Bizarre Bazaar
June - July 2016
Courtyard of the Center for Urban History
It is organized by students in architecture and urban planning from Michigan University, based on different topics of their research about the use of public space and trading spaces they were doing in Ukraine. They visited Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv and studied similarities and differences of architectural history and modern use of bazaars and informal markets. The display includes drawings, photographs, and other original pieces by the course participants. It represents new opinions on places common for spectators such as bazaars and their architectural, structural, and contextual components. The exhibition is not only the presentation of research work by students but also a methodology example that helps to describe a feature of the object or subject under study within a short period.
A Bizarre Bazaar is a result of a four-week travel course with a workshop of the same name Bizarre Bazaar; supervised by Ashley Bigham, a lecturer of architecture at Taubman College for Architecture and Urban Planning at Michigan University. Eight participants of the course are the students from the graduate and undergraduate years of the Taubman College. The course focused on developing informal markets in Ukraine and shifts in the use of public space in a post-Soviet context.
The exhibition includes drawings, photographs, and other original works by the course participants. This is a new look at the usual places for smokers – bazaars and their architectural, structural, and contextual components. This exhibition is not only a presentation of students' research works but also a methodological example, which aims to describe one of the characteristics of the studied object or subject in the shortest possible time.
Afterward, the exhibition was exhibited in the exhibition hall of the American House in Kyiv (February 18 - March 20, 2017). The opening was accompanied by an online presentation by Ashley Bigham and a discussion of the bazaar phenomenon.
Ashley Bigham
is a Fulbright Fellow in architecture currently researching historic city fortification systems near Lviv. She is a recent graduate with a Master of Architecture from the Yale University School of Architecture. In addition to her studies at Yale, Ashley’s teaching experiences include a teaching fellowship with Professor Dolores Hayden at Yale University and an Adjunct Lecturer position at the University of Tennessee. Professionally, she has practiced at MOS, an inter-disciplinary architecture firm based in New York and Gray Organschi Architecture in New Haven.
Ashley’s research in Ukraine will focus on the preservation and modern adaptation of historic fortification structures in the Galicia region. Her work will focus on the cultural and architectural identity of the structures by examining their modern context.
