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Þetta minnir mann á umræðuna hér varðandi breytingar í Reykjavík og því að ekki megi koma við nokkurn hjalla sem byggður hefur verið vestan Elliðaáa.

Don't make Kyiv a museum
Sep 22 2005, 00:05

The apartment of an acquaintance of mine is reminiscent of a museum, although the things in it have no museum value. His parents won’t allow him to change the decor or throw anything out: "My mother picked out these curtains in TsUM in 1950, and I remember how that was a holiday for us. And this toilet – my grandfather repaired it." The truth is that the curtains are torn, and the toilet is cracked and leaks.

Judging from everything, many architects and annoyed city-dwellers wish to turn Kyiv into a museum. They protest against construction not only in the historical center, but also in any part of the city in which somebody already lives. "This building will bring dissonance into the architectural concept of the street! Stores shouldn’t be situated in the center, because that will increase the flow of cars! And on this little square, near the trash bins, I kissed my future wife for the first time 40 years ago, you can’t build a new house there!"

Protectors of Kyiv’s old appearance hardly understand that the choice in the city isn’t between restoration of the Bessarabsky quarter as investors envision it, and as they envision it. The city can only choose between projects by people who want to invest money on the one hand, and weed-choked rat-lots protected by shields of advertising on the other hand.

The fact is, people invest their own money, even if it’s not completely honestly earned, and it’s necessary that the project get completed so that the money someday gets earned back. But land is expensive, workers demand money, and bureaucrats are waiting for bribes. So investors want seven floors, and not four, and ask for space in the expensive commercial areas in the center, and not in the city’s proletarian regions.

But what do the fighters for the inviolability of the city’s aura want? The splendid architectural ensembles of Venice or Saint Petersburg? No, with the exception of several truly outstanding architectural clusters – in short, the bourgeois Kyiv of the 19th century – the center isn’t that of the richest province of the Russian Empire. Rather, it was recently the capital of a Soviet republic, consisting of blocks of nine story buildings and Khrushchevkas. Why cling to a questionable past if a better time has now begun?

Take a look at one part of Khreshchatyk untouched by war – between Shevchenko Boulevard and Khmelnytskoho Street. Besides the building that was restored and made taller by Benneton, there’s no other reason to look there. Within the same block exist half-wrecked, twisted heaps, which for their esthetic unattractiveness can compete only with the poorest regions of Cairo.

We’ll always have Paris

When the Eiffel Tower was built in Paris, society – including the most famous writers and artists – wrote angry letters of protest about the erection of this "repulsive and useless monster, this outrage to the spirit of the capital of France." In the same way, people were outraged by the glass pyramid of the Louvre, built under the former president of France, Francois Mitterand. And now what? The Eiffel tower has become a symbol not only of Paris, but of all of France – indeed, the most famous architectural structure in the world. The Louvre pyramid united the past, the present and future and made visiting the museum easier.

Kyiv has the "Iron Woman" – the Rodina Mat monument, hated and reviled by architects as "inappropriate for a 1,500-year-old city." But for tourists, it’s become a symbol of the capital. And then there’s Independence Square, an unskillful imitation of antiquity, calling up no feelings except aversion to its tastelessness.

Any city, especially the capital of an actively developing country, is a growing organism. It’s not necessary – more accurately, it’s not possible – to place it in formalin and try with all your might to avoid architectural dissonance. We live in the 21st century, and to try to leave the city like it was two centuries ago is simply stupid. Our children should see our footsteps, not only monuments to the past.

Architecture isn’t just music hardened into stone. It represents the ideas that predominate in society, and a dynamic nation should leave its legacy. Therefore the reflection of St. Sofia Cathedral in the glass of the hotel built alongside it isn’t an insult to a sacred location, but a symbol of modernity.

It’s worth mentioning that according to the results of a poll carried out by the magazine Architecture and Prestige, 48 percent of Kyivans believe the capital of Ukraine has become better in recent years and only 17 percent believe it has become worse.

Of course, new buildings should be affirmed by the city building council, and those that go up in the center should be of value as contemporary architecture. But I can’t name one new building in Kyiv that summons up in me the same disgust as the nine-story Soviet buildings in Podil.

As Deng Xiaoping, the architect of Chinese reform said, quoting Mao, "Let a hundred flowers bloom." And look at what a chic city 3,000-year-old Beijing has become over the last 10 years.

Oleg Lysenko is deputy chief editor of Korrespondent magazine, where this essay originally appeared.

Translated from Russian by Andrey Slivka.

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