21.01.2011 Roddom.institute opened an exhibition of the works made by Columbia university students (New-York), which was called “Two impressions”. Students from New York came to Kharkov in the framework of their master program in architecture and urban design, as Kharkov was selected one of the Spring Semester workshop sites. The workshop involves studying Kharkov infrastructure and suggesting ideas for its renovation. 24 students were divided into 8 groups, having received each their own plot for research. Students spent several days studying their plots and making “travel notes”, which are actually presented at the exhibition.

21.01.2011 The exhibition of blitz-ideas “Urban Flows” was opened in the hall of Roddom.institute. Students were asked to think about the topic of urban flows, on the way our movements are communicated to the city to find here their own reflection. The exhibition features 22 works made by students from Kharkov and Minsk.

20-21.01.2011 Roddom.institute was home for a two-day symposium "The Place of Identity and the Identity of Place”, with the participation of Alberto Foyo, Oleg Drozdov, Eugene Asse, Richard Plunz, Michael Conard, Petra Kempf, Geeta Mehta, Jose Aldrete Haas, Alexander Bouryak, Columbia University students (New York) and Kharkov students from architectural and art departments.
The symposium touched upon the issues of urban development, with case studies in Moscow, New York, Kharkov and other cities.
The Symposium was followed by the round table discussion.
 

Richard Plunz, USA: The Urban Design Lab. New Urbanization Paradigms for Livability and Sustainability.  
A presentation of the work of The Earth Institute - Columbia University. With 850 scientists, postdoctoral fellows, staff and students working in and across more than 30 Columbia University research centers, the Earth Institute is helping to advance nine interconnected global issues: climate and society, water, energy, poverty, ecosystems, public health, food and nutrition, hazards and urbanization. With Columbia University as its foundation, the Earth Institute draws upon the scientific rigor, technological innovation and academic leadership for which the University is known.
 
Michael Conard, USA: Regionalizing the food system for public health and sustainability. 
This research project presents the problems of our current global food system and how rethinking the role of food and creating regional production, processing and distribution systems can create a healthier, more predictable and sustainable food system while developing strong local and regional economies.  

 Petra Kempf, Germany: You are the City—The Art of Mapping Urban Uncertainties 
Cities are an everyday invention. They are mirrored and informed by the imprints left as we move through them, imprints left in an intricately overlaid pattern of passages, each with its own reality and place in time. By translating fragments of the city into personal urban snapshots, we create new realities of the urban condition—a process by which we produce our individual place of the city.

Geeta Mehta, India: User generated cities  
The work of URBZ in developing workshops and online tools to empower local communities to improve their street, neighborhoods and cities, using examples of work done in Tokyo, Mumbai, Delhi and Istanbul. 

Oleg Drozdov, Ukraine: The power of borders  
Physical and mental borders as typology; the role of borders in the formation of societies and communities & their effect on the understanding of locality.  

Alberto Foyo, Spain: The genius loci and the locus genii  
Tradition, modernity, and civic identity; the use of the five star architect as an urban development strategy to “put a city on the map”; Alvaro Siza and Peter Eisenman in Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Jose Aldrete Haas, Mexico: The nostalgia of paradise : Towards the construction of New Babylon  
A reflection on architecture´s indifference towards nature and the need to go beyond the timid strategies of modernism - transparency, topographic integration, material mimetism, pro-ecological technology, etc-, in order to build a habitat that 'redefines our existential relationship with nature'.

Eugene Asse, Russia: Locus magici: Patriarch pond in Moscow  
What does "magic place" in the city mean? What makes one urban place magic? An analysis of the famous Patriarch's Pond in Moscow in terms of morphology, topography, phenomenology and urban mythology.

-Round table discussion (Moderated by Alexander Bouryak & Alberto Foyo)

информационная поддержка:

http://www.canactions.com

http://archportal.com.ua

http://archinews.ru
 

Cities are changeable. They are continuously created by the course of our lives.

We are moving each in our own reality and time, and our movements are conveyed to the city.

By fixing intricate patterns of urban flows, we are transmitting the present.

 

We are waiting for your blitz-ideas for the exhibition "Urban Flows".

The deadline for submitting the images is 19.01.2011, 7 p.m.
JPEG 300dpi А3 (vertical).

