The park is located in the central part of Kharkiv, a 1.5-million-strong city in Ukraine. As a product of an industrial era, Kharkiv largely consists of factory buildings and residential areas. Two small rivers running through the city became much shallower and almost disappeared over the last decade.
However, there is a powerful freshwater spring in the ravine called SarzhynYar. This water is safe to drink and has a temperature of 7 degrees Celsius all year round.
During the soviet times, a futuristic-looking concrete cover was built above the pump room of the spring. The park was mainly used as a place to get drinking water and as a place to take a plunge in the cold water bath filled with spring water. Our initial task was to renovate the part of the park around the water taps and the stone bath, but after examining the whole area of the ravine we offered the city authorities to turn the whole site into a water landscape park.
The new plan involved not simply renovating a small section of the park, but also using the water from the spring to create a system of picturesque lakes. Apart from the lake system, we designed two bike overpasses (for the 3.5 km long bike loop not to intersect with pedestrian walkways), children’s playgrounds, a sports ground for people of all ages, and a wooden terrace for doing yoga. We preserved 4 hectares of natural wooded area, only adding gravel paths and admire-the-nature garden chairs to the terrain. One of our top priorities was to leave a large part of the area intact, in its natural state.
