How Architects In Ukraine are Preserving Their History

In April 2022, just two months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, at the second UN Forum of Mayors, British architect Norman Foster presented the mayor of the eastern city of Kharkiv with a masterplan for its reconstruction. "[He] was like, ‘Oh, we need to rebuild Kharkiv,’" architect Varvara Yahnysheva recalls. "People instantly want and need to rebuild whole areas, whole districts, and, if money comes, they really are able to do it very fast, but they don’t have time for preparation, consideration, or research." 

Postwar architecture usually happens when it is safe to move forward with rebuilding, ideally with thoughtful consideration of historic and social context and optimistic ideas about the future. Wartime architecture, on the contrary, is often little more than temporary refugee housing like tents and flat-packed prefabs. But in Ukraine, where millions have been displaced from their homes—some for the second or third time in their lives—reconstruction can’t wait. So, while the current invasion rages on, a young generation of Ukrainians are reimagining what home means and how to preserve the essence of what is being physically destroyed.

Yahnysheva left her home city of Donetsk in 2014 after finishing high school. By then, Moscow-backed separatists had established breakaway "republics" in the east, and Yahnysheva refused to live under occupation. In February of 2022, she joined many internally displaced people (IDP) in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, including her colleague Anastasiya Ponomaryova, cofounder of the Ukrainian design agency Urban Curators. Together with Metalab, an architectural NGO founded in 2017 that provides affordable housing and community workshops, Yahnysheva and Ponomaryova collaborated with other architects on Co-Haty, an initiative to convert unused buildings into homes for IDPs.

When starting Co-Haty, Yahnysheva and her colleagues thought they could easily adapt a communal co-living/co-working model to house large groups. That changed when they started work on converting a university dormitory. "We came to meet the people who would live in this house: one hundred people who had lived in a school gym for half a year," she says. "They were all kinds of people: grandmas, families, young guys, young girls. We met them and saw that, sometimes, they hate each other." 

They pivoted, focusing instead on providing as much private space and as many private bathrooms as possible. "The plans are really not that appealing and spacious, but it’s all for giving people more privacy and less reasons to fight," Yahnysheva says. To ensure the project’s success, some architects remain onsite for months to guide the new residents through the unfamiliar conditions, assuming a social worker–type role. "It was not our focus to be involved in the [building’s] operation, because it’s a lot of work, and we are not experts in this," she says. "But then we had to become experts." 

Other areas require different kinds of expertise. In smaller towns near Kyiv, where residents were able to return home only to find them heavily damaged, debris cleanup is an immediate need. From the capital, Ilia Serha leads fundraising efforts at the rebuilding NGO Smilyvi. Serha relocated to the capital from his home in Kherson, one of the many southern cities terrorized by the Russian military. Before February 2022, he ran a shading net manufacturing family business. Then, for six months, he was forced to live under occupation. "At that time, I had a young daughter, and my wife was eight months pregnant. Due to military clashes on the city outskirts and the absence of humanitarian corridors, we couldn't leave in time," he writes over text. "In August 2022, we left with our newborn son towards [Ukrainian-controlled territory], passing through 34 enemy checkpoints. It was a long journey." 

After settling in a friend’s apartment in Kyiv, Serha soon joined Smilyvi, run by a group of volunteers who were repairing homes. What started with a handful of people is now a larger organization backed by international partnerships. Aside from the completed and planned restoration of educational facilities for children in regions across the country, Smilyvi has documented and shared online more than 400 stories of families and individuals that the organization has pledged to help. 

Storytelling is important to many reconstruction groups. Livyj Bereh, another volunteer-led organization, has replaced the roofs of more than 350 houses in shelled areas, and it shares the harrowing accounts of each one on its Instagram account. The group is often able to complete a roof installation in one day, but it is in constant need of funding—each installation costs about 2,000 euros. Like many others, the group also organizes vehicle, drone, uniform, food supply, and ammunition deliveries to support Ukrainian defense in frontline regions.

