Alla Horska. The tree of Life
Without doubt, the future development of Mariupol is an interesting topic of study. A city is not only buildings, but also the people. One of the most industrialized cities is in fact not a ‘typical giant’ that possesses factories and life consisting of eight hour shifts, 24 hours a day.
Photo Justin Tyler Tate
After an entertaining 20-hour long train journey from Kyiv, the residents of Architecture Ukraine are back in Mariupol for the follow up field trip to complete their site study. This will allow them to calibrate their project ideas before submitting the final concept proposals.
Rachel Armstrong, professor of Experimental Architecture at Newcastle University, conducted a lecture Architecture for the Ecocene.
According to Armstrong, architecture for the Ecocene examines how biologically active metabolisms can help us design and engineering new approaches for the production of architecture.Continue reading →
An important part of the working process for the residents are the weekly project reviews during which ideas are exchanged, questions raised and concepts challenged. Apart from the curators, the invited AU expert guests also take part in these.
During the week each of the residents work on their individual projects in order to present their work at the end of the week on Friday. This enriches the projects conceptually, establishes international connections and provides fresh input.
After 5 days in Mariupol this footage is put together as a visual notebook and a starting point for a documentary movie being shot in the city later this year during the Izolyatsia AU residency program.
Recently put in the spotlight due to the current conflict between pro-Russian and Ukrainian forces it is a stronghold of the Donetsk region but also a very unique city that is struggling with adaptation to an extreme situation.
The Architecture Ukraine residency project continues to hold open lectures on related topics. On Saturday, July 25, anthropologist at Oxford Brookes University in England, Brigitte Piquard held a lecture titled Observing Symbolic Violence. Symbolic Violence, Resilience and Spaces in Conflict-affected areas.
Brigitte Piquard research the obstacles and barriers that divide people and form zones of exclusion and discrimination. These borders can be physical (walls, architectural structures, roadblocks) as well as symbolic (discrimination, violations of human rights, etc).
July, 24 Paul Jones (Newcastle University, UK) delivered a lecture A New Paradigm of Autonomous Urban Living.
The presentation considered a new prototype for urban living that was designed and conceived for the International Design Competition: Integrated Habitats, this entry received second place, and was exhibited at Milan Design week in 2014.