What Have Kharkiv and Łódź Got to Do with Each Other?

Sir Foster accepted the invitation in mid-April, he will develop Master plan For Kharkiv and the region.

He began humanly, with words.

Attention architects! We practice reading with comprehension, without plans, without sketches, words themselves. The entire manifesto (THE KHARKIV MANIFESTO) is not long (https://normanfosterfoundation.org/meeting-between-mayor-ihor-terekhov-and-lord-foster/). 

Nevertheless, let's circle the repeated phrases, the details that catch the eye.  

In the first place: The most, the most desirable, the most lovely.

In second place: The best, the best minds with the best planning, architectural, design, and engineering skills in the world.

On the third – composites: Combining a planetary awareness with local action.

If it goes well, you have to wish it to Ukrainians, Kharkiv will be one of the main gates-business cards of Europe for those travelling from the east. It can be amazing, it has a good, long academic tradition, it has become a hero city, it is important for the new Ukrainian culture. 

It is not very known how Sir Foster intends to distill the faction from planetary consciousness Russian mira, who feels boundless and international. 

Removing the trace of Russia will probably be the most difficult task when building Kharkiv of the 21st century. It is worth watching as others move from words to scaffolding. We at Łódź will be watching it with special attention.

The world consists of seemingly random details. Some attract our attention, others we don't even notice in the chaos around. Our personal experiences, thoughts, emotions make some of these details important and unique to us. They get a charge of energy from us. And we, in Łódź, want to use this energy, show a collection of carefully selected details, subjectively important for people from all over the world. Show how strange, incomprehensible other people's choices and ways of life can be. These details can be a collection of five books that determined our lives, there can be six photographs that describe how we see our city, it can be a verse of the book rewritten by our handwriting. There are infinitely many possibilities. The details put together next to each other create a huge spiritual, emotional energy, for which the most important thing is the right housing, allowing this energy to be retained. And we did not find a more beautiful housing for the details than the process of handing them over and then publicly exhibiting them.

The Łódź project operates in two realities: virtual and real. In the 21st century, we learn to use the potential of the virtual, parallel world. Its lightness and freedom to reach people from all over the world, the ease of sharing information is inspiring and creates the perfect environment for gathering details from all of us. The second reality in which we want to act is the real world. Ambitious cities like ambitious units have aspirations. Łódź wants to be something. We collect details from all over the world. Let's chase the details of the whole world to work for our city.

We don't want to race with Kharkiv. But we feel that in our city it is time to say: "I check".