Norman Foster
(Picture: Dave Benett)NORMAN FOSTER’s grand plans to assemble a team of international experts and rebuild Kharkiv in Ukraine as a “city of the future” have been slapped down by Ukrainian architects.
Officials from the Kharkiv School of Architecture have warned leaders to be wary of “intellectual colonisation”. Speaking at an online event hosted by Architcture Today, the school’s founder Oleg Drozdov and deputy vice chancellor Iryna Mastevko graciously welcomed the interest of a renowned architect like Baron Foster, but stressed the importance of involving local designers to avoid a rebuilding Kharkiv as a “copy-paste” metropolis. “There are a lot of architects who already have experience working in Ukraine and experts who already deal with post-war reconstruction.”
