British Council, Euro-2012, and young architects
The British Council in Ukraine and the Kyiv organization of Ukraine’s Union of Architects announced a competition among young architects and designers for the best concept of arrangements and festive decorations of Troitska Square near the Olimpiisky National Sports Complex in Kyiv. The works of the winners will be recommended to the developers, and they may be involved in the project as co-authors.
The jury consists of the influential Ukrainian and foreign architects: Vadym Zhezherin, president of the Kyiv organization of Ukraine’s Union of Architects, Anatolii Zhyrnov, director of the Institute of Design and Landscape Art, Kerem Cengiz, general director of the Ukrainian office of the British company Chapman Taylor, Bohdan Cherkes, director of the Institute of Architecture at Lviv Politechnic University, and other honored experts. This competition gives a chance to the talented youth to influence Kyiv’s cityscape for Euro-2012 and afterward for the coming generations. It is a part of the Creative Cities international project by the British Council to involve the public in enhancing urban environments through creativeness, entrepreneurship, and innovations.
The works will be presented and the results will be announced at an exhibit on March 18-20, 2010. The international seminar “Development Perspectives for the Object and Space Environment of a Modern City” will be held in conjunction with the final round. Ukrainian and foreign experts, as well as city community representatives will also participate. More details on the competition can be found on the website of the British Council in Ukraine.
What kind of Ukraine do Russians love?
Russians have read the special issue of Den/ The Day entitled “What Russia do we love?” (Den no. 10, March 31, 2009), which was memorable and containted interesting thoughts from our best contributors. Interestingly, the idea to create this special issue sparked great interest among the editors of Rossiykaya gazeta (Russian Newspaper), an official periodical published by the RF government (http://www.rg.ru). The special issue, prefaced by Den’s Editor in Chief Larysa Ivshyna (extract to be found below), was included in this newspaper’s issue on January 12.
“…It [the special issue. - Editor] appeared as a reaction to the public opinion research conducted in Russia. To our surprise, it has been revealed that Russian’s attitudes towards Ukrainians have changed significantly. It appears that our country ranks third on their enemy list, after the US and Georgia. This led us to the questions: “What mistakes has Ukraine made, that resulted in such a worsening of relations with our neighbor?”; “Or, has Russia done something to its citizens?” What is going on in Russia is very worrisome, irrelevant of the fact whether it is due to politicians being captive to public opinion, or whether the situation is contrived from above.. All biases aside, including political ones, Ukrainians and Russians are closely connected. Their historical ways have crossed, one way or another, they are crossing still, and will do so in the future. I have other questions: “What kind of Russia do we need?”, “What will it be like tomorrow?” and “What kind of Russia do we want it to be?”
Those, whose opinions were selected for publication by our Russian colleagues, include Volodymyr Panchenko, Oxana Pachliovska, Ihor Pasichnyk, Yurii Shcherbak, Ivan Dziuba, and Ela Libanova. This is a reputable team of Ukrainian intellectuals, well known to our readers.
On their part, our colleagues from Rossiyskaya gazeta have asked their readers to answer the question, What kind of Ukraine do you like? They made an only condition: the project will be published by Moscow’s Rossiyskaya gazeta and Kyiv’s Den. Follow The Day’s issues.
