Kharkiv. Architectural Guide - Gubkina, Ievgeniia

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Résumé :
Author Iegeniiva Gubkina's Architectural Guide Kharkiv is another title on Ukraine's building tradition. In this 300-pages publication, she argues passionately for the protection of the Constructivist heritage in her hometown. In Kharkiv, the war destroys buildings almost daily - making it difficult to remember Ukraine's architectural history. A prominent example is the Railway Workers' Club, which was largely destroyed after two direct attacks in March and most recently in August 2022. This guide is more than a documentation of the significant buildings in the second largest Ukrainian city. This book is a declaration of love for a city that was exposed to direct combat several times during the Second World War and has been a frontline city since February 2022. Gubkina's description of Kharkiv is based on the layout of the Janus-faced structure Old Town vs. New Town and Sumska Street connecting the two parts. ?But the two equal centers do not simply oppose, argue, or resist one another, but are in dialogue, in interaction, in a dialectical relationship. This is not the primitive negation of the old, but the classic unity and struggle of opposites of the old and the new. Or more, it is the completion of the thesis-antithesis model by synthesis.? This ambivalence takes on all the more significance against the backdrop of the Russian army's current war of aggression. This title is part of the Histories of Ukrainian Architecture programme initiated by DOM publishers in response to Russia's attack on Ukraine's sovereignty on 24 February 2022....

Biographie:
Ievgeniia Gubkina (born 1985) is an architectural historian from Kharkiv and currently lives in exile in London. She is the author of numerous books on the architectural history of Ukraine, including the Architectural Guide Slavutych, published by DOM publishers in 2016 in English, Ukrainian, and Russian (out of print).

Sommaire:
Today Kharkiv's unfortunate geographical position on the eastern edge of Europe makes it a frequent target for the Russian army's relentless shelling and airstrikes. Yet, not long ago, Ukraine's second-largest city was a vibrant centre of student life, progressive art, intellectual thought, and techno-logical innovation, all spiced by the tough post-industrial identity of its citizens. Born from waves of migration, modernisation, industrialisation, and revolution, Kharkiv trod a stormy path from its origins as a Cossack military fortress to a period (1919-1934) when it was the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This decade and a half was a golden age, marked by a dramatic construction boom that turned Kharkiv into a legendary Modernist city. In this publication author Ievgeniia Gubkina takes the reader on a journey through the city's history and architecture, from its Old Centre to its New Centre, home to Derzhprom, a Constructivist gem which was also the embodiment of a new model of social and economic relations. This architectural guide is a tribute to the indomitable spirit of freedom of Kharkiv's citizens. But it is also an important act of remembering and resistance: in documenting the city's buildings in words and photographs even as many of them are, day after day, being destroyed by Russian bombs, it keeps them intact and alive in our minds as a model for the city's future....