How to save historic villages
Historic village of Kurgenitsy is very popular this summer. Students and researches have started to visist the village from this May. And, again, the next group landed to Klimenetsky Island in the middle of June. The students of Petrozavodsk State University firstly had the preliminary training course on Kizhi Island and after that they started their practice in Kurgenitsy village. They had to create detailed plan of the village, to fix the types of survived buildings, to find the place of the lost chapel and write it down on the map,to make the photo fixation of the village. The students used gained knowledge. The work is finished, data processing is being done.
The Kurgenitsy village was chosen not by chance. It is a very interesting place to study from architectural point of view. Long ago the village was the big economical center in this area. There were blacksmiths’ workshops, a tan-yard, an oil mill, a mill etc. In XXth century there were own school and kindergarten.
Unfortunately nowadays the most of buildings are lost including chapel, memorial cross, farmers’ houses.
But in spite of that the village still is really impressive. From the one hand, there are only a few locals in the village because of isolation. But from the other hand isolation protects the village from modern buildings. The old houses are still alive and worthy of respect. The bitter truth is that these houses are nearly of being lost.
What could we do for this village and other villages around Kizhi Island? How to protect them and make them alive? The team of the project “Ethnoarchitecture of Fennoskandia in XXI century” is trying to answer these questions. The work of the students will be the part of the research.