This year, although not at full capacity, Ukraine joined the list of countries hosting one of the most prestigious events in the field of design — Design Week — for the first time. This cultural event takes place annually in the largest capitals of the world, such as Milan, Paris, London, Dubai and many others, and covers almost two dozen design areas: clothing, furniture, architecture, graphics, object design, etc.
Unfortunately, due to the full-scale war, Kyiv was not able to hold a full-fledged event this year, but the idea was supported by Swiss colleagues from Zurich Design Weeks, who volunteered to host Kyiv Design Week in their city. As a result of international collaboration, it was possible to implement the event in an unprecedented format - simultaneously in two countries, covering different cultural locations of Zurich and Kyiv.
Thus, the locations of the first KDW in Zurich were the Design Museum Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, the cultural center Kulturhaus HELFEREI, the gallery-atelier Thomas Kurer Galerie, the showroom MY BENI, and in Kyiv - MacPaw Space, the design concept store Vozianov Studio, as well as the contemporary art gallery The Naked Room.
The Kyiv Design Week was organized by the Design4Ukraine association — a Ukrainian professional public association whose goal is the formation of a coherent society and the promotion of design culture.
"The task of the first KDW was to include the Ukrainian creative community with its own annual design festival — Design Week — in the worldwide network of cultural events as ecologically as possible."
Anastasia Biletska, curator of Kyiv Design Week within Zurich Design Weeks 2023 and ambassador of Design4Ukraine in Switzerland. Photo: Salvatore Vinci
"The task of the first KDW was to include the Ukrainian creative community with its own annual design festival — Design Week — in the worldwide network of cultural events as ecologically as possible. The main long-term task of the project was to create a basis for the further development of KDW as an event that will contribute to the economic prosperity of the industry and the establishment of Kyiv as a significant point on the map of Europe for a professional audience. I believe that Kyiv should become a new destination for cultural tourism in Ukraine, which continues to demonstrate itself as a multicultural, creative and developed country," says Anastasiya Biletska, curator of Kyiv Design Week.
The event was made possible thanks to the support of the German government within the TIPSTER project: "Trade, Intellectual Properties Support, and Technical Regulation", which is implemented by the NGO "Reform Support Fund in Ukraine", as well as within the framework of the international cooperation project ReACT4UA ("Application and implementation of the Agreement on the association between the EU and Ukraine in the field of trade"), the executor of which is the German federal company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. This project is aimed at increasing the competitiveness and sustainability of Ukrainian small and medium-sized enterprises, especially in view of Ukraine's potential accession to the EU. The USAID program "Competitive Economy of Ukraine" acted as a partner of Kyiv Design Week.
Guests and participants of the Kyiv: City of Changes event, which took place in Kyiv as part of Kyiv Design Week. Photo: Valentin Kuzan
Why Switzerland and what do they have in common with Ukraine? According to Anastasia Biletska, today, looking for something in common is a common thing. And the motive for this is, first of all, to find a common language for an effective dialogue: cultural, economic, strategic. However, Anastasia emphasizes that, in addition to the commonality, one should not forget that each country has its own unique history and unique national code.
"We have a lot in common with Switzerland in folk crafts, in particular in embroidery, household ceramics, musical instruments, such as, for example, the Ukrainian trembita, which is similar to an ancient wind musical instrument, which is also common in the Alps. By the way, it is one of the national symbols of Switzerland. That is, in general, everyday life is similar to that lived by people before the modern era. The industrial era brought a different rhythm of transformations to our territories. It should not be forgotten that the Swiss lands did not know wars for more than 800 years, and the territory of Ukraine did not have a single peaceful century for the projected development. Therefore, design as a phenomenon on the territory of Ukraine is a unique chapter in European history, primarily the history of the liberation of thinking and freedom of action after 1991. The rapid growth that the Ukrainian design community has shown over the past 30 years was triggered by obtaining the desired freedom in its broadest sense, primarily by the opportunity to be marked as an author, and not an anonymous performer from the system," Anastasia believes.
Anita Simeon Lutz, editor-in-chief of Das Ideale Heim, co-founder and curator of Off Spaces at Zurich Design Weeks. Photo: Salvatore Vinci
The vast majority of events of Kyiv Design Week 2023 took place in Zurich, where exhibitions, discussions, presentations, lectures, screenings of documentaries, performances and many other events aimed at popularizing Ukrainian design in Europe took place for almost three weeks. Thus, the main attraction of the event was the interactive exhibition Design Zentrale × Zurich Design Weeks, which took place from August 31 to September 19 at the Zurich Museum für Gestaltung. Within its framework, a series of Crossing Kyiv Talks lectures was held with European speakers and representatives of the Ukrainian art scene. In particular, the founder and editor-in-chief of NO MAD Paper Dominique Kuroyanagi presented the editorial project Crossing Kyiv, dedicated to Kyiv and its modern culture. The special guest of the event was Victoria Yakusha, a Ukrainian multidisciplinary designer and architect who currently lives in two cities - between Kyiv and Brussels.
