New Yahidne House of Culture in Chernihiv
One of the cities that has suffered the harsh passage of the Russian army is Yahidne, a town located approximately 140 km north of Kiev and whose population suffered a holocaust for 25 days between March and April 2023. More than a hundred people were crammed into the basement of a 65m2 school.
After this tragedy, we were entrusted with the reconstruction of one of the most iconic buildings in this town: the Yahidne House of Culture. This project acquires an emotional charge for the collective memory of the people, from the Soviet era to the current war.
Project Type: Public Infrastructure/Remodeling
Project Premises
The Place
The administrative building, located in the center of Yahidne and almost completely destroyed by Russian shelling, suffered severe damage to its windows, façades, roof, and interiors, while a secondary building was entirely demolished. Built during the Soviet era, it reflects Stalinist architectural style and holds strong emotional significance for the community. Its single-level structure, with thick walls and excessive compartmentalization, limits natural light and spatial flexibility, making it difficult to incorporate new programs.
The façade, with a forced neoclassical style and eclectic decorative details, fails to integrate with the village’s scale. Inside, the space is labyrinthine, hyper-compartmentalized, and designed for social control, typical of Soviet-era architecture.
Project Fundamentals
Two programs, two separate spaces
Spatial transformation and liberation of the structure:
Contrast between memory and modernity
The strategy seeks to programmatically separate the new large luminous and transparent space for the administrative offices from the great hall of the theater, and building a new large lateral access to this theater, allowing non-disruptive access for theater activities, and that this space can be used completely independently of the administrative office area.
The aim is to reformulate the architecture inherited from the Soviet period, eliminating the overload of forced neoclassical elements and dividing walls to open up the interior space. The proposal creates visual and spatial continuity, encouraging free interaction between users.
The intervention preserves the facades and main structure as elements of historical value, but introduces contemporary materials—glass and laminated wood—to create contrast and give the building new meaning. This dialogue between the old and the new preserves collective memory but projects it into the future.
Architectural Proposal
Taking all of the above into account, the project develops an architectural reformulation to transform this Soviet space into a new space, full of natural light, freedom and spatial and programmatic continuity, which encourages the free meeting of the people who will inhabit it.
Like the volume it is of a single level, it provides the possibility of stripping it of all that forced neoclassical over-structuring, to free up its interior space, to generate great spatial and visual continuity.
Each one of us carries a story, good or bad, and that story has been developed through built spaces, which is why they are part of our history and from there they allow us to project ourselves into the future, but without ignoring the history we have lived, overcome and conquered. This is what our architectural proposal is about.
Same building, different meaning
The way to highlight a building with an old character is to contrast it with other totally different elements. In this sense, for both processes, the conservation of the facades and the use of the main structure are proposed to preserve the collective memory that the building houses.
In exchange, the internal program of the New House of Culture is worked with a large glass box of natural light on a new roof, and also inside its central space the new administrative office space is developed through separations. of transparent glass between each charge, to give a sense of continuity and freedom.
In addition, laminated wood is used as a structural material, which provides quality, sustainability and warmth to the project, in the construction of the structure of its new central space and also as asupport of the new natural light glass box in the roof.
This is how the building can rescue the collective memories of the people, however, give them a different meaning, transformed and with an eye on the experiences that are to come.
Finally, our proposal develops a new space for a Summer Stage open to the open air, to promote cultural activities, presentations, shows and concerts in the open air.
The strategy for the development of this Summer Scenario is to bury it slightly in the ground through exposed concrete retaining walls, generating the development of a large staircase-gallery with large steps that allow the gathering of a large number of people, in groups, couples or families, embracing various positions of the human body to rest, rest, sit down and enjoy the show, using cross-laminated timber planks with gravel tracks.
This semi-buried space contains a stage that is protected by a cross-laminated Timber vine trellis structure, which blends and blends with the existing trees of the park and that surround the stage.
Summer Open Air Theater
