New Ivanivka House of Culture in Chernihiv
After the excellent reception of our projects for the city of Irpin, we were contacted by Chernihiv, a devastated city in the northeast of Ukraine, constantly attacked and tortured by the advance of the Russian army since March 2022.
The request of the Chernihiv Construction Management and Urban Consultancy to reformulate this administrative building in the center of the town of Ivanivka into a Cultural Center is, in addition to a structural and humanitarian demand, an enormous emotional challenge, to rescue strength, soul and dignity of the inhabitants of their regions.
Built in 1956, this building was almost completely destroyed. Windows and facades were damaged by rockets and fire from Russian troops, as well as the roof and interior walls. The current building houses the town's library.
Project Type: Public Infrastructure/Remodeling
Project Premises
The Place
Building made from the Soviet Union Era, very characteristic and of great emotional charge in the collective memory of the village area, embodying all the concepts and characteristics spatial and stylistic aspects of Stalinist construction.
This volume is built on a single level and is structured with a brutal system of thik walls that compartmentalize its spaces and programs, constituting a segmented and discontinuous space, which, due to its over-structuring, prevents the entry of natural light and the conception of interior space program and its different areas, as a continuous and compact unitary space, complicating the development of its experience and losing the possibility to gain more space to add new programs and spaces.
Its main façades attempts to build a forced neoclassical style, full of cladding and eclectic decorative details, without achieving a spatial and urban dialogue with the scale and significance of the rural village of Ivanivka.
Inside, it is an overstructured, labyrinthine, twisted space in terms of natural light, hyper compartmentalized, designed with a logic that prevents the free meeting and interaction of people inside; a true space of control and social supervision, faithful representative of the Soviet Union Era.
Project Fundamentals
Contrasting elements and materials
A new level
Inside-out
The building’s historic character is enhanced by contrasting it with opposite materials—glass for light, transparency, and openness, and wood for warmth and sustainability—against the solidity of the original brick.
On the existing walls, a habitable second level is proposed, transforming the old roof into a social wintergarden with a café and cultural spaces that encourage interaction.
Continuous tempered glass façades, supported by glass ribs and spider fittings, combined with laminated wood structures, allow nature to flow into the building, creating an open and flexible interior experience.
Architectural Proposal
The project develops an architectural reformulation to transform this over-structured and necessarily neoclassical Soviet space into a new space, full of natural light, freedom and spatiality, visual and programmatic continuity, which favors the free gathering of the people who will inhabit it.
The strategy to approach this project is based on the conservation of the thick brick walls of the current building as structural supports for new glazed and warm elements that unify the space and house a new and modern program.
In this way it is intended to change the emotional image of the building but without forgetting its past, being the venue for numerous events and visits.
At night, when the lights of the cultural center are turned on, the old walls light up, like a museum that takes care of these walls full of history inside its brilliant showcases.
Preserve Elements and Materials
Preserving the façade and the supporting walls that remain standing within the ruins of the building not only allows structural and material savings in terms of its eventual demolition and construction costs, but also allows the preservation of the memories of the town, since it is understood as a powerful element visual for this one.
Also, in this building, there are several symbols that mark its Soviet origin, and recall part of the horrors experienced by that sinister era. Our proposal erases these symbols, freeing the building from its heavy and negative symbolic load, replacing them with the integration of natural light, transparency, fluidity and programmatic interconnection, as a new symbolism of spatial liberation
The current anatomy of the building suggests a concentric composition subdivided into 3 large strips, whose two outer strips, being less protected by interior walls, function as transition spaces for noisy programs and circulation (offices, cafeteria, coworking, stairs and bridges).
These strips are contained by two triple-height glazed cubicles that fluidly connect the two levels of the project. This new transparent interior organization allows to connect all the programs in the new building without interrupting the fluidity and spatial continuity of different areas.
The central strip, on the other hand, being contained within brick walls, allows for quieter and more containment programs (such as the Winter Garden or the theater).
Likewise, noisy programs are planned for the first level (ballet or music room), leaving those that require greater silence (library or classes) on the second level.
Transition zones: From noise to silence.
