How architecture became one of Ukraine’s essential defenses

The Ukrainian government and military have already begun major reconstruction projects. Bucha and Irpin, the devastated suburbs of Kiev, have become major construction sites. Architect Norman Foster has been hired to design a new master plan for Kharkiv, whose extraordinary density of modern architecture is exposed to near-daily shelling. But this exhibition continues to focus on informal, bottom-up efforts in Ukrainian architecture. It showcases the work of architects from inside and outside the country, but also some of Ukraine’s most prominent artists, not to mention the ravers and DJs from Kiev’s world-leading electronic music scene, who have aided the reconstruction efforts while the records were spinning.

Vladimir V. Putin began a full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022, but Russia has actually been at war with the country since 2014, when it responded to Ukraine’s democratic, pro-European Maidan revolution by occupying Crimea and invading the easternmost part of the country. Village. regions. That low-intensity war meant that Ukrainian architects and urban planners suffered displacement and destruction when millions of citizens began fleeing from east to west two years ago.

In Lviv, Ukrainian firm Drozdov & Partners and student volunteers from the Kharkiv School of Architecture quickly erected cardboard partition units for hundreds of disadvantaged people, adapting and redistributing a system first developed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. An NGO, MetaLab, created a cohousing project for those who had lost their homes during the war. Called Co-Haty, a play on Ukrainian words for “love” and “houses,” it includes a quick-to-assemble, modular wooden bed of the same name that you can now find in empty government buildings and temporary shelters. .