10 принципов современной планировки. Европейский путь восстановления городов (Том 2)

Что такое квартальные города? Это плотные органические города с взаимосвязанными строительными структурами и доступными городскими пространствами. Города, предлагающие разнообразие, яркость и высокие архитектурные качества, побуждают исследовать их пешком или на велосипеде. Они создают чувство открытости, позволяют жителям чувствовать себя в безопасности, предлагают места для общения и способствуют культурному единству. Города, уважающие традиции и культурное наследие. В этой книге архитектор Карстен Полссон рассматривает городские кварталы как структуру, которая лучше всего подходит для содействия развитию устойчивой городской жизни. Он исследует появление определенных качеств благодаря использованию городских кварталов в качестве основных элементов застройки, беря примеры из выбранных европейских городов, а также старых и новых городских районов в столице Дании Копенгагене. Он определяет ключевые элементы квартального города и исследует его широкий потенциал. Наконец, Полссон предлагает десять принципов современного планирования, которые являются основой подхода к трансформации старых городских районов и новых.

10 принципов городской трансформации. Европейский путь восстановления городов (Том 1)

Эта книга является практическим руководством, в котором на примере крупных европейских городов демонстрируется, как может выглядеть городское развитие, ориентированное на людей. Такой подход предполагает обновление и развитие именно гуманных городов с учетом их истории и созданием масштабного архитектуры человека. Книга придерживается традиции, начатой ​​Яном Гейлом, которая рассматривает городское пространство как среду для жизни и общения людей. Отправной точкой для этой книги является европейская традиция плотного классического города. Особое внимание уделяется физическим и пространственным параметрам, моделям развития застройки и типам зданий, а также руководящим принципам, регулирующим доступность и взаимосвязи с дорогами общего пользования. Все это является основой безопасной городской жизни. Книга разделена на десять тематических разделов, в каждом из которых приведены определения и общее описание основных проблем вместе с предложениями по их решению.

Исторический очерк городского развития и практически организованная тематическая структура, лежащая в основе обсуждаемых концепций, позволяют приведенным примерам значительно расширить понимание этой темы.

After more than one year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, thousands of civilians have been killed, and thousands of buildings, heritage sites, and entire cities have been damaged. Along with millions of other Ukrainian women and children, architectural historian Ievgeniia Gubkina had to leave the country, moving further away from the Russian threat in search of safety. Her hometown Kharkiv still remains a target for the Russian army. The war has dramatically changed the geographies of nearly all Ukrainians and returned the work of an archi­tec­tural critic to the traditional mainstream of journalism.

This shift has taken Gubkina’s thoughts from the academic context and made them more akin to war reporting. This book contains papers presented, printed, or published online by various media in different parts of the world during the first eight months of the all-out war. Most of the texts were written in late spring and summer 2022 after Ievgeniia and her teenage daughter had evacuated to Paris.

This publication reflects the work of the first year of Ro3kvit – Urban Coalition for Ukraine. The members are profes­sionals from Ukraine and elsewhere who have come together to rethink Ukraine’s future. In six chapters covering topics ranging from urbanism to housing and from identity to circular building and governance, the many different aspects of rebuilding and reconstruction are addressed in the form of longer essays, conversations, and project descriptions. All texts and projects are written or executed by Ro3kvit members. Sometimes the authors express their personal views and involvement, creating a rich amalgam of different voices while adhering to a common set of values that members of Ro3kvit share and cherish.

Ro3kvit’s work follows five principles:
• Civil society comes first
• Ro3kvit’s work is ethically sound
• Consideration of prudent use of sources and resources
• Education is crucial
• Ro3kvit’s work is network-based

The City of Mariupol’s heroic defence and systematic destruction at the beginning of the Russian invasion have made it an international symbol of senseless brutality and Ukrainian defiance. The ruined city today still harbours the embers of that resistance.

Join a multidisciplinary team of architects, planners, Mariupol residents, and outside experts as they envision the rebirth of their beloved city following its liberation.

Inspired by the Ukrainian people’s faith and determination to rebuild, the authors join forces with displaced Mariupol residents to imagine a dynamic future for Mariupol that will begin the day the Ukrainian flag rises.

