projects / all projects / Revolution of Dignity Museum Kiew | Ukraine

Revolution of Dignity Museum Kiew, Ukraine – 2018

During the Revolution of Dignity, protesters, coming up from Maidan Square, stormed the hill. The new museum building, situated on top of the hill, symbolizes the crucial moment of the storm and transports this image into the concept of a „walkable building“. Several ramps of different widths are organized around the building and resemble the storm of the hill in a concentrated form. At the same time, they proceed the walk up from Maidan Square onto the building. This walk leads from both sides onto a terrace, which provides a (reflective) view back to Maidan Square. Moreover, the visitor experiences a great view over the city center.

The visitor is invited to continue his walk into the building and is led through the diverse exhibition spaces down, back to street level. Here they might stroll along the contemplative water basin to the Memorial garden in front of the International Center for Culture and Arts. The Memorial and Museum are correlated and offer to rethink and memorialize individual dignity in relation to society and the country as it moves into the future.

The façades are subdivided, analog to the development of the outside ramps, into a base and a pavilion-like form created by slender pillars around the circumferences. The families of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes created their own memorials with flowers and photographs in curved brick niches on top of the low wall along the alley. These „people’s“ memorials will be replaced by the memorial stela. The facade concept for the base of the museum picks up the theme of the curved niches and develops it into a structuring order, leading in succession from a narrow spacing to the rhythm of the pillars of the pavillon-like top.

Due to the spacing of these niches and columns, the building appears either more open or more closed from different points of view, similar to the effect of a curtain. This impression varies according to movement along or around the building. The resulting veiling and unveiling refers metaphorically to a further level of meaning, namely to the events during the „Revolution of Dignity“.

Architect : Jan Kleihues and Johannes Kressner

Location : Alley of Heavenly Hundred Heroes, Kiew, Ukraine

Client : Ministry of Culture of Ukraine

Competition : 06/2018, 1. Preis

GFA: 26.158 sqm

Type of use: Museum