahead of the struggle, you had been based totally in Kharkiv, the town that you simply needed to flee. Now that you’re in Lviv, may just you speak about your present state of affairs?
Oleg Drozdov: Each our place of job and faculty, moved to Lviv, 1,000 kilometres to the west, inside the first week after the struggle began. We arrange the brand new place of job and returned to paintings two weeks later. The college used to be additionally operational inside weeks. I knew that there have been going to be loads of refugees on this a part of the rustic. So, we contacted the mayor’s place of job right here about putting in place shelters. Parallel to that, we organised fundraising campaigns. Our architects, scholars, and their oldsters all volunteered on those tasks.
VB: The place are you working from in Lviv, each your place of job and the college?
OD: The college to begin with moved to a rent-free area on the Ukrainian Catholic College right here. And now we discovered a extra everlasting house on the Lviv Academy of Arts. We’re setting up fundraisings to get cash for renovating those areas. We will be able to get started our much-anticipated faculty 12 months in September. Already one month after the struggle began, no less than part of our scholars and professors, moved to Lviv and we began having our categories part on-line and part in-person. And our place of job used to be to begin with hosted via an area company, AVR Construction. Just lately we moved to our personal new area, which used to be rented to us at part marketplace value.
VB: What tasks are you presently operating on on the place of job and what number of of you are actually in Lviv?
OD: We’ve 15 other folks right here. Ahead of the struggle, there have been 27 people. 3 other folks left the rustic. A couple of others had to stick with their households in Kharkiv and different towns. And several other other folks took a ruin because of the extremely prime degree of emotional tension at the moment. And a few architects are operating remotely.
Some of the first tasks that we returned to paintings on had been our commissions in Switzerland — a town villa and an rental construction. There also are a few tasks in Dnipro — a museum for the municipality and a town artwork gallery referred to as Dnipro Heart for Recent Tradition or DCCC, a brand new main cultural hub with public sport zone and dedicated to keeping up unfastened get right of entry to. Then there may be an academic campus within the Carpathian Mountains in western Ukraine. And there are co-housing and co-working tasks in Lviv and the scientific campus in Kharkiv.
Along with those industrial commissions, we’re operating on analysis tasks, together with reconsidering municipal condo fashions and taking part with factories on growing new fabrics and construction sorts. We discover concepts for the usage of prefabricated concrete panels and different parts in those tasks, specifically in the ones structures that had been broken all the way through the struggle. And we discover concepts for utilising fabrics that come from demolished structures and easy methods to revive the everyday Soviet microraion or micro-district type via expanding density however reducing the choice of flooring, making improvements to insulation to raised mirror local weather alternate, and placing new public purposes.
Whilst we’re doing all this paintings, we placed on cling our commonplace salaries and earnings and reside and paintings as a form of commune. We percentage flats, tasks, and earnings. In brief, we don’t deal with operating on our tasks as a industry.
VB: Anti Patio is your personal space. How would you formulate its major thought?
OD: This can be a container for dwelling. This can be a vessel that accommodates many fantastic plots. It modified my lifestyles via letting me reside many lives that I may just now not expect. The primary days that I moved there, nearly all my time used to be spent looking at issues with my mouth open. I realized such a lot. I began paying very shut consideration to each element within the lawn. I must indicate that being in each room you might be solely surrounded via the lawn and the perspectives that cross on for plenty of kilometres. So, the home is like an unending plot or movie. It’s open to an overly pleasurable revel in. Lots of my buddies had been provoked via the home so far as their alternate of behaviour or temper. This position helps to keep gathering many essential conferences and conversations that came about there. And this is a complete different international for my buddies’ youngsters.
VB: And what are you able to say about your Horse Membership?
OD: There we needed to marry the vernacular structure and the commercial structure. The challenge’s tight price range resulted in the speculation of an overly ordinary façade. This used to be our 2nd challenge for this consumer, after designing his villa. That’s how we knew that he owned a woodland the place he were gathering fallen bushes. So, I requested if shall we utilise them as a show of trunks on the construction’s entrance. This woodland could be very ornamental, and the customer protects it dearly. The problem used to be to make use of those parts now not as décor however as an integral a part of the development. So, those trunks, in truth, lift the load of the entrance wall, despite the fact that their mere presence conjures up the classical order of structure with positive Submit-Modernist connotations. However for me what’s essential is that it tells a tale. This tale is set integrating the fabric and the legacy of the website online and making it part of the brand new challenge and the way previous fabrics are utilized in new tactics.
The opposite attention-grabbing particularity about this challenge is that it’s all designed across the body structure of the pony as a result of near to each measurement — door openings, hall widths, temperature mode, air flow, pavement fabrics, to not point out such main points as washing and therapeutic massage apparatus — the whole lot is catered to those glorious animals.
VB: I would love you to elaborate on a few of your quotes. The primary one: “To be, now not appear to be.”
OD: To that, I’d upload — to reside, to not personal. Which means what’s essential isn’t to possess a illustration of one thing however to revel in lifestyles itself. Structure must lend a hand us do this in probably the most direct and galvanizing tactics, now not simply package deal our goals in fancy fabrics. I really like when structure isn’t simply an area for the buildup of stuff however a device to be informed and revel in lifestyles. I attempt to separate the essence from mere makeup.
VB: “I don’t see any obstacles between Artist, structure, artwork, and lifestyles.”
