The Department of Architectural Environment Design, Lviv Polytechnic National University, develops interesting projects that may significantly change Lviv in the future.
Since its establishment on November 28, 2003 the Department of Architectural Environment Design, the Institute of Architecture and Design, Lviv Polytechnic, formed a wide range of educational and applied areas: architecture and urban planning, landscape, lighting, monumental, cultural and urban design.
What does the Department of Architectural Environment Design do?
The Head of the Department, Doctor of Architecture, Professor Viktor Proskuriakov told us about the general activities of academic staff and students and about their professional achievements.
«From the very beginning of the Department, in addition to all possible traditional forms of educational and applied semester training, we involve our students in exploratory research, experimental and competitive design for today’s needs in Lviv, Uzhgorod, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Kropyvnytskyi, Kyiv and other cities where graduates of the Institute of Architecture and our Department work. They do not forget their alma mater and organize for our students design competitions in the cities where they work» said Professor Viktor Proskuriakov.
Also, according to Professor Viktor Proskuriakov, the Department of Architectural Environment Design has a number of international partners with whom scientific and applied workshops and seminars are organized.
«These are foreign architecture schools in Kielce, Poland; Dresden, Berlin, Kaiserslautern, Germany; Palermo, Italy; and Toronto, Canada. For example, in Dresden, together with our partners, we held a scientific and practical seminar on the topic: «City and river» where we studied the architectural silhouettes of the Elbe banks. In Berlin, we took part in projects for the reconstruction of Alexanderplatz and the TV tower, as well as the territory of Tegel Airport. Together with students from Ryerson University in Toronto, we considered the possibilities of wider operation of the assembly hall in the first academic building of Lviv Polytechnic National University» says Viktor Proskuriakov.
The range of projects created at the Department is extremely wide, as today architects are facing a large number of issues they need to address daily.
«These are solutions that meet the pragmatic needs of a certain area of the city – such tasks will be the most numerous. Innovative projects are also being developed to demonstrate the ability of students to think outside the box, as well as their level of creativity on the way to finding modern solutions. In fact, due to the fact that we often work in areas located in Lviv or other cities of Ukraine and Europe with a preserved historical environment in which we design, we pay attention to historical and exploratory research methods of solving problems our students face. We often arrange the urban environment for various functional purposes: to organize holidays; spaces with a mobile landscape; stationary, mobile, traveling and studio theaters; museums, exhibitions, spiritual and religious buildings; interuniversity cultural centers; modern types of people’s houses, societies, unions; libraries of the future and many others» says Professor Viktor Proskuriakov.
Ideas for futuristic development of Lviv
Yuliia Bohdanova, an academic at the Department of Architectural Environment Design, teaches Monumental Design to the fifth-year students, who perform course graphic works on the theme of the futuristic development of Lviv.
«For the second year in a row, we have been working with students on five provocative topics that may be of interest to Lviv residents and guests. Our goal is to show dreams of Lviv, which can be completely different, to demonstrate how to solve complex and irritating topics that have been emerging for a long time and there are a lot of different opinions on how to address them. After all, architects must dream, especially now, when they are still students and have not become too pragmatical to life yet. In the fifth year, they are technically ready to make attractively beautiful things. The quality of the result will depend on how deeply the performers dive into the proposed topics, and believe that it is interesting and necessary. Only under such conditions will they be able to convince people who will see their projects. We hope that the necessary number of high-quality proposals will soon be collected in order to make an exhibition» says Yulia Bohdanova.
The architect says that one of the topics is the opening of the Poltva River in the center of Lviv.
Probably, since Poltva was «imprisoned» in a collector and buried underground, disputes have been going on to reopen it and make it an attraction of the central part of the city. However, according to legend, Count Stanislav Skarbek was the first to promise to restore Poltva’s old glory in the early 19th century. At the Department of Architectural Environment Design, under the leadership of Professor Viktor Proskuriakov, ten years ago the graduate Vitalii Skoblikov developed an interesting project on how to restore the river (Fig. 1). Since then, this topic is quite popular at our Department and we often return to it. Therefore, teaching Monumental Design, I also offer this topic to the fifth-year students. However, this is not about its true opening, but rather about imitation. In fact, the story that has recently gained notoriety on Lviv social networks about the creation of an artificial reservoir that would resemble the Poltva riverbed near the Opera House is the work of our fifth-year student who developed project as part of this course. She works in the company of Andrii Lesiuk, a graduate of our Department, who showed this project online adding his visualizations» says Yuliia Bohdanova.
