Svitlana Smolenska: The Heroic Period of Ukraine

Online lecture by Svitlana Smolenska will address several pressing questions. What is the uniqueness of Ukrainian industrial, civic, and residential architecture of these years? Should it be preserved? Why is it admired abroad and still undervalued in Ukraine? What was heroic about the architecture of Ukraine and Kharkiv – the first capital of Ukraine from 1919 to 1934? Industrial giants such as DniproHES and the Kharkiv Turbine Plant, the new cities of Zaporizhzhia and New Kharkiv, and grand metropolitan projects will be presented: the Freedom Square complex – the largest square in Europe and other examples of avant-garde architecture built or designed in these years. Why did they lose their authenticity in the following decades and how does the new war threaten the preservation of modernism's legacy in Ukraine today? Svitlana Smolenska is an architecture theorist with extensive academic experience in the field of architectural monument restoration. She has long been dedicated to modernist architecture in Ukraine and the possibilities of its revival. Since 2018, she has been a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Kharkiv School of Architecture in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
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