CanActions workshop: Building from substraction

Location: Kiev, Ukraine

Year: 2015 y 2016

Framework:  CANactions Festival

#Subtraction #Reflection #Workshop

 

The festival, organized as an alternative to the rigid local academic education, took place in an industrial area where several abandoned buildings are starting to hold cultural events. With the duration of a week, workshops working on the city and the environment of the mentioned industrial area, conferences, debates, films and documentaries on architecture and colloquiums on the problems of the city were alternated.

n’UNDO conducted a workshop, where urban impertinences in the country and in Kyiv in particular were discussed. Various locations were mapped and analysed, where the strategy of subtraction and not doing, was shown to be appropriate as a key option for improving the capital. Huge urban strategic plans to turn parks into housing sprawls and delirious buildings were noticed, and large areas of degraded public space and lack of accessibility in many places mapped; but what participants pointed out most, were the semi-permanent sales kiosks, illegal structures placed in anywhere in the public space with no order or plan. Despite being the only small commercial spaces that can be found in Kyiv, they constitute an aggression against public spaces and the right of citizens to use it. 

A place where knowledge and visions about the city and the meaning of architecture were exchanged and we discovered many people eager to improve their environment.