24 September Roddom provided Kharkov architects and students with the opportunity to meet Thomas Marti and Eugene Asse. Thomas Marti was the first to speak. In his lecture "How to Handle Buildings from Constructivism. Theory and Praxis" he drew parallels between Soviet and Swiss Constructivism. The lecture sparked off a discussion on the preservation of constructivist buildings in Switzerland and Ukraine.
The topic of Switzerland was carried on by Eugene Ass in his lecture "Swiss Friends - Swiss ways", where he talked about his friends from Switzerland and their works. At the end of his lecture Eugene showed a short documentary commemorating one hundred years since the death of Leo Tolstoy.
  The last item on the agenda was the presentation of students' projects accomplished during summer internship at "Drozdov&Partners " design bureau. 3 groups of students presented their 3 projects, all located in Odessa. The exhibition of projects, displayed in "Roddom" exposition hall, continued for a week and aroused keen interest among architectural community.

THOMAS MARTI (Switzerland)

Bern University of Applied Sciences, teaching courses on practical preservation of historic monuments.
since 1970 member of the Art Society of Lucerne
since 1983 member of the SSES (Swiss union for solar energy)
since 1984 member of the quarter association Obergrund
since 1986 member of the Schweizer Werkbund (SWB)
since 1992 member of the Swiss engineer and architect association (SIA)
since 2007 member of ICOMOS, International Council on Monuments and Sites

Presentation of students' projects, created in «Drozdov & partners» design bureau during summer internship. Three projects will be presented - «Gagarin Plateau», «Dvoropolis», and «Clover -park».

Blitz-conference “Growing or Shrinking”, devoted to changes in professional activity in the context of declining population and resources.

In 2008 Roddom hosted International conference “Urban culture and environment of metropolis” organized by international public organization “Kharkov club” in collaboration with other organizations (28–30 October 2008).

Representatives of local authorities, architects, developers, teachers, museum workers, experts in local history, editors of specialized journals, and animal rights activists – all of them took part in this conference and joined efforts in the analysis of current trends and problems of modern urban development. The key issue, raised by Alexander Bouryak, president of “Kharkov club”, was crisis and its manifestations in the urban culture: whether they are associated with post-communist development alone, something like “children diseases” of the newly-born democracy, or they are peculiar features inherent in all modern cities.

A lot of honorable guests were present at the opening ceremony on 28 October: Vadim Landsman, head of Department of humanitarian affairs, Tatyana Verkina, head of permanent Committee on humanitarian issues in Kharkov city administration, Emil Markvart (Moscow), president of European club of experts in local self-government, Aleksandr Levintov (Moscow), expert of the Academy of National economy under the government of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Nikitin (Kiev), deputy director of International centre for perspective research. Among foreign participants one should mention Alberto Foyo, professor of architecture in New-York city college (the USA).

Case-study and round table discussion on the topic “Distinctive features of post-communist city” were also held within the framework of the conference.

Collection of materials presented at the conference

International project seminar “ARCHITECTURAL AMBULANCE” was the first major architectural event, where Roddom took part. The seminar was held in Kharkov in October 2003, the organizers’ team including, besides Roddom club, a number of Kharkov-based design offices, such as “Atrium” (the former name of “Drozdov & Partners”), “Avuar”, “Nice”, and “Tovt_design”, “Waterpas” architectural magazine, and “Kharkov club” international NGO.

The topic of the seminar was defined as “Kharkov – city quarter” and basically dealt with problematic issues that arise once privatization and investment processes become more active within the historic downtown quarters.

Five typical quarters in the central part of the city were chosen as subject matter for design. All of them are different in morphology, topography, parceling, density, function, etc. The aim of the seminar was to encourage certain speculation over the existing situation, suggest ways of rehabilitation and outline possible scenarios of further development of these areas.

The second, but no less important goal of the seminar was to create an opportunity of cultural exchange between professionals worldwide. Architects from eight different countries – Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the USA, Ukraine and Sweden – came to Kharkov to take part in the seminar. Among them there were Alberto Foyo, Jeroen Schipper, Patrick Meijers, Ilse Castermans, Theo Hauben. The topic of the seminar proved to be interesting and relevant for all the participants and ensured everybody’s involvement in the most active design process despite unusual conditions and rules of the game which were introduced. Teams were formed in such a way that people who had never worked with each other before found themselves in one group. Interestingly, this very confusion of languages and architectural traditions was essential for intensive nine-day long creative activity.

One of the results of the seminar was the representation of a quarter as the basic unit of urban formation. Moreover, materials of the seminar ushered further research and discussions on the topic. A whole bunch of fresh and interesting methods and structural approaches applicable to this kind of spaces was suggested.

However, the most remarkable achievement of the seminar was the appearance of a new social group of like-minded professionals, which gave impetus to a number of various events in future.