Despite the unavailability of reliable information and the difficulty of communicating with the scattered population, the team illustrates the case for planning rebuilding while the city is still under occupation, both so as to exorcise the scars of war and colonialism and to establish a viable economy and human-centred city that draws strength from its tragic past.

Housing is the most omnipresent urban typology. Housing is also the essential architecture of the human condition. Perhaps more than any other architectural species, housing determines the ways urbanites construct their lives and build their shared futures.

The all-out war in Ukraine, started by the Russian Federation in 2022 has disproportionally affected housing and residential infrastructure. The destruction is so targeted, and the damage so significant that it has disfigured entire neighborhoods and erased entire cities. With the scale of damage and loss in mind, and the future wide-ranging reconstruction that will inevitably take place after the war, this study examines the history and typologies of mass housing in Ukraine. It does so in order to evaluate what is lost, explain the diversity of modes of urban living that exist in Ukrainian cities, and finally, reconsider the narrative of how Ukrainian housing came about.

The study covers the period of the last 100 years: the time of the most dramatic expansion and change in character of Ukrainian cities. It begins with the experimental buildings constructed in the Soviet Central and Eastern Ukraine and Polish Western Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s, continues by looking at type projects from the Stalin era, as well as the serial apartment blocks built during the reigns of Khrushchev and Brezhnev and in the late USSR. Finally, it showcases individually designed, yet also typical residential buildings from the turbo-capitalist period of the 1990s and 2000s.

With the help of archival materials -- texts, blueprints, and photographs -- as well as contemporary documentation, the authors analyze 30 examples of Ukrainian-designed or modified housing types. Through uncovering the Ukrainian context, as well as the work of Ukrainian architects, design institutions, contractors, and developers, the history of Ukrainian housing is emancipated from the Russian narrative of the Soviet past. By doing so, we aim to write the history of a specifically Ukrainian building tradition and contribute to embedding it in the context of all-European architectural history.

Chapters:

1922–1938
Ukrainian residential architecture under the early USSR and the Republic of Poland     

Residential courtyard on vul. Stryiska, Lviv 
Tarnavskoho ensemble, Lviv 
Slovo House, Kharkiv
Settlement No. 6, Zaporizhzhia
Kharkiv Tractor Factory, Kharkiv
Zhovtnivka Cooperative, Kyiv
First prefabricated building, Kharkiv

1938–1958
Stalin and the end of Modernism      

Five Modernist apartment buildings, Lviv
Series I-302   
Khreshchatyk, Kyiv
Series 7
Series 11
Sobornyi prospekt, Zaporizhzhia
House with a Spire, Kharkiv
Series I-403
Series I-406

1958–1984
First- and second-generation series under and after Khrushchev

Series I-438
Series I-464A
Series 1-480
Series BK
Series II-57
Series 67
Series 84
Series 87
Series 94
Series 96
Series 121
Series T
Series KT

1984–2008
Late Soviet and early post-Soviet construction

Series APPS 
Series APPS Lux
Postmodernist Podil, Kyiv
Slavutych new town, Slavutych
Cast-in-place towers, Kyiv
Amphiteatr/Amsterdam, Dnipro
Vozdvyzhenka: pseudo-historicism, Kyiv

2008–2022
Turbo-capitalism and urban renaissance 

Residential complexes by Kadorr, Odesa
Karat, residential building, Kharkiv
Residential complexes by Budova, Odesa
Comfort Town, Kyiv
Fayna Town, Kyiv
Municipal housing, Vinnytsia

A quiet rural town until World War I, Zaporizhzhia exploded into a major industrial centre in the 1920s following the con­struction of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station.

This book looks at a later period in the history of what is now one of the largest cities in Ukraine, the 1950s to 1980s, when the focus in Soviet policy shifted from industrialisation to welfare and from production to consumption. In this respect, Zaporizhzhia may be seen as ‘a local model of the birth of a modern society’ – Soviet consumer society. Historian Pavlo Kravchuk and historian and graphic designer Mykhailo Mordovskoi skilfully combine text and images to show how this shift played out in urban planning, architecture, and, more importantly, the lives of ordinary Soviet citizens.

