Forest Technology company supported the realization of a playground for rest in Malin. By joining the central park and the main square of the city, its administrative buildings, shops, the area is currently serving as a meeting place and a rest.
The team of architects tried to determine what local people are investing into the street on which the project, with which it is symbolized, is associated. They created surveys, questioned people online and offline, viewed video from cameras. It turned out that the place has a noticeable contrast, depending on the hours of the day. In the afternoon there are parents walking with children, they come to ride on toy cars. There is a children’s library, a post office, a cafe. There are wooden huts nearby, which can be rented, for example, for entrepreneurship. In the evening, it’s not so cozy – there is access to the alcohol stall, but there are no alternative activities. There are also no shops in the street to just sit there.
The city authorities are still developing a project for the capital reconstruction of Krivenchuk Street, and BUR together with the WoodLuck Social Workshop have decided to use the street potential and change the perceptions of this pedestrian space now. We decided to put in place a creative intervention here – to create two stationary platforms, benches for sitting and microcrossing, portable mobile benches and color navigation, which will combine all elements into a single composition. Through such experiments, we want to discover how the physical changes in the environment affect consciousness, responsibility, self-organization of the public; to find the most appropriate solutions before reconstruction in order to positively influence long-term changes in the city. Will the local people put the bench in the cold and spend time reading a book or playing chess? Will the artists move furniture and, when they form mini-amphitheaters, will play their music and performances? Will they care about property that is, in essence, “protected” only by surveillance cameras? Do local entrepreneurs and masters want to open their business and fill the street with new meanings and opportunities? For example, the local non-alcoholic cafe “Caramel” plans to make a terrace and arrange evening movie shows, projecting video on the wall of the children’s library.
Of course, we needed a tree to implement the plans. And it’s cool that the Forest Technology Company, many of its employees who live in Malin, and which is part of the Holding of Effective Investments, gladly responded to the offer of partnership and provided the necessary wood materials to create this public space for the city and its inhabitants! We believe that such cooperation will benefit the entire community of the city, and Malinchans will rejoice in the new space created by volunteers from all over Ukraine and the world with the support of local business!