Architectural Modernism in Early Soviet Kharkiv | Kultura 2026
Date and time:
Wednesday 18 November, 2026
18:30 - 20:30
Location:
ONLINE
This seminar focuses on the experimental modernist architecture and urban planning of Kharkiv during the years when the city served as the first capital of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (1919–1934). As a new post-revolutionary capital, Kharkiv acquired an expanded political role while its population and industrial infrastructure grew rapidly, making it an important site for experimenting with new forms of socialist space-making and architectural expression. Our primary focus will be on New Kharkiv (1930–32) as a case study to discuss the benefits of modern architectural iconography, functionalism, and design standardisation, while also questioning the ethics of construction during a time of forced famine.
General £35 Student £25
Lecturer
Dr Christina E. Crawford, Emory University, USA
Dr Christina E. Crawford is an architectural and urban historian, a trained architect, Masse-Martin NEH Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University, and affiliated faculty at the Kharkiv School of Architecture. Her research focuses on the transnational exchange of ideas about housing and urban form in the twentieth century. Her first book, Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union (Cornell University Press, 2022), follows the development of socialist urban theory and practice in three seminal industrial sites: Baku, Magnitogorsk, and Kharkiv. She is co-editor of Detroit-Moscow-Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917–1945 (MIT Press, 2023), and is currently writing a book about interwar exchanges of worker housing expertise between the US and Europe using Atlanta, Georgia as a primary node. Crawford received her PhD and MArch from Harvard University, and her BA from Yale University. She was a Fulbright student in Kyiv in 2001–2002, during which she researched the emergence of post-independence Ukrainian architecture.