"This resilience and mobilization doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from generations of memories and pain that have been translated verbally and emotionally through people," says architect Sasha Topolnytska who, with architect Ashley Bigham and artist Betty Roytburd, curated the exhibition Constructing Hope: Ukraine at New York’s Center for Architecture, on view through September 3. The exhibition focuses on grassroots initiatives transforming the future of Ukraine, including Co-Haty, Livyj Bereh, and BRDA, a foundation repurposing discarded windows from Poland in Ukraine. 

While these organizations help people reclaim their homes, others are making sure that the country’s architectural heritage—from modern and postmodern to vernacular forms of construction—is known, studied, and lauded. This preservation of memory is another form of resistance.

In the summer of 2022, after the Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives reclaimed territory from Russian control, word spread about plans to rebuild. With support from Urban Curators and Izolyatsia, a nonprofit forced into exile from Donetsk that funds research, site-specific projects, exhibitions, and residencies, Yahnysheva conducted research for the book Architectural Identity of Eastern Ukraine. It focuses on recording the architecture and urban landscape of vulnerable regions on and behind the front line. Though she says that most city planning in these areas had come from outdated ideals of the communist era, she believes that spirit should be preserved. "People left home, and when they come back, for them not to find something they know will be sad," she says. "We need to find a way to make their space familiar to them."  

The standard concrete panel housing blocks from the Soviet era are prevalent in Ukrainian cities. But in forested regions like Chernihiv, which borders Belarus and Russia, centuries-old traditional carved-wood houses populate cities and villages alike. Stanislav Ivashchenko, a web designer, began documenting the architecture of his home city of Chernihiv in 2018. Fearing its disappearance, he founded an online museum, Wooden Lace of Chernihiv, which has information on 294 houses that date back to 1688. The site’s volunteer staff now receives calls from people interested in restoring their homes, which the group offers to do for free or at cost. Ivashchenko says his goal is "to make people fall in love with this architecture again." For over two years, he has been serving in the military, which dramatically scaled down his working hours, but his project shows no signs of slowing down. "This year we plan to finish at least six houses, and we will launch a new website," he assures.  

Chernihiv is still under attack, as are many other cities throughout the country. In an effort to preserve rural architecture and, if territory is recovered, to prevent generic reconstruction in the future, the Kyiv-based architecture firm Balbek Bureau, led by Slava Balbek, developed RE:Ukraine Villages, a database of regional styles and a digital modeling tool to imagine how village homes could be rebuilt. The team pulled information from a series of research expeditions covering nine regions bordering the 800-mile front line and the Old Khata Project, a documentary photo series of folk architecture started in 2020 by two sisters from occupied Severodonetsk.      

"Our hope is that we can spark an interest in heritage preservation and encourage Ukrainians to stick to their roots, restoring and building their homes with respect to local traditions," says Balbek. The modeling tool has yet to be put to use by locals, but the group hopes it will also raise awareness worldwide. "Ukrainian culture has long been suppressed and overshadowed by Russia," Balbek says. "It’s time we put it back on the map." 

 In the thick of war, architects are working on pressing and immediate projects, as well as visionary, long-term ones. "We have to be responsible and think more about how we engage people from the beginning…[and about] what kind of civilization we are building right now," says architect Oleg Drozdov, cofounder of the Kharkiv School of Architecture (KhSA), who was forced to evacuate his office, school, and family from Kharkiv amid the threat of Russian occupation. Once reconvened in the western city of Lviv, the curriculum at the KhSA shifted to working for people needing humanitarian aid and testing relevant wartime proposals. 

"We’re training a new generation of thinkers [and teaching] empathy every day," Drozdov says. "All our students are very sensitive in terms of critical understanding of the circumstances of where they live and people’s needs." Their reality is inescapable, however, as he tells me: "We have to be ready that many of us will be joining the [armed] forces." It’s a grim reminder of the daily threat that these initiatives face while they try to ensure their country’s future.

Related reading:

Is the Future of Refugee Housing Permanence? 

Top photo: Courtesy Livyj Bereh

Correction: The Wooden Lace of Chernihiv photo was mislabeled in an earlier version of the story.