OD: It’s true. I see the arena each as an artist and an architect. In fact, there are works of structure that experience not anything to do with artwork. [Laughs.]
VB: “We need to alternate our towns for the easier.”
OD: This slogan is vital for our college. The speculation of the college is to shape a neighborhood with commonplace values and the will for truthful and deep discourses, and it’s the neighborhood that can shape our towns. Our towns can’t alternate just by including singular, even handsome structures. All of us should be brokers of alternate.
VB: “Structure should claim its place to the surroundings, position, and time. Constructions evoking grandiose funerals of the development fabrics are to be have shyed away from.”
OD: It’s all about growing structures responsibly. And I believe one of the crucial maximum celebrated structures with their doubtful experimentality from the past due Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s are actually extremely old-fashioned. Whilst some previous tasks, comparable to the ones via Marcel Breuer, most effective turn into extra related. I believe he has turn into probably the most recent architect whose structures are about eternity, proximity to nature, efficiency, intensity, and tectonics — qualities that recent structure has misplaced.
VB: Although the struggle remains to be in an overly lively section, architects are already discussing the way forward for the rustic’s reconstruction. Some overseas architects rushed to participate within the rebuilding efforts. Any ideas on that?
OD: As we growth on this procedure it is vital for us, now not merely to transition from being a colonial state below Russia to turning into any other colonial state of the West. I used to be one of the crucial initiators of the Ro3kvit city coalition, which engaged in a collaboration with western experts in 3 spaces: analysis, training, and public systems. Any growth should be executed collaboratively with native government, the inhabitants, and, after all, native architects. Those members of the family must be established prior to any architectural items can be designed. Already we established our ongoing conversations with native municipalities, neighborhood activists, and overseas architects as experts. The location gifts a possibility for Ukraine to amass large international wisdom about probably the most a success city tasks and combine it into our context. New tasks must now not fall from the sky drawn up via a longtime overseas architect.
VB: Is there this type of perception as recent Ukrainian structure?
OD: Our structure goes via a novel transformation. I’m specifically within the paintings that began after 2014, the 12 months the struggle between Russia and Ukraine first broke out. Within the ultimate 3 years, I’ve been serving because the Mies van der Rohe Award professional, nominating structures in Ukraine. 2014 introduced a undeniable time table that has been forming structure. Ahead of that, it used to be solely pushed via intake and earnings. Since 2014, there’s a new neighborhood consciousness and a brand new social time table. The start of the struggle signalled the instant when Ukrainian society began to shape. After the struggle structure will alternate dramatically however even between 2014 and now it has matured considerably as a result of our society is present process a surprisingly dynamic transformation. Our structure will mirror that. There may be one of those hipster urbanism that has turn into reasonably central in our towns.
VB: Which structures inbuilt Ukraine because the flip of the century would you determine as an important?
OD: I’d select a brief open-air level construction referred to as Degree, the primary venue of the 2018 cultural competition Development in Dnipro. It used to be a jointly designed, flooring sourced and flooring funded public area. The design used to be led via architect Tomasz Świetlik and concrete fashion designer and researcher Kuba Snopek, each from Poland. Some other challenge that I additionally nominated for the Mies Award is the Heart of Andrey Sheptytsky, a cultural centre, and library on the Ukrainian Catholic College in Lviv, designed via Behnisch Architekten and integrated 2017. Its structure could also be over the top and redundantly polyphonic, however its social affect is reasonably extra special. This can be very lively. They continuously organise a wide variety of public occasions.
The 3rd challenge I would come with here’s the Memorial of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred via Bet Line Architects in Lviv which opened in 2019. This can be a very suitable observation and testimony that established new relationships with the town — how it works with tragedy, reminiscence, public area, and the park. In the end, I’d point out the Renovation of the Spassky Bastion and Church in Kyiv via AER Architects finished in 2018. All 4 tasks are extra a couple of new social type than structure in a slender sense. That is what Ukrainian structure used to be lacking prior to. Most effective talking of social qualities, we will be able to truly speak about recent structure.
I’d additionally say that Ukrainian structure is reasonably regional with Dnipro being a robust chief, whilst Lviv is an in depth 2nd. This has so much to do with the paintings of Alexander Dolnik [1954-2013], the past due Dnipro architect. In his structures, you’ll recognise a lot of quotations from 20th century architects, however he without a doubt discovered his personal language. He used to be the main architect within the nation in recent years, leaving an important legacy.
VB: On your opinion who’s the main architect in Ukraine these days?
OD: I’d somewhat title a few of our maximum influential architects. And I’d tension that their affect comes extra now not from what they constructed however somewhat from what they pontificate. Because of this, I’d title Viktor Zotov, a very powerful determine at the architectural level; he’s the founding father of ZOTOV&CO in Kyiv and of an establishment referred to as CANactions, a well-liked instructional platform, competition, and publishing corporate. I’d additionally title Slava Balbek and his Balbek Burau in Kyiv as one of the crucial influential architects with an emphasis on growing recent interiors. Then there may be an influential architect and journalist Julian Chaplinsky together with his standard Chaplinsky Weblog. The recent structure right here remains to be being shaped. Our architects are in a position to paintings with the folk to create now not simply sublime structures however structures that may fulfil the desires of our society within the making. What is excellent about our structure is that it’s being shaped at this time. And we additionally wish to reconsider our heritage, which is wealthy, and inspirational, and if we do it seriously, so much may also be realized from it.
