Anhelina L Starkova explains how her expertise of dwelling by way of the Ukraine struggle has formed her method to curating the 2024 Tallinn Structure Biennale on this interview.
Starkova, who was chief curator of this 12 months’s biennale, is from Kharkiv in north-east Ukraine – a metropolis that has suffered hefty bombardment since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, coming near being captured early on within the battle.
In line with the curator, she skilled one thing near an epiphany not lengthy after the struggle started, whereas taking refuge within the bunker in her home as bombs fell round it
“I keep in mind that planes had been flying round, and the constructing was shaking, and it was actually the second once you perceive that it is in all probability your final minutes,” she recalled.
“I used to be standing with this wall, and I used to be pondering that this wall was a continuation of my physique – that is me,” she continued.
“It was, for an architect, [a] very engaging feeling. As a result of I completed college, I had my 10 years in observe, and I nonetheless was not likely immersed in structure.”
“You all the time assume it intellectually, however once I was on this bunker I began [to] assume, ‘oh my god, that is the one one factor that may actually save me – this wall is the one one factor that I want’. It was a really existential expertise.”
Later, whereas spending a while in Bucharest, visiting a shopping center made her rethink the worth of structure.
“There’s all this business structure, and I really feel such a disgust,” she informed Dezeen. “Prefer it’s a cartoon, it isn’t actual. I felt it not with my mind however with all my physique: we dwell in a world of full phantasm.”
In different phrases, Starkova mentioned, the traumatic expertise of the struggle has given her a novel sense of readability about what actually issues in structure.
“When the struggle began within the Ukraine, that was essential for me as an architect,” she defined. “I did not count on that it will affect me a lot personally.”
“All the pieces type of began to be very clear: many, many issues that we add to structure – these addictive visions – are additional issues, and they aren’t making buildings in a complete manner.”
“If I want to proceed [in architecture] then I would wish to isolate myself from all this gallery of pondering, which I am unable to stand anymore.”
As an alternative, Starkova, who in addition to operating her personal studio lectures on the College of Utilized Sciences of the Grisons and Kharkiv Faculty of Structure, has develop into extra within the naked necessities of structure.
“Actually nice structure, it is about sturdiness elements, the performance, but additionally giving folks a type of stability and security,” she mentioned. “Ultimately, it is principally about our immersion.”
Starkova has utilized this back-to-basics philosophy to her curation of the seventh Tallinn Structure Biennale, which opened within the Estonian capital final week.
On the centre of this 12 months’s biennale is an exhibition exploring the theme of Assets for a Future, hosted by the Estonian Centre for Structure.
That includes 14 reveals from studios together with Gus Wüstemann Architects, KAMP Arhitektid, Déchelette Structure and Pihlmann Architects, it examines totally different approaches to utilizing native assets for creating novel buildings and prolonging the lifetime of current ones.
“I had conversations with every architect that it’s a must to have a look at the fundamentals and the basic, actual really feel of what you’re doing,” Starkova mentioned.
“And even requested every architect, once you’re speaking about assets, what actually fosters you to do structure, what helps you? And every set up confirmed the solutions.”
As an example, Denmark-based Pihlmann Architects created a huge mannequin of a stripped-back constructing shell the place a part of every ground had been minimize out and sloped downwards to type a ramp up from the ground beneath.
“It was actually about this concept of purification,” mentioned Starkova. “You see an ancient constructing and also you simply don’t add something. You see the character of the constructing and also you’re attempting to heal it or to reformulate its parts.”
That, she mentioned, is a lesson she realized whereas engaged on repairs to broken buildings in Kharkiv in the course of the struggle.
“You are attempting to compose it once more, to heal it, after which it will get one other conceptual setting – one other feeling, and it is already structure.”
“Structure is the fixed technique of pondering of your relation to supplies, totally different parts, and assemblage of them in a holistic manner.”
On the centre of the exhibition are a collection of pillars erected by rammed-earth specialist Emmanuelle Déchelette of Paris studio Déchelette Structure, with the fabric dug regionally to Tallinn.
“It is about doing rather a lot with nothing, that full purification,” mentioned Starkova. “To keep away from this ideological and even social structure.”
The taking part architects got a intentionally open transient, as a result of Starkova felt the exhibition was “not about dogmas”. In consequence, the reveals are extremely diversified in type and method.
They vary from an enormous chunk of a restored customary Estonian log home by Apex Arhitektuuribüroo (pictured high) to an summary proposal for a public house created solely by digging by Romanian architect Laura Cristea and Swiss architect Raphael Zuber.
In one other, Estonian studio KAMP Arhitektid introduced analysis on the stunning breadth of potential constructing supplies that may be discovered on one particular 15 square-kilometre piece of land within the nation.
“Every venture was a shock as a result of I did not know them personally earlier than the exhibition, none of them,” mentioned Starkova.
That impact was solely heightened by the truth that Starkova managed the entire venture remotely, solely arriving in Tallinn a couple of days earlier than the exhibition opened.
She started with a listing of greater than 500 architects whose work she admires, finally choosing those that she felt “had been essentially the most radical of their pondering”.
The Ukraine struggle is referenced in a single set up, produced by Elina Liiva and Helena Manna in collaboration with PAKK, composed of a collection of photographs of condominium dwelling rooms printed on translucent material and positioned in a line, with chunk of concrete mendacity close by that corresponds with a gap minimize into the scene.
However past that, Starkova intentionally averted making the battle a direct focus of the exhibition, believing that it might detract from a way of immediacy.
“Throughout the struggle, it isn’t a spot for structure – principally a spot for pondering,” she mentioned.
“And sure, architects are attempting to assume, with the help of worldwide world structure, what may very well be finished [after the war]. However I simply needed to remain candid and never be futuristic.”
Total, Starkova hopes the exhibition will allow guests “to be taught from architects that structure is elementary to do, and that the formulation are fairly elementary”.
In addition to main curation of the exhibition, Starkova was additionally head choose for the biennale’s customary pavilion fee competitors, this time for a bus shelter at Tallinn’s Balti Jaam transit hub.
Out of greater than 80 entries, the winner was No Time to Waste by Belgian structure duo Brasebin Terrisse.
The central idea of the pavilion, which continues to be finishing building, was that the design can be led by no matter building off-cut supplies may very well be sourced in Tallinn.
“This was the one venture who mentioned that now we have an open finish – we don’t suggest [a] type of the set up, we put together that we come to Tallinn, we take a look at a neighborhood scenario and after we’ll develop a type given when doing the work on it,” mentioned Starkova.
“So the rendering of the venture itself is only a library of expertise that they want to utilize, however the type should be made later in the course of the working course of,” she added. “It adopted the course of the biennale.”
With the biennale’s opening-week programme full, Starkova has now returned to Kharkiv, the place many buildings lie in ruins in a metropolis that was beforehand celebrated for its wealthy and diversified architectural heritage.
“It is all so hard,” she mirrored. “Kharkiv is altering, it’s in fixed change.”
“It is completely not possible to dwell, since you dwell in that mode of all the time existential disaster – on the sting, all the time. You go to mattress, you do not know you are going to get up. You go exterior, you do not know you are coming again.”
“Possibly it brings some magnificence, as a result of we truly dwell on this manner, all of us – proper on the sting.”