Also, the creative director of MacPaw, founded in Ukraine and now an international company, Alyona Koroleva, presented the new basic font Fixel, developed in cooperation with the famous Ukrainian font studio AlfaBravo.
"There were several reasons to be particularly proud of the success of the participants within the project. One of them is the presentation at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich of MacPaw's Fixel typeface. Choosing and approving this location for the exhibition was actually an asterisk task, because there are certain restrictions and a difficult approval procedure. The Swiss Design Museum is home to timeless and valuable concepts, and to be represented there with a Ukrainian typeface is to stand in line with the legendary HELVETICA. The mission has been successfully completed, which was our ambitious goal," shares Anastasia Biletska.
The screening of the documentaries "Facade Color: Blue" and "Whisper of Footsteps" at the location of Kulturhaus HELFEREI aroused great interest of the audience. Photo: Michael Calabro
In addition, the audience was very interested in the VR tour of the architectural and historical monuments of Kyiv's brutalism "Walk through Kyiv. Architecture of Brutalism" by Save Kyiv Modernism and Aspichi, as well as the screening of the documentaries "Facade Color: Blue" and "Whisper of Footsteps" at the location of Kulturhaus HELFEREI.
The documentary film "Facade Color: Blue" told the viewer the history of the UFO building ("Dish"), built in 1971 by architects Florian Yuryev and Lev Novikov, its modern history about the revitalization project by the author and a team of modern architects, and the struggle for existence with unscrupulous and greedy developers.
The documentary "Whisper of Footsteps" introduced the audience to the life and work of the Ukrainian artistic duo Ada Rybachuk and Volodymyr Melnichenko, who became famous for the creation of monumental and decorative buildings in Kyiv in the 1960s-1980s. The main work of their artistic tandem — the Wall of Memory at Baikovo Cemetery — was destroyed by the Soviet authorities after 13 years of the authors' daily hard work.
The design museum Museum für Gestaltung Zürich in Zurich became one of the key locations of the first KDW. Photo: Salvatore Vinci
In the last week of the event, from September 12 to 19, the Crossroads of Time exhibition was held at the Thomas Kurer Galerie location in partnership with the USAID Program "Competitive Economy of Ukraine". The curator of the exhibition, Anastasiya Biletska, brought together in one concept traditional Ukrainian crafts and digital products, art, industrial and collectible design, color palette, conceptual fashion and graphic design.
One of the participants of Crossroads of Time was UFEG (Ukrainian Fashion Education Group), which presented the Roots of the Future project, which explores the fusion of fashion and technology, rethinks the structure of traditional Ukrainian clothing and demonstrates its flourishing, taking care of nature through biodesign.
The trending theme of biodesign was continued by the artist Diana Bilichenko, who presented author's objects of Kyiv bioart. Rhizome, and the S.Lab company and the Ukrainian ceramics studio Natura Ceramica presented the decor collection déco mycø, which was inspired by a new biomaterial from mycelium and hemp, created in the Kyiv S.Lab laboratory under the curatorship of Sana Moro.
A series of posters from OdesaCityLetters
He supported the "story about the culture of Ukraine" and the Ukrainian brand TheO Wallpaper, presenting a color palette of paints for interiors Kyiv colors, which are a reflection of the colors of various architectural objects of the Ukrainian capital. And the creative duo of designers Kateryna and Valery Kuznetsov presented a collection of functional art called "Wanderers" / Lights "Wanderers".
SOLOMIA Reshetylivka Craft Studio impressed the audience with the "MetaProstir" tapestry, which the masters from Reshetylivka made in collaboration with the UFEG school especially for Kyiv Design Week. As part of the exhibition, the authors talked about the history of weaving in Ukraine and showed preserved weaving techniques that are now undergoing new development and reproduction in combination with the latest digital capabilities.
According to the curator, the special attention of the audience was attracted by the Ukrainian watch company ZAVOD, which told the stories of two iconic watch models - RIDER1991 and REAL TIME.
"The design community in Ukraine knows for sure that these watches are an investment. And who, if not the Swiss, will be able to give them an objective expert assessment? We told about the history of the creation of these models and their concepts, and the audience, to put it mildly, was in shock, why we had not yet made a museum of Ukrainian design and placed these things there. It takes a long time to explain why. Everything is ahead!" - shares Anastasia.
