Exhibition
Fragile Brutalism. Ukrainian Mass Housing: Past | War | Future
10 Mar 2023 – 13 May 2023
The Modernist Shop & The Modernist Magazine
Manchester, United Kingdom
Ukrainian urban graphic SERIA ___ project reflects on mass housing in Ukraine before and during the war;
the "voices behind the windows" share experience of real lives;
video research of mass housing in Ukraine and East Europe.
Tall, grey and brutal, these mass-housing buildings are homes to millions of Ukrainians. Designed with an idealistic vision in mind, they came as an improvement on the compact five-storey apartments hurriedly built in the wake of WWII's destruction. These buildings were dubbed ‘panelki’ for their prefabricated concrete slabs – panels. Eventually, many of them became neglected, run down and stigmatised. SERIA No___ is a Kyiv urban graphic project devoted to the brutalist mass housing in Ukraine. The project was conceived with the aim of raising awareness of the country’s architectural heritage and changing attitudes towards ‘panelki’ in order to bring a positive change to actual houses. But the ongoing war in Ukraine puts the project in a different context. What’s been happening to ‘panelki’ since 24th February 2022 and what does the future hold for the Ukrainian urban landscape?
In the Kingsway Corridor space at Goldsmiths University, we installed the paper version of the SERIA ___ project by Dasha Podoltseva and Elena Orap. Both are from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Initially, SERIA ___ is an urban graphic project devoted to the brutalist mass housing in Ukraine represented in the form of porcelain plates, concrete plant pots and silkscreen prints. These aimed to raise awareness of the country’s architectural heritage and to change attitudes towards these buildings in order to bring a positive change to actual houses. These art objects are partly in Ukraine and Switzerland.
In London, we add the "voices behind the windows" belonging to people who have experience living in Ukrainian tower blocks before and during the war of 2022. Moreover, mass housing video research will provide more information on the theme.
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