“Kyiv is an exceptionally eclectic
city architecturally. This allows it to embrace almost any architectural form.
But too many architects have taken advantage this eclecticism and abused it.”
This sums up a hot debate I watched Thursday
night on Studio 1+1’s talk show, “Ya tak dumayu” – “That’s what I think.” The
topic was the development of downtown Kyiv, with Serhiy Babushkin, the city’s
chief architect and the guy who’s John Hancock you need if you want to put up
so much as a dog house in Kyiv, in the hot seat.
With Mr. Babushkin was a white-haired gentleman
by the name of Oleksandr Komarovskiy, the architect responsible for the Maidan
Nezalezhnosti project.
Being a true product of the soviet privileged
class known as the nomenklatura,
the suave Mr. Babushkin was highly disinclined to listen much to his fellow
guests or to answer directly any questions from the presenter.
“We’ve done more to build up the central parts
of Kyiv in the last six years than in the last 20,” said Mr. Babushkin. “I
don’t need any referendum. The happy faces I see on the Maidan, people
climbing into the fountains, taking each other’s pictures – that’s the best
vote for me and every Monday I go to work happy that I’ve seen that.”
Being of a soviet generation that thought any
speech under 57 minutes was just an interrupted anecdote, Mr. Komarovskiy was
disinclined to stop ranting once he got started.
“You can’t compare the present Maidan with the
old fountains and what was build in another epoch. Time has come for the Maidan
to become a favorite place for a new generation. You’ll see what it looks like
when the fountains are working and everything else. It’s all on a European
level of quality.” Etc, etc.
Given the fact that the statue of Ukraina is already
listing forward, less than a year after installation, I’m not sure what Europe
Mr. Komarovskiy has in mind.
There’s another European concept that I have questions about. It’s called town planning and vision.
Now, I’ll be the first to agree that you can’t
build by committee. Yet when a city plans, it ought to be thinking about what
that development will mean over many years. It’s not just building a single
house for a particular family. It’s building an environment for tens or
hundreds of thousands – even millions – of people. It’s building something more
than one administration will have to deal with.
Build a bad road and you have to rebuild it a
year or two or five later. If you’re into laundering money or buying tiles from
your son’s factory, fine. At least try to fix up a new location each time,
rather than redoing what was badly made the first time around!
One woman on the show put it beautifully. “A
city is a living, evolving thing. It continues to grow and change forever.
There’s never a moment when it is complete or perfect, so every moment it must
be the best that it can be for its residents in the first instance.”
Whatever today’s administration plans now will
affect what can be planned in the future. Even if it’s an authoritarian regime
that simply tears everything down arbitrarily only to put something else up in
its place equally arbitrarily.
“The residents are affected by any city construction,”
said one of the talk-show guests. “It affects their daily lives and their
world view. It affects them continually, every day that they use the city and
its infrastructure.”
And these people should be heard – even if, in
the end, they are not entirely listened to, for legitimate reasons. It’s
called building goodwill. A thoroughly European concept.
But what’s going on in Kyiv is looking worse
than building by committee. It’s building without planning, consultation,
debate or taste.
Take the remnants of the original gates which
were found under the Maidan.
Olha Petrova, an art and architectural critic
on the show, said, “What a travesty this whole process has been! When any
normal country uncovers a Pompei – which is what was found under the Maidan –
these things are preserved. Why were they not preserved in Ukraine?”
To which Mr. Komarovskiy replied: “Our archaelogical
group did what they could to preserve and they fulfilled their program. Of
course, there were some difficult situations and things were lost, but I
challenge anyone to do better in the circumstances we were working in.” Etc,
etc.
Take Mr. Babushkin’s notion that the happy
faces on the Maidan are a vote for his project.
In what sense are they? Why should people let
his bad planning spoil their happy day in the sun? They’re used to hanging out
on the Maidan every weekend. They’ll just learn to ignore the mish-mash of
unrelated sculptures and the obstructive conservatory roofs.
“Nobody is being driven underground,” is Mr.
Babushkin’s response. “If it doesn’t appeal to you, don’t go there.”
Maybe Mr. Babushkin should ask how many people
are worried that the roadway could collapse onto the underground mall with
time. Or that a well-placed rock will shatter the glass in the mall skylights.
Ask how many have tripped walking down the halls of Metrograd with its barely
visible half-steps.
The fact that people adapt is not a sign of
approval. In fact, during a telephone poll during the show, 88% of callers said
they wanted some say in future developments in Kyiv.
Goodwill boys, take heed. •
–from
the notebooks of Pan O.
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