Kharkiv: Architectural Guide

(Paperback, Bilingual edition)

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Description

Author Iegeniiva Gubkinas Architectural Guide Kharkiv is another title on Ukraines building tradition. In this 300-pages publication, she argues passionately for the protection of the Constructivist heritage in her hometown. In Kharkiv, the war destroys buildings almost daily making it difficult to remember Ukraines architectural history. A prominent example is the Railway Workers Club, which was largely destroyed after two direct attacks in March and most recently in August 2022.

This guide is more than a documentation of the significant buildings in the second largest Ukrainian city. This book is a declaration of love for a city that was exposed to direct combat several times during the Second World War and has been a frontline city since February 2022. Gubkinas description of Kharkiv is based on the layout of the Janus-faced structure Old Town vs. New Town and Sumska Street connecting the two parts. But the two equal centers do not simply oppose, argue, or resist one another, but are in dialogue, in interaction, in a dialectical relationship. This is not the primitive negation of the old, but the classic unity and struggle of opposites of the old and the new. Or more, it is the completion of the thesis-antithesis model by synthesis. This ambivalence takes on all the more significance against the backdrop of the Russian armys current war of aggression.

Bilingual in English & Ukranian

Author Bio

Ievgeniia Gubkina (born 1985) is an architectural historian from Kharkiv and currently lives in exile in London. She is the author of numerous books on the architectural history of Ukraine, including the Architectural Guide Slavutych, published by DOM publishers in 2016 in English, Ukrainian, and Russian (out of print).