A labyrinthine national archive for Ukraine at Mostischenska, a small village on the outskirts of Kiev.

Its position on the edge of the city was chosen because of the dynamic prevailing in the border zone between city and hinterland. The village of Mostischenska is an example of what they call a private sector, a village hemmed in by major urban expansion areas dating from Soviet times, in this case a covered market, a bus terminal, a power plant and a shopping mall. A buffer zone wrapped round the village is constantly adapting to meet the village's changing relationship with its context, a relationship that is sometimes defensive and sometimes symbiotic. The villagers adapt the zone and activities there to meet the succession of changes, which in turn informs the archive's design.
The Ukraine National Archive is to house the collective memory of a nation with a turbulent history of foreign domination. Other than in a museum, visitors will have the opportunity to access that history individually. The building is designed not as a symbol of national pride but as an instrument to retrieve a possible past and consider a possible future. Its interior is dominated by objects. The labyrinthine spatial order of the routeing along the collection is essential to how visitors experience the archive. Its design was inspired by the following quote which compares knowledge to a labyrinth: 'Foucault's view of knowledge as a collection of colliding and intersecting grids offers this kind of place. We can wander here; we often return to familiar points, familiar intersections, which give pleasure. This is the mythical labyrinth, which we enter and from which we have no desire to emerge.' Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: The (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993
In the labyrinth, the route is more important than the goal. The length of the route is enough in itself to achieve a state of meditative contemplation. Here the classic labyrinth is transformed into a circulation model of a continuous route 2.5 kilometres long and consisting of a sequence of 53 individually programmed spaces inspired by the 53 ambiences encountered in Mostischenska. The spaces of different height are oversailed by a flat roof accessible to lorries. Objects can easily be added to or removed from each space in the archive along ramps or through hatches using cranes.
Each space has its own storage system of fixed density. Welded steel racks act as storage space and double as the roof's support. The open structure makes it possible to manipulate the contact between the paths of the labyrinth.
The labyrinthine route is folded inside a compact square box, inciting new spatial and visual links. Practical cross-connections can be effected and while making your way through the labyrinth you come across spaces where you have already been and others you have yet to visit. So the route through the archive unlocks the possibility of accessing the future and the past, thereby expressing how time flies.

Place of education: TU Delft | Specialization: architecture | Tutors: Marc Schoonderbeek, Oscar Rommens, Jan Engels