More than 20 young people aged 12 to 16 created outdoor furniture and flower boxes with their own hands, and planted the plants.
The newly created public space was made in two days and installed near the Hnat Khotkevych Palace. The workshop was held as part of the II Lviv Urban Forum: Taking Responsibility.
The Activation Point workshop is an opportunity for young people with different degrees of training and different knowledge to get involved in creating the urban environment. The organisers decided to work with a public space that was not very active. The goal was to transform it: to make it more attractive and encourage people to stay there.
The teenagers made 6 elements for seating and 6 boxes for flowerpots, in which they planted plants. They chose species that help increase biodiversity in the city and attract insects. Among them: serpentine – a medicinal plant, millet and stachys.
“The furniture we have designed is designed to be modified, put together and made into different configurations. As a space where nothing is happening, I think it would be great if people started to gather there and something could be done there.
Nearby is the Hnat Khotkevych Palace, where many children gather for various studios – they are already active creative youth. We would like them to continue to get involved in order to revitalise this space,” said Olha Kryvoruchko, co-founder of the Urbanideas architectural studio.
Furniture and plants have become part of the space and will remain here.
“It’s great to work with young people, because they are open to any new ideas. If you tell them that the space should be super-inclusive and that inclusion is not only about accessibility, but also about including different people, where everyone should feel comfortable, they begin to understand it, accept it, and will continue to share this idea. They do not have any preconceptions or frameworks and are very open to accepting new things. They also have no preconceptions that they don’t know how to do something or can’t do something. If you give them a screwdriver and tell them to fasten one thing to another, they will just do it. They don’t think that they have never done it before, so they won’t do it.
Also, when we work with children, they get the experience of working for free for the world, and they can always repeat it. They don’t expect everything to be a business,” added Olha Kryvoruchko.
The workshop was held as part of the II Lviv Urban Forum, which brought together more than 1300 participants, representatives from hundreds of Ukrainian communities and more than 30 speakers from around the world. This year’s forum focused on responsibility, safety, and socially-oriented architecture. One of the world’s most famous architects, Alejandro Aravena from Chile, spoke about his experience of rebuilding an entire district destroyed by the tsunami.
Participants also had the opportunity to join 11 different tours of the city’s most important spaces.