Prefabricated construction techniques enabled the rapid erection of districts of mass housing, giving ordinary people a small apartment of their own for the first time. With this came a need for consumer goods. At the same time, sitting in their new kitchens, people gained a modicum of privacy and a space in which to meet and discuss, away from the controlling eye of the state. The new Soviet apartment was ‘a place of leisure’, but also of dissidence – the beginning of the end of the regime.

About the Authors:

Pavlo Kravchuk is a Ukrainian architectural historian. Chief specialist in historical and cultural heritage at the Department of Culture and Tourism at Zaporizhzhia City Council. One of the founders of the Zaporizhzhia Museum of Architecture. Creative director of the digital portal Zaporizhzhia Heritage. Author and coordinator of 'Programmes for protecting cultural and historical monuments of Zaporizhzhia City for 2018-2022'. Editor of the Ukrainian-German publication Fragile Heritage: Architectural Modernism of the Ukrainian South and East: late 1950s-1980s (2023).

Mykhailo Mordovskoi is a Ukrainian historian and -designer. Head of the municipal museum network in Zaporizhzhia. Author of the permanent exhibition at the Zaporizhzhia Museum of Architecture. Holder of the Heritage Solidarity Fellowship for Ukraine from Europa Nostra, Global Heritage Fund, and ALIPH (2022). Curator of the Rethinking Space cultural centre - the first public space in Ukraine focused on understanding the events of the current Russian--Ukrainian war (2023).

An in-depth overview of Ukrainian art from the dawn of Modernism in the late nineteenth century to the start of the Russian invasion in Spring 2022.

This new volume in the World of Art series provides an overview of Ukrainian art, artists and art movements from the dawn of Modernism and the 1900s to the Soviet period, to post-Soviet times and the beginning of the war with Russia in February 2022. Ukrainian art and artists are discussed within historical and political contexts as well as how they have contributed to, and interacted with, Ukrainian culture and identity. Filled with rich illustrations, each chapter explores a different art period or movement.

We are at a historical moment where Ukraine and its cultural identity are in grave danger, and author Alisa Lozhkina offers a powerful opportunity to connect curious and empathetic readers with the Ukrainian art tradition.

About the Author:

Alisa Lozhkina is a leading art historian, critic, and curator. She was the editor-in-chief of the major Ukrainian art magazine Art Ukraine and served as a deputy director and chief curator of Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, the largest museum and exhibition complex in Ukraine. Lozhkina has curated numerous art projects in Ukrainian and international museums and art centers, and published several books. She has contributed to numerous publications including Texte zur Kunst, The Art Newspaper, ARTnews, Etudes sur L'histoire de l'art, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She is also an artist.

Discover the richness of contemporary creative culture from Ukraine with the best in interior design, architecture, art, photography, and fashion.

In the last decade, Ukraine has emerged as a hotbed of contemporary creativity, showcasing impressive contributions in fields such as interior design, fashion, architecture, photography, and art. The young Ukrainian creatives blend traditional crafts, materials, and aesthetics with a modern, cosmopolitan outlook.

Ukraine Rising is a book that celebrates the best of contemporary Ukrainian culture through compelling photography and insightful writing. It showcases the work of top creatives and features expert essays that offer a glimpse into the vibrant people, projects, and innovation the country has to offer. This collaboration with Ukrainian publisher Lucia Bondar is a testament to the creative spirit and energy of Ukrainians and a promise for a better future.

About the Author:

Lucia Bondar is an experienced media manager and publisher, the founder of CP Publishing. She has been working as a journalist and author of various professional publications for over 10 years. Under her leadership, CP Publishing has organized numerous well-known events in Ukraine, including an annual architecture and design forum.

From the front lines of the war in Ukraine comes this compelling collection of images from world-class photographers that captures the humanity, perseverance, and determination of the nation's fight for freedom and independence against all odds.

Stunning collection of images from some of the most respected photojournalists of our time:

- Carol Guzy, four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist
- Lynsey Addario, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist andNew York Times bestselling author
- Paula Bronstein, award-winning photojournalist, and Pulitzer Prize finalist
- Justyna Mielnikiewicz, award-winning photojournalist
- Svet Jacqueline, award-winning photojournalist
-and 20+ other world-renowned photojournalists

Moving essays, published in both English and Ukrainian, by:

- Foreword by the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova. Markarova provides an overview of how this war has shaken her country and what democracy and freedom mean to her people.
- Award-winning Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov. Ukraine's most famous living writer, Kurkov provides an emotional, heartfelt reflection on what's happening to his country in relation to the pictures displayed in the book.
- Pulitzer Prize winner and personal photographer to President Gerald Ford, David Hume Kennerly. Kennerly speaks to the emotional and physical risk photojournalists take in covering war alongside their mission to show truth.

As Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said in his address to U.S. Congress, Russia “went on a brutal offensive against our values, basic human values. It threw tanks and planes against our freedom, against our right to live freely in our own country, choosing our own future, against our desire for happiness, against our national dreams, just like the same dreams you have, you Americans.”Relentless Couragedelivers a gripping, visual portfolio of images that remind us of our shared humanity, what is right, and what’s at stake when independence and freedom come under attack.

Published to accompany the Royal Academy exhibition from 29 June to 13 October 2024, a major study of Ukrainian art from 1900 to the mid-1930s – with loans from major museums in Ukraine, elsewhere in Europe, the United States (including MoMA) and Israel

How does artistic life flourish during revolution and conflict? Ukraine in the early 1900s endured unimaginable political upheaval, yet this became a period of true renaissance in Ukrainian art, literature, theatre and cinema.

In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s, presents the ground-breaking art produced in Ukraine in the early 20th century, focusing on the three key cultural centres of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa. Against a complicated socio-political backdrop of collapsing empires, World War I, the revolutions of 1917 with the ensuing Ukrainian War of Independence, and the eventual creation of Soviet Ukraine, several strands of distinctly Ukrainian art emerged.

While émigrés such as Sonia Delaunay and Alexander Archipenko found fame outside their homeland, the followers of Mykhailo Boichuk focused on Byzantine revivalism, and the artists of the Kultur Lige sought to promote the development of contemporary Yiddish culture. The first avant-garde exhibitions in Ukraine featured the radical art of Davyd Burliuk and Alexandra Exter, and the dynamic canvases of the Kyiv-based Cubo-Futurist Oleksandr Bohomazov. In Kharkiv, Vasyl Yermilov championed the industrial art of Constructivism, while Vadym Meller, Anatol Petrytskyi, Oleksandr Khvostenko-Khvostov and Borys Kosarev revolutionized theatre design. The attempt to build a national identity in Ukraine resulted in a polyphony of styles and artistic developments across a full range of media – from oil paintings, sketches and sculpture to collages, cinema posters and theatre designs.

Twelve internationally renowned scholars, including curators from the National Art Museum of Ukraine, bring to life this astonishing period of creativity in Ukraine and all the movements it encompassed.

Table of Contents:

Foreword
Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Konstantin Akinsha

I. Kyiv

From Kyiv to Paris: The Cosmopolitanism of Alexandra Exter
Katia Denysova

The Beginning: The First Avant-Garde Exhibitions in Ukraine
Olena Kashuba-Volvach

The Art Section of the Kultur Lige: Yiddish Avant-Garde Art in Kyiv (1918–1922)
Hillel Kazovsky

Oleksandr Bohomazov: The Ukrainian Version of Futurism
Olena Kashuba-Volvach

Boichukism
Myroslava M. Mudrak

Bauhaus on the Banks of Dnipro
Olena Kashuba-Volvach

II: Kharkiv

The Tragic Sensuality of the Kharkiv Avant-Garde
Tetiana Zhmurko

Constructor Vasyl Yermylov: A Captive of the Material World 
Konstantin Akinsha

Visual and Spatial Experiments in Ukrainian Scenography of the 1920s
Olena Kovalchuk

Ivan Kavaleridze: Searching for the Hero of the New Age
Oksana Barshynova

Nova heneratsiia (1927–1930)
Myroslava M. Mudrak

III. Odesa

The Odesa Society of Independent Artists
Olha Barkovska

From Symbolism to Avant-Garde: The Emancipation of Ukrainian Cinema in the 1920s
Ivan Kozlenko

IV. Aftermath

In the Shadow of Russia: Ukrainian Art at the XVI Venice Biennale of 1928
Olena Kashuba-Volvach & Maryna Drobotiuk

The Émigrés from Ukraine: Archipenko, Delaunay and Baranoff-Rossiné
Katia Denysova

