Vinnytsia Architecture as Evidence of Multiculturalism

Uncovering Vinnytsia’s Architectural Heritage research project was a 6 month joint research project between Pangeya Ultima Development Centre,  Vinnytsia History centre, Vinnytsia city council, Donetsk and Vinnytsia Pedagogical Universities. The aim was to investigate historic multiculturalism in the city’s historic architecture.

The term multiculturalism in the last decade has become a new point of discussion used to debate the progression of a society in reaching a desired stage of neoliberal idea of progress made possible by its advancements in a globalised world. Therefore, the claim is that the presence of multiculturalism or a multicultural society is only found in the last decade. However, if one looks critically back at history they will find eras with successful multicultural societies, many later becoming empires. It could be argued that one of the reasons these empires became so large was due to the presence of a multicultural society. Therefore, this research explores the topic of a historic multicultural society and constructs a method of investigation needed for a framework that can verify the presence of historic multiculturalism in a historic society. This method is then applied to the case study of Vinnytsia, a city in central Ukraine, to check if the idea and presence of historic multiculturalism is a valid concept.

Supplementary information can be found in Uncovering Vinnytsia’s Architectural Heritage - Sourcebook: Paul Simon Morgenstern and Matteo Redaelli, Uncovering Vinnytsia’s Architectural Heritage - Sourcebook (Zenodo, 2022), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7121372.