UKRAINE, KHARKIV, Apr 18 — An English architect, Norman Foster, will design the memorial complex for fallen soldiers in Kharkiv. He already has certain ideas about it, said Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov to Gwara Media’s journalist.

The Kharkiv residents many times asked the authorities to create a memorial in the city. The City Council stated the memorial would be made after the war ended.

“I asked Norman Foster to design the project for the memorial complex. He agreed. I think it’s very important for us to make this memorial monumental because we see this war not only on screens but also in real life,” added Terekhov.

According to the mayor, the memorial based on Foster’s project will be built after the end of the war, but it will be possible to create construction submittals for the project and lay the foundation of the complex before that. 

City council plans to install the memorial on the Kharkiv cemetery №8, where the fallen soldiers’ alley is located now. Officials also wanted to create the park in honor of fallen combat medic and aerial reconnaissance specialist Vladyslava Chernykh.

Pavlo Khramov, Kharkiv urbanist, says it’s “stupid and cynical” to ask Foster, who hasn’t visited Kharkiv and doesn’t know the Russia-Ukraine war, to design a memorial and notes that the city has local architects who get all the nuances about war. “It can be a difficult discussion — it should be, because it’s a very complex, painful topic. But no one сan make (this memorial) better than us,” Khramov says.

UPD from Apr 18, 7:13 p.m.: Last paragraph added; the indication of speaker added to the headline.

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