Sesam 2020 Poliklinika: Architecture COmpetition
 
The building of poliklinika (polyclinic in English) is located in the city centre. Built based on population growth projections that never happened, the hospital occupies over 10 000 sq m. Following the collapse of the USSR, the local municipality couldn’t afford the main city hospital to work at full capacity, and the vastness of its spaces proved to be too expensive to maintain. In 2014, Poliklinika was indefinitely closed, and the health services moved to a smaller facility.
Over the past six years of abandonment, the building has been rapidly deteriorating. The polyclinic was a prime example of the late modernist architecture designed to heal the psychological and physical trauma and wounds of those residents affected by the radioactive cloud.
In order to activate the space, and aligned with our intention of focusing on the architectural legacy of the city, we are going to use the ’poliklinika’ (clinic, hospital) as a
base of operations for SESAM 2020. During the event, participants will not only habit the building but will also have the chance to use it as a space for workshops, here they can propose spatial experiments, as well as for various events. Interventions inside the building will remain until the next event, creating a platform for experimentation on forms of habitation, interacting with empty spaces of the building, as well as re-thinking and reflecting
on earlier interventions. Through the activation of the hospital ruin, we are aiming to bring Slavutych back to avant-garde architectural discourse, where it was at the beginning of its creation when the city was designed by leading architects of eight different countries.