Reconnecting Kiev

Since independence in 1991 Ukraine has been searching for a new identity. In the capital city of Kiev, in particular, architecture is seen as a means of achieving this. In a forced attempt to break with the past, new capitalist developments have been allowed free rein in Kiev. Like other booming regions in the world, building has become an objective in itself with high-rise as the leading building typology. In the past nineteen years commissioning bodies and architects have had an open field in Kiev. With every building project they want to add an icon of their own to the city. Urban morphology, typological variety, functional demand and a targeted market supply are of no consequence in this context. Without considering Kiev’s future and without any direction, an unashamed volume of cubic metres has haphazardly been built in the city at a very fast pace. The result is a collection of arbitrarily-positioned, autistic buildings that have no relevance whatsoever for Kiev and its inhabitants. Next to this collection of soulless architecture which, to a large extent, is vacant, the glossy renderings on developers' billboards in Kiev are the tragic relics of unrestrained belief in capitalism.

The present worldwide crisis of that same capitalism has also hit Ukraine very hard, whereby the senseless property boom has come to a standstill. So the crisis has also had its advantages and opens up opportunities of looking at Kiev in a sensible way. It is now time to develop a clear and well-conceived urban vision and strategy for the city. Producing buildings dominated by authorship and final outcome must be a thing of the past. And this also applies to thinking exclusively in terms of architectural objects and ignoring programmes and strategy. The most visible symptoms of this mistaken approach are the enormous increase in traffic and the ill-advised use of the city’s valuable space. This has put pressure on the quality of life in Kiev. This short-term thinking in the past two decades has steadily eroded the qualities of the city.

What Kiev certainly no longer needs are even more buildings promisingly presented in glossy renderings. Meanwhile, time has shown that this approach cannot make good these promises. Kiev needs urban planning! A new leitmotif and logic needs to be sought for the city, the suburbs, the surrounding countryside and their interrelations. The cities that serve as examples should not be copied as a final outcome. It is more interesting to examine the processes and strategies that have led to the success of these cities. The future developments of Kiev must be facilitated in an astute way with the right functions in the right place. For new developments, this does not mean searching for a vacant spot on the outskirts of Kiev every time. There are still sufficient possibilities for qualitative and quantitative development in the city centre. And, moreover, if these developments take the international significance of the capital city of Ukraine into account, then Kiev is guaranteed a solid future.