Elite international architects are just starting to work in Moscow, and Ukraine, eventually, could be next
As the contruction boom in Kyiv continues , the expensive downtown is filling up with ever-more residential projects, the most high-profile and controversial of which lately has been the massive unfinished luxury tower at 9 Hrushevskoho. Along Lesi Ukrainky, meanwhile, one residential tower after another goes up. These buildings are great for Ukraine’s burgeoning haute bourgeois, but few would argue that many resemble the buildings that affluent urban Westerners live in. They tend to be cookie-cutter buildings, kitschy structures that often excite the amusement of Westerners in Ukraine.
So the question is: When are affluent Ukrainians going to start demanding the same architectural standards as moneyed urbanites in the West? Or, when is elite architecture coming to Ukraine?
Creative building
A few years ago, designs that transcended postmodernist kitsch started coming to high-end residential buildings in Moscow, a city that is often a bellwether for trends in the Ukrainian capital. Moscow also went through a stage of construction hysteria, with many esthetically questionable towers going up fast. But now, in addition to the kitsch, developers are increasingly trying to fulfill the esthetic demands of an “elite” stratum of customers who have become acquainted with sophisticated Western designs. These clean, elegant, well-built apartments are more in line with what you might find in a Western design magazine like Architectural Digest. They’re highly popular among the pop-culture elite of Russia who can afford them.
In general, Moscow’s architecture scene has matured. It is perhaps a sign of how Russia is several steps ahead that super-prestigious Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas was recently a candidate to do a major reconstruction of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum. He didn’t get the job, but for a similar project in Ukraine, someone of that caliber wouldn’t even be considered. Now Koolhaas is working on a residential Moscow job. International architecture star Zaha Hadid is too.
Kyiv elite residential prices are now comparable to Moscow ones, and there’s enough money floating around to pay someone of Hadid’s stature. But the creative urge has yet to reach Ukraine.
Michael Perry, a native Californian who heads Kyiv’s Perry Construction, says very good elite family houses are being built in Ukraine, but fewer good multiple-family houses. And, he says, “hip houses” are still lacking: there are no interesting industrial loft-space reconstructions, for example. Perry says it’s simply not financially interesting to developers to create extravagant, high-quality projects.
“Developers are making money the easy way, so they’re not going to go out on a limb to try to get their margins,” he says.
Perry says he gets the occasional hip client who wants his company to do a loft renovation. But loft space in Ukraine isn’t often convertible into living space. Whereas potential loft spaces in, say, lower Manhattan are often located in beautiful and expertly constructed industrial buildings from the 19th century, Kyiv industrial real estate is often something shoddy from the Soviet era.
Dmitry Zmiyevets, head of marketing and sales department at Zhytlo-XXI Century, a company developing major high-end residential complexes on Lyuteranska and Kreshchatyk, supports Perry’s statement. He says people with money in Ukraine have super-conservative tastes, and his company is not in a position to take risks.
In his company’s Capital residential building, he says, “apartments are purchased by people of high financial status, because a square meter there costs upwards of 3,000 euros.” These buildings represent fulfillments of “dreams,” Zmiyevets says. “Possibly, very recently they were nobodies, and strived to earn their money….Capitalism in this country is quite young and people didn’t have time to develop eccentric tastes. They are pretty conservative.”
Tastes are not going to change soon either, he says. And architects, who are businessmen as well as artists, have to respond to the market.
“Concept houses should be in demand on the investors’ side,” says Yanush Vig, who designs residential projects for local developer Poznyakyzhylbud throughout the city, in particular in Pechersk’s Tsarske Selo area. “This is what I face. Investors approach these aspects from a more pragmatic side. What I personally want to build is a totally different story, and not for over the phone.”
Poznyakyzhylbud’s designs are common in Kyiv, and easily identified by their red bricks, distinctive wavy contours, and syringe-like tops.
Zoning matters
Another reason for Kyiv’s architectural uniformity is multiple permit-issuing institutions. Heorhy Dukhovichny, a member of the board for Kyiv’s Union of Architects, describes these as bureaucratic and super-conservative.
“If the situation in Kyiv doesn’t change, Kyiv will continue experiencing folk-fair and pseudo-historical imitations. So far, that’s the trend,” he says.
“Investors,” Dukhovichny says, “are pragmatic people who work with finances, often with loans. So they order projects that can be easily agreed on and built fast. Right now the whole process of acquiring permits for building and design confirmation is focused on not letting unique projects through.”
Dukhovichny currently works in the construction and investment working group in Ukraine’s Presidential Secretariat, trying to ease the permit requirements. Right now, he says, there are about 280 regulations, a number he calls “unprecedented around the world.” He strongly believes that as that situation is bettered, Kyiv will be “filled” with conceptual projects interesting both from commercial and aesthetic points of view.
Will Kyiv’s hills, like Los Angeles’, start being dotted with internationally prestigious houses by the world’s top names? Will the trend spread to Crimea, whose stunning ocean landscapes are begging for great contemporary architecture? In Ukraine, stranger things have happened. Perry says that someday things will change – we have only to wait.“Sooner or later,” he says, “rich individuals will take the leap, but no one is leaping just yet.”
