The productive city - a real laboratory between Vienna and Kharkiv

Lecture by Ievgeniia Gubkina: Saltivka, the largest residential area in Ukraine under heavy Russian shelling
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Olha Kleytman: “Velyka Rodyna” project

As part of the Kyiv Biennale, which was hosted in Vienna from October to December 2023, a real laboratory was set up in Vienna and Kharkiv, in which architects from Ukraine worked together with colleagues from Austria in a hybrid space as a joint workplace. These activities have been supported by the Chamber of Civil Engineers and Architects (Bundeskammer der Ziviltechniker:innen und Kammer der Zivitechniker:innen. Wien. Niederösterreich. Burgenland). Now the project has been taken to a new level: with the help of the Margarete Schütte Lihotzky Project Grant, an architecture collective has been formed, and members of the collective are traveling from Kharkiv to Vienna for an intensive exchange and to give a lecture.

Jenia Gubina: Saltivka, the largest residential area in Ukraine under heavy Russian shelling
Since the first days of the full-scale war that began in February 2022, Saltivka, as the northeastern border of the city of Kharkiv, has been massively destroyed by the shelling and rocket attacks of the Russian army. This largest residential area in Ukraine was designed according to the master plan of Kharkiv of 1964. It was actively developed in the 1970s and 1980s with prefabricated mass housing, which was prevalent in Soviet Ukraine and many other countries. Saltivka continued to be built into the 21st century until the outbreak of the war. Almost a third of Kharkiv’s population lived there, or about half a million people.
On the one hand, how did it happen that a district became so huge that not any city can compare with it in size? On the other hand, Saltivka was not a monolithic “ghetto”, but a fragmented, diverse neighborhood full of mass social housing. What will happen to Saltivka? After decades of criticism of mass housing and standardized architecture, is there any other solution to the housing crisis that Ukrainian cities will inevitably face after the war? And more embarrassingly, what to do when your heritage is not medieval castles, but dozens of micro-districts of prefabricated panel houses, the destruction of which is perceived as a blow to your identity and memory?

Olha Kleytman: “VELYKA RODYNA”
As a result of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, around 12 million people were forced to leave their homes. As fighting intensified in the border area near Kharkiv, residents were evacuated. At one point, some immobile people had to be left behind, mostly elderly with their infirmities, in sometimes bombed-out and powerless houses. This became an impulse for a group of architects and volunteers to create the project “VELYKA RODYNA”. The group found an old dormitory of a non-working factory in the city of Kharkiv, washed it, furnished it and settled the first residents. Now the project is home to 50 elderly people, 22 of whom are bedridden. Since the beginning of the war, about 150 people have passed through the shelter.
Olha Kleytman is one of the architects and will talk about the project.

Ievgeniia Gubkina: Architect, historian of architecture, curator of architecture and art projects, educational activities. Her work specializes in architecture and urban planning of the 20th in Ukraine, and multidispinary approach to heritage studies.

Olha Kleytman: Co-founder and chief architect of SBM Studio Architecture and Design Bureau in Kharkiv. The office focuses on urban space and the processes that take place in it.