A German architectural firm, Kleihues+Kleihues, was announced on June 27 as the winner of the Ministry of Culture’s international competition for the design of the museum of the EuroMaidan Revolution, a 2013-2014 uprising that ousted then-President Viktor Yanukovych but saw over 100 protesters killed.
The building will be located on the Alley of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred in central Kyiv, exactly where the climax of the events of the EuroMaidan Revolution occurred. The museum will be situated within a larger memorial site, known as the National Memorial Complex of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred.
Both the start date of the construction and the budget are yet to be revealed. The architects estimate it will take at least six years to build the museum.
Four years after the Revolution, the announcement signifies the enduring memorialization of those who were killed over three months of protests. However, it also reminds that justice for victims was never provided, with the killings still being investigated.
Winning design
The plan of Kleihues+Kleihues, named “Storming the Hill,” was chosen for being elegant, organic, and visually European. The main entrance to the museum will be at the Heavenly Hundred exit of the Khreshchatyk metro station.
Inside, the level of daylight will be adjustable and there will be a central atrium, which will feature the EuroMaidan Yolka, the Christmas-New Year Tree that became a symbol of the demonstrations. The area can also be used for public events.
Due to the spacing of the columns on the outside of the building, it will appear more open or closed depending on the point of view, while photos of the victims will feature within the façade.
The building will feature ramps of various widths, embodying the protesters’ storming of the hill, and at the top there will be a terrace, from which Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square and the entire city can be viewed. It is actually from this floor that the exhibition starts, and visitors exit the museum from below.
In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Jan Kleihues revealed his ambition to show historical perspectives through architecture. The design creates a wider view of the events of EuroMaidan, while simultaneously giving the visitors a more intimate insight into the Revolution.
He stated that the competition first caught his attention because it is not an ordinary museum, but “an extremely political task”. As well as tackling this challenge, he wanted the building to appear open and modern, to reflect “the future of the population of Kyiv”.
“I did not expect (to win) this, to be honest, and it seems wonderful!”
Preserving memory without prosecutions?
Volodymyr Bondarchuk, a jury member of the competition and chairman of the non-governmental organization The Families of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, told the Kyiv Post that keeping the memory of the Revolution alive is extremely important. However, for him and his colleagues, investigations into the killings and providing justice for the victims and their families must be “the number one priority.”
“The memory of our relatives should be first of all in good deeds, not in stone or bronze,” he stated.
Most of the perpetrators of the killings have never been identified, let alone prosecuted. Many of snipers of the Berkut riot police force escaped to Russia, including the commander Dymtro Sadovnik, who fled following his release from custody in September 2014. He was accused of killing 39 protesters.
Four years later, progress has been slow. Civil society groups have to continually pressure the authorities to continue the judicial process, as there appears to be a lack of political will to pursue investigations.
In recent weeks, the Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko announced plans to dissolve the Department for Special Investigations, which has been gathering evidence for the thousands of offences that took place during EuroMaidan Revolution.
This follows a pattern of obstructions that lawyers working on EuroMaidan cases have experienced since Lutsenko was appointed by President Petro Poroshenko in 2016.
Meaning behind memorial
Igor Lyubashenko, a researcher of post-EuroMaidan transitional justice, understands there is the sentiment among many activists that the authorities praise the sacrifice they bore, but make limited effort to prosecute those who were responsible for this sacrifice.
However, he noted that memorial sites are important because they are a feature of the public sphere. In the long run, it may even “have an impact on which values are regarded as acceptable and which are not”. Yet this depends on the way the space is used, since if the memorial is just a ‘place’ then nothing will change.
Memorial spaces need to be dynamic for people to regard it as a form of justice, according to Lyubashenko. If it provides “a place for discussion of the past, helps achieve a social agreement about the deep causes of EuroMaidan,” then it can be regarded as a success.
As per the website of the memorial complex, the current plans suggest this will be the case. The area will feature a memorial garden, research center, and a ‘Freedom House’, which will be a public space for meetings and activities of associations and movements “whose goals are coherent with the values of Maidan.”
Moreover, the complex will feature a tree-lined memorial walkway leading to the museum, designed by Ukrainian architects Maria Protsyk and Iryna Volynets.
They were sensitive to how the space can be used to help others understand Ukraine’s history, in particular the difficult path of the country’s civil society. The trees were envisaged as both a memorial to those who died and a representation of hope, prompting visitors to “rethink the relationship between past and future”.
“We tried to imagine what country (the Heavenly Hundred) would like to see in 15 years, and how we, as architects, can reflect their beliefs”, they told the Kyiv Post.
From July 13 to Aug. 13, the House of Architects in Kyiv (7 Borysa Grinchenka St., 3rd floor) will be exhibiting all the architectural designs for the museum that reached the first stage of the competition.
