Denys Sokolov: City dwellers value nature without infrastructural junk

/ Urbanism /

Denys Sokolov, co-founder of the architectural studio SVOYA studio, told PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA how to fit a villa into the urban fabric and how a city park-oasis should be.

PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA: What elements and components of a resort city can and should be integrated into the fabric of our ordinary cities in order to increase their comfort?

Denis Sokolov: In every city, the most important thing is its inhabitants. Everything that happens with architecture must be on a human scale. That is why local pedestrian zones, which have recently appeared in the place of highways, cannot fail to please. The most terrible of urban landscapes is a dull, monotonous building in which there is no place for a person. It is necessary to consider the city not only as a platform for earning money, but also, first of all, as a place for life, as a canvas on which a person moves, on foot or by transport. To maximally integrate recreational zones into the building, create places for public events where people can socialize and spend their leisure time. If there is no natural body of water in the city - a sea, a river, a lake - an artificial alternative should be created. There are many options for how exactly to do this in international practice. In whatever form water appears in an urbanized space, vital energy and people will always be concentrated near it.

PM: How specific is the "villa by the sea" architecture today? Is it possible and justified to move such an object, for example, to an ordinary suburban area, or even to the city center?

D. S.: The format "villas by the sea" does not look very organic in the urban area, if it is a single, detached villa. Often, the owners of such houses ask to be physically and visually fenced off from the outside world. Therefore, the object looks like a foreign inclusion. But it is enough to assemble a small group of villas and loyally integrate them with the help of landscaping and design into the urban environment, as they immediately acquire the right to life.

If we are talking about the suburban area, you can find quite a lot of similar implemented examples in Ukraine. If earlier these were elite settlements for wealthy people, now there are quite a lot of buildings of different formats for different budgets.

Denis Sokolov and Lera Sokolova

PM: Is there a place for a "city villa" in our post-industrial and post-covid cities?

D. S.: It is difficult to say about the "city villa". But today, post-industrial spaces are actively used for the social life of cities — this is a fact. A cool trend is to reformat old factories and plants into creative galleries, venues for exhibitions, and various events. Often, cities historically grew around industrial zones, so they are located in the very heart of megacities. And since these territories no longer fulfill their former function, it is time to create a new one for them. Well, I think it is still too early to call our cities "postkovydnyi".

PM: Is it possible to create "resort" oases on the scale of a block or is this the prerogative of point projects from the resort category (hotels, spa centers, sports complexes)?

D. S.: It is possible and necessary! And they are created. In the Dnipro, for example, such oases have appeared over the past few years. And they are very popular among citizens. It is especially nice that they were made not just how, but with the right approach, with the involvement of good architects, landscapers, dendrologists.

PM: Often "escape" means a radical change of environment. Is it possible to solve this problem with the help of design, or is no design capable of satisfying our "anxiety and desire to change places"?

D. S.: It seems to me that if you put in order the city parks, which are, in fact, a piece of nature in the urban environment, they can be exactly the place where you want to escape. Often they are not given enough attention in terms of landscaping, which is why they look neglected and unwelcoming. And if they do, they clutter it up with various outdated forms — attractions, stalls, and other architectural and infrastructural debris, whereas a modern person needs, first of all, nature and parks with competent functional zoning into quiet zones and places for activities.

Interviewed by Iryna Isachenko