09 September 2025
Recently, the city of Odesa decided to hold a competition for the best design proposal for the monument to Lesia Ukrainka.
This decision was preceded by many years of debate and bureaucratic struggle over the monument, so we decided to dedicate the Intent.Insight live stream on September 9 to this topic.
Why Lesia Ukrainka Avenue and Park have appeared on the map of Odesa only recently, and what to expect from the competition, in the live broadcast of the online TV show. Insight talked to Olga Kvasnytska, a deputy of the Odesa City Council.
Larysa Petrivna Kosach (Lesya Ukrainka) was born on February 25, 1871, in the town of Novohrad-Volynskyi (1795-2022), now Zvyagel, Zhytomyr region. Since childhood, her family called her Lesia. The poetess visited Odesa at least 18 times. She was treated here, stayed with the family of her friends the Komarovs, and wrote a cycle of poems "Journey to the Sea" and the story "Over the Sea." Her play "Blue Rose" was staged on the Odesa stage in 1903. In Odesa, there is a street named after Lesia Ukrainka in the Peresypskyi district, and in 2024, according to the order of the head of the Odesa Regional State Administration, Gagarin Avenue was renamed in her honor.
The competition is open to professional architects, sculptors or designers, students of architectural and construction higher education institutions, design organizations, teams of authors, and specialists in the field of urban planning and architecture. The teams of authors may include specialists from other fields with experience in creating monumental art objects.
It is proposed to provide cash prizes to reward the authors of the best project proposals:
UAH 350 thousand is planned to be allocated in the 2026 budget for the competition. In July 2024, a park located at the intersection of Lesia Ukrainka Avenue and Fontanska Road was renamed after Lesia Ukrainka.
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