From Oblivion to Glory: Spetsfond or The Special Secret Holding
Yuliia Lytvynets

Plates
Authors’ Biographies
Picture Credits
Index

About the Author:

Konstantin Akinsha studied at the Shevchenko Art School in Kyiv, Ukraine, and in 1986 completed an MA in art history at the Moscow State University. He completed a PhD in art history at the University of Edinburgh. In the course of his career, Konstantin Akinsha has been curator at the Kyiv Museum of Western and Oriental Art, Moscow correspondent for ARTnews, contributing editor for ARTnews magazine, New York, as well as a Research Fellow at both the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, and Bremen Kunstverein, East European Institute of Bremen University. From 1999 to 2000 he was also Deputy Research Director, Art and Cultural Property, Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, Washington, D.C. In 2006 he became the European Correspondent for ARTnews magazine in Budapest, and in 2007 he also became a Eugene and Davmel Shklar Fellow at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. Akinsha has written a number of books, including Stolen Treasure (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), co-authored with Gregorii Kozlov, and The Holy Place, co-authored with Gregorii Kozlov and Sylvia Hochfield (Yale University Press, 2007).

On 24 February 2022, the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops began. Since then, Russia's war of aggression has continued with increasing ferocity and destruction. Millions of Ukrainians have fled to neighbouring European countries. Ukraine is now a country caught between two stools: on the one hand, it is striving for rapprochement with NATO and the EU; on the other hand, good relations with Russia have also always been of fundamental importance to the country.

This is a picture book about a landscape and its country, which is going through dark times and is currently moving the whole world. Here we take a look at the beauty and the integrity of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian landscape is characterised by steppes, plateaus, lowlands and mountains. The Lemurian Lake in the south of Ukraine impresses with its pink colour, as it has a higher salt content than the Dead Sea. The mountain ranges of the Carpathians in the west of Ukraine captivate with their wonderful wild beauty. The Ukrainian steppe is part of the great Eurasian steppe, which runs through several countries of Eastern Europe and used to be the home of the Cossacks. The country is also criss-crossed by numerous river courses, with the Dnieper, Donets and Dniester rivers, which flow into the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, being among the most significant.

Unparalleled scale, out-of-this-world colours and unique landscape shots from above make this book a tribute to the beauty of the Ukrainian landscape.

_A declaration of love by the young, award-winning Ukrainian photographer Yevhen Samuchenko to his homeland in dark times
_An opulent illustrated book that shows the beauty, diversity and richness of colour of the Ukrainian landscape
_By looking down on one, the dimensions of Ukraine as one of the largest European countries are made visible
_Text in English, German and Ukrainian

A celebration of Ukraine’s rich cultural heritage, drawing on over 100 of the country’s most important works of art and architectural monuments from prehistory to the present.

Showcasing more than one hundred objects and buildings — from Byzantine icons and wooden churches to gold-domed cathedrals, folk art, and avant-garde masterpieces — Treasures of Ukraine chronicles the rich arts and heritage of a country currently facing destruction and devastation. The significance of the pieces is explained by renowned artists, curators, and critics, revealing the nation’s complex history and its impact on the present. From the development of ancient cultures like Trypillia and Scythia to early states such as Kyivan Rus and the Cossack Hetmanate, to the dawn of Modernism and the striking contemporary paintings and political artworks being produced today, Treasures of Ukraine reminds us that art and monuments represent powerful sources of collective memory and identity.

All proceeds will be donated to PEN Ukraine, to help Ukrainian authors in need and support museums in Ukraine.

Contents List:

Introduction: Andrey Kurkov
Map of Ukraine
1. Pre-history to Early History Andriy Puchkov
2. Kyivan Rus Christian A. Raffensperger
3. The Lithuanian–Ruthenian State Diana Klochko
4. The Ukrainian Baroque Era Maksym Yaremenko
5. The Nineteenth Century and the Fin-de-Siecle Alisa Lozhkina
6. Avant-Garde Art and Theatre Myroslava M. Mudrak
7. Soviet Rule, the Ukrainian SSR and Non-conformist Art Oleksandr Soloviev
8. Postmodern and Contemporary Art Victoria Burlaka
Appendix: Folk arts Alisa Lozhkina
Timeline of Ukrainian History

