Kyiv | 20 December | National Art Museum of Ukraine | Hrushevskoho st., 6 | Beginning at 19:00 | Enter free with registration
Monuments to inequality reflects on the russian public spaces paradigm shift from political revolution to consumerist manifestation, exploring urban planning strategic development – from Moscow to Vladivostok.
Following the breakdown of the USSR, an ideological emptiness appeared and, extinguished socialist values – ‘labor, justice, equality — were replaced with — ‘profit, property, democracy’. At the same time the necessity appears to build the material world, so despised in the Soviet years, nearly from scratch. The community rushed to praise the comfortable capitalist world. Dramatic changes in economic and political life echoed in all spheres of social and cultural life as well as in architectural and design practices.
Among the population, urban remnants of socialism are seen as old-fashioned and stagnant, and the changes in the political system have rewired social and cultural life, having a radical impact on design practice. As class division continues to increase under the current political and economic context, the public spaces that once gave form to equality among citizens have now become a symbol of the inequality of neoliberalism.
Romea Muryń is a Polish architect and urban planner. After receiving her master’s degree from West Pomeranian University of Technology, Szczecin, Poland and her bachelor’s degree from the School of Design and Technology, Copenhagen, Denmark she worked for 8 years as an architect in leading design practices in Copenhagen, New York, and Rotterdam.
Romea also successfully completed the postgraduate programme ‘Hybrid Urbanism’ at Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design and worked as a leading architect and urban strategist at KB Strelka, Moscow, Russia, taking part in the projects ‘My Street’ large-scale urban renovation program and, ‘Key Public Spaces: Improvement in 40 Cities of Russia’.
As a founder of Locument, her work was exhibited at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Italy, and at the 25th Biennial of Design, Ljubjana, Slovenia. Currently, she is an adjunct Professor at INDA International Program in Design and Architecture, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.
