The 3rd annual International Architecture Festival CANactions 2010 has opened in the Ukrainian capital. The event is masterminded by the Zotov & Co. Architecture Bureau and ambitious budding architects from Ukraine and Europe. For a week, both young and experienced, renowned and unknown aces of the drawing board are to discuss the problems of Kyiv’s present-day architecture, exchange ideas, and compete in design mastery.
The festival program includes workshops and lectures by the outstanding European architects from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, and Ukraine. The most active and ambitious young participants will be entitled to an opportunity to compete in the student design program and win enrollment in a M.A. program at the DIA Dessau, Germany.
The jury includes both European experts in architecture and Ukrainian specialists. Jeroen de Willigen, an architect from a Dutch architecture bureau De Zwarte Hond and a member of the professional panel of judges of the student design contest, welcomed the participants of this international festival and hoped that the communication would be successful and the main aim of the event would be achieved.
The latter, in his opinion, lies in handing down experience in the process of teaching youth and searching for new ideas of modern architecture while discussing cultural, geographical, and economic issues.
Furthermore, an International Exhibit of Architectural Designs will be open at the Kyiv Architect Center during this week. Experts will judge the works by young architects from Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and Ukraine.
The week-long international architectural event will climax in a workshop whose theme can be defined as “The slopes of Kyiv. The Belt.” For seven days, a team made up of 10 renowned international and 10 young Ukrainian architects is to work together on a joint design. The experts will elaborate the designs for the development of the “Belt,” Kyiv’s most expensive territory along the Dnieper’s upper bank, at the boundary of the capital’s historical center and the natural landscape area.
The work of the international architect group will be supervised by the renowned Russian critic, professor at the Moscow Institute of Architecture, architect Yevgeniy ASS:
“I already have some experience in participating in similar and larger-scale workshops. I held the most recent one, which lasted for three months, in Venice together with Russian students and international architects within the framework of an architecture biennial festival.
“In my view, it is fairly interesting concept — bring together representatives of various European states and unite their efforts with those of their Ukrainian colleagues for working on an urgent development problem. It is important not only as a part of the educational process and exchange of know-how, but also, first and foremost, as a search for ideas and new trends in the world architectural art.
“As far as the result of our week-long work goes, I just hope it will not look like a ready-made design. I wouldn’t like it to be some sort of architectural forms and definite suggestions, a kind of material for discussion, on the level of one’s likes and dislikes. I want all of us, in the course of the workshop, to develop certain strategic research which will allow to debate the general concept of urban development in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states.”
NOTA BENE!
On the same day, another joint International project named “The Linear City of Kharkiv,” masterminded by young architects from the Lviv Polytechnic National University, the Kharkiv State Technical University of Construction and Architecture, and the Vienna Technical University, opened in Kharkiv. The young participants of the project will spend a week designing a residential development on the premises of the former Serp i Molot works. The 44 hectares of the industrial area will have to house not only residential buildings, but also educational infrastructure, shopping malls, and entertainment centers.