About the Authors:

Andrey Kurkov is Ukraine’s most acclaimed living novelist and public commentator. Andriy Puchkov is a specialist in Ukrainian architecture and author of more than two dozen monographs. Christian Raffensperger is professor of history and department chair at Wittenberg University. Diana Klochko is a prominent art historian and author of 65 Masterpieces of Ukrainian Art. Maksym Yaremenko is Professor at the Department of History at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Alisa Lozhkina is an art historian, critic and author of Permanent Revolution: Art in Ukraine, XX–early XXI century. Myroslava Mudrak is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the Ohio State University and a member of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. Oleksandr Soloviev is a leading art critic and a local expert in contemporary art; Victoria Burlaka also specializes in contemporary art.

In the times when the Ukrainian art sphere was regulated by the Soviet institutions, local monumental and decorative arts existed at the frontier of the Party’s propaganda and the artistic thirst to experiments. Nowadays, Ukrainian mosaics are wrested out of the architectural context of the country in both literal and metaphorical ways. The artworks are liquidated from the buildings they were specifically created for and indiscriminately despised as ideological pieces of no value. Furthermore, in legal terms mosaics are not defined as objects of art that makes them unguarded in the face of the decommunization process.

Initially incepted as a guide, this book is an equally beneficial companion for the journey through space (in the context of the geographical area of modern Ukraine) and hitchhiking through time (in terms of Ukrainian cultural history). It incorporates the selection of Ukrainian mosaics which undermines the simplified perspective on the Soviet art heritage in Ukraine. The volume is generously supplemented with unique photographs of the documentary photographer Yevgen Nikiforov who continues the research, initially presented in the book Decommunized: Ukrainian Soviet Mosaics (2017). Together with the art historian Polina Baitsym who reveals striking linkages of the mosaics’ plots with broader historical context, he will guide you through the testimonies of the genuine creativity of Ukrainian monumental artists which managed to flourish on the most infertile soil.

_________

В эпоху, когда сфера культуры в Украинской ССР, как и в других республиках, регулировалась генеральной линией партии, местное монументальное и декоративное искусство развивалось на стыке партийной пропаганды и художественного эксперимента.

Сегодня украинская мозаика буквально вырвана из архитектурного контекста страны. Произведения искусства уничтожаются, исчезают со стен зданий, для которых они были специально созданы, и без разбора осуждаются как часть идеологической пропаганды, не имеющая никакой ценности. Кроме того, с юридической точки зрения мозаики не считаются искусством, что подвергает их опасности перед лицом действующей программы по декоммунизации.
Изначально задуманная как путеводитель, эта книга является не только полезным спутником в путешествии по современной Украине, но и позволяет читателю совершить скачок во времени и узнать больше об украинской культуре второй половины XX века. Издание включает около 120 уникальных панно, и эта внушительная коллекция противопоставляется упрощенному взгляду на советское художественное наследие Украины.

Книга проиллюстрирована уникальными фотографиями Евгения Никифорова, который продолжает собственное фото-исследование, ранее представленное в альбоме "Декоммунизация: Украинские мозаики советского периода". Вместе с искусствоведом Полиной Байцим, которая раскрывает связи мозаичных сюжетов с историческим контекстом, читатель познакомится со свидетельствами подлинного творчества украинских монументалистов, сумевшего расцвести даже в условиях многочисленных ограничений.

In Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide, researcher Darmon Richter journeys into the contemporary Exclusion Zone, venturing deeper than any previously published account. While thousands of foreign visitors congregate around a handful of curated sites, beyond the tourist hotspots lies a wild and mysterious land the size of a small country. In the forests of Chernobyl, historic village settlements and Soviet-era utopianism have lain abandoned since the time of the disaster – overshadowed by vast, unearthly mega-structures designed to win the Cold War.

Richter combines photographs of discoveries made during his numerous visits to the Zone with the voices of those who witnessed history – engineers, scientists, police and evacuees. He explores evacuated regions in both Ukraine and Belarus, finding forgotten ghost towns and Soviet monuments lost deep in irradiated forests. He gains exclusive access inside the most secure areas of the power plant itself, and joins the ‘stalkers’ of Chernobyl as he sets out on a high-stakes illegal hike to the heart of the Exclusion Zone.