The main attraction of the event was the interactive exhibition Design Zentrale × Zurich Design Weeks, which took place from August 31 to September 19 at the Zurich Museum für Gestaltung. Photo: Salvatore Vinci
Also, one should not overlook the special project of curator Olga Protasova — Kyiv Posters, which contains a series of posters dedicated to Kyiv. Their designers and illustrators — Yurko Hutsuliak, Mari Kinovich, Mykola Kovalenko, Oleksandra Korchevska-Tsekhosh, Artem Gusev, Dasha Stepicheva, Anton Firsik, OdesaCityLetters, Katya Jatsushek, Oleg Fedunchak, Olga Protasova, and Victoria and Vitalina Lopukhina — created posters specially for Kyiv Design Week as part of Zurich Design Weeks.
"All samples of Kyiv Posters, which were created and printed specifically for the event, were transferred to the collection of the Design Museum in Zurich after completion. This creates not only a significant line in the professional biography and recognition of each designer of the project, but is also of great importance for Ukrainian design in general. Until now, there are collections of Soviet posters in museums around the world, from which the authorities of Soviet times very carefully removed the names of the authors, depriving them of their right to authorship — and to subjectivity in the professional world environment," says the curator of Kyiv Design Week.
The special guest of the Crossing Kyiv Talks event was Victoria Yakusha, a Ukrainian multidisciplinary designer and architect. Photo: Salvatore Vinci
Anastasia also spoke about the planned second stage of cooperation with the Design Museum in Zurich — a project to review the archive collection, which includes more than 2000 posters, with the aim of finding and restoring the names of Ukrainian authors.
"Starting to inscribe Ukrainian names in the history of world design is an important mission for us. The representatives of the Design Museum in Zurich responded enthusiastically to it, because the culture of "preserving" has very deep roots in them. The important common thing that unites us is the vision of the need for constant dialogues in order to build a safe and happy future, no matter how idealistic it sounds. We surprise and delight the Swiss with many things, they want to learn from us, and they can teach us just as much. Exchange of differences, constant dialogue, joint modeling with the Swiss design community is my personal goal, in which I see a lot of valuable necessary experience, which will save us time for testing and implementing changes," notes Anastasia.
Yaroslav Belinsky, co-founder and head of Design4Ukraine. Photo: Valentin Kuzan
Several events within Kyiv Design Week took place in Kyiv. In particular, from September 14 to 15, the Kyiv: City of Changes event took place, as part of which "Success stories of modern Ukrainian creative businesses" were presented. Its participants were such companies as Expolight, Superhumans, Save Kyiv Modernism + Aspichi, MacPaw, AlfaBravo and others.
On September 15, with the support of the USAID Program "Competitive Economy of Ukraine", the visitors of the event had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the presentation "Design of changes for the creative economy", during which the vision of co-creation of the future ecosystem of creative industries was presented.
The final event of the Kyiv cultural marathon, with the support of the Embassy of Switzerland in Ukraine, was the presentation of the first edition of Crossing Kyiv Paper, developed jointly with NO MAD Paper and Design4Ukraine. Mr. Felix Baumann, Ambassador of Switzerland to Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, was personally present at the event, which took place on September 19 in the capital's art space The Naked Room.
In an exclusive interview for PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA, Mr. Baumann spoke about the specifics of this cultural initiative and about other joint projects for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
In general, the participants of the first KDW were: Projector Institute, MacPaw, Save Kyiv Modernism and Aspichi, Ukrainian interior designer and DJ Yova Yager, Crossing Kyiv project (NO MAD Paper publishing house), UFEG (Ukrainian Fashion Education Group), ZAVOD watch company, TheO Wallpaper, furniture company DONNA Factory, artist Diana Bilichenko, S.Lab + Natura Ceramica (project curator — Sana Moro), creative duo of designers Kateryna and Valery Kuznetsov decorkuznezov, SOLOMIA Reshetylivka Craft Studio, Odesa City Letters, Kyiv Posters special project (project curator — Olga Protasova). Special guests of events in Kyiv — Kyrylo Tkachev, founder and art director of AlfaBravo font studio, Kabluka Light & Digital Sculptures (KLDS), Superhumans, Yuliya Dvorakovska (CEO of CBM Forum engineering company), Weapons Development and Innovation Unit of NASV and Vitaly Kyryliv, co-founder of Hochu Rayu . Design bureau.
Oleksandr Tregub is a Ukrainian designer, CEO and co-founder of Projector Creative & Tech Online Institute. Photo: Valentin Kuzan
"If we speak in the language of numbers, then more than 130 is the potential reach of the audience around the world who learned about Kyiv Design Week 000 and the participants of this year's event during September. Not bad, right? - shares Anastasia. — In the future, we plan to develop a network of events that will build up "musculature" with a modern type of cultural interactions. Design000Ukraine is about design for change. We all feel that the way it was before is no longer necessary. I really want to unite with curators and organizers in order to create a new horizon of the sphere in which there will be no competition, because everyone has their own place and special task. "Kyiv Design Week is a form-creating event, so depending on the request and readiness of the participants, we will be able to organize formats that will meet the requests and the mission - to change the field for the better, and as a result, people's lives," concludes Anastasia.
