While it's difficult to find a single answer in the debate over Ukraine's reconstruction about what the country should look like after the war, the first corrective measures are already being taken.
Petro Vladimirov—Ukrainian architect and multidisciplinary curator, specializes in Direction office projects. Graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Wroclaw University of Technology. With the BRDA Foundation he co-creates the OKNO project. Co-curator of the Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale 2023 and has worked in Ukraine and Denmark.
The ongoing exhibition „Office of Reconstruction of Ukraine” in the Warsaw Museum's Variable Cabinet is a record of discussions and questions posed by experts in the context of physical and social reconstruction. What these questions are and where the discussion is heading in Ukraine is explained by Petro Vladimirov, architect, researcher and curator of the exhibition.
Kacper Kepinski: What does the „Office of Reconstruction of Ukraine” look like?
Petro Vladimirov: The exhibition consists of two spaces. The first has the character of an office, the second is its back office, an archive or warehouse. In the first part, we designed an installation consisting of desks, which became a place for presenting questions about the reconstruction of Ukraine. The desks are placed in such a way that they show the complexity and comprehensiveness of the problems we face. So there are no separately arranged workstations, but there is a common space of reflection. The questions we face are very complex and one person or representatives of one profession cannot solve them. The desks set in the middle, grouped into one table, thus symbolize a space for cooperation and knowledge exchange.
poster promoting the event
© Museum of Warsaw
Kacper: What questions do you pose here?
Petro: These are questions that we received from the experts involved in the project from different fields working on reconstruction. So these are issues related to housing policy, urban planning, construction law, historic preservation and in general the management of space, local government and the territorial division of the country. For me, extremely important issues include those of where to start reconstruction in the first place—because this is a key issue. No one can give a clear answer today. But we also ask whether housing should be a right or a commodity.
Kacper: In the title of the exhibition you refer to the Bureau of Capital Reconstruction. Will we find Polish-Ukrainian themes here? Is there anyone from Poland among the experts?
Petro: No, the experts are from Ukraine—we invited one person for each of the five issues. Instead, the exhibition is bilingual, so it is accessible to the Polish public. In preparing the exhibition, knowing that it will be organized jointly with the Warsaw Museum and working in this context, we wanted to enter into a dialogue with the history of Warsaw, so we referred to the BOS. It would be interesting to see how a similar institution would operate today.
exhibition spaces
photo: Tomasz Kaczor
Kacper: The second part of the exhibition is a record of your conversations with experts?
Petro: These are reports, condition inventories prepared by invited experts. Before reconstruction can begin, it's necessary to take a serious look at the resources we have and understand what has really happened over the last thirty years to Ukrainian cities. So each expert and expert prepared such a chronicle for their field. In fact, we reached much further, because while with housing policy the thing is not so complicated, because it affects each of us, I think no one before us has looked so closely at what has been happening in Ukraine with construction law over the last three decades. Our discussions and research made up a multi-page study, a very valuable inventory of the existing state, which we can continue to work on.
Kacper: There are a lot of ideas in the public debate about this reconstruction, and probably a lot of answers to the questions you pose. If you were to summarize which positions in this discussion are dominant, which demands are repeated most often, what would they be?
Petro: Regarding the main postulate that is being made in Ukraine, it says that reconstruction should have a European character—this war is seen as a fight for Europe, such values were chosen, so Ukrainian cities after reconstruction are also supposed to be European. The problem of describing the characteristics of European reconstruction is complex, because it overlaps with the question of what Ukrainian architecture is in general, how to classify it. I think identity issues are extremely important, fundamental. The second issue is a set of topics related to the quality of space. This comes up again and again in discussions about reconstruction plans, the allocation of green areas for new buildings, there are conflicts at the municipal level. We are talking about the quality of materials, rubble and what we can do with it. And here, of course, we have the rich experience of Warsaw, but the rubble that was processed then is different from what we have available in Ukraine. In Warsaw the materials were more natural, we have to deal with a lot of plastic, Styrofoam, which cannot be separated from the ruins of buildings.
Grassroots reconstruction issues are also important. Many young people, volunteers have moved to rebuild the reconstructed cities. The state is preoccupied with the war—so reconstruction started from the bottom up. There was no specific legal framework or strategy, not everything was obvious, so together with experts we tried to observe and describe reconstruction issues on an ongoing basis.
exhibition spaces
photo: Tomasz Kaczor
Kacper: Who participates in this discussion? Who has the most to say?
Petro: The discussion, due to the huge public involvement in reconstruction, is initiated primarily from the bottom up. Among others, we invited Hanna Bodnar, a Verkhovna Rada deputy, who has been working with her team for the past six months on the creation of the reconstruction law, to participate in the exhibition. The document is intended to give a legal framework for everything related to recovery efforts. Developers are also active in the discussion, because reconstruction is a big piece of the pie, from which everyone wants to have something. Unfortunately, there are also decisions such as Law 5655, which has stirred up huge controversy because it gives a free hand to developers and withdraws construction from public control [see www.architekturaibiznes.pl/23271.html]. The new legislation removes much of the government's control over the investments developers make. So there is a lot going on, sometimes contradictory things.
exhibition spaces
Photo: Tomasz Kaczor
Kacper: The real estate market in Ukraine was already heavily dominated by developers before the war. Are there demands for market regulation in the reconstruction discussion? How do investors behave?
Petro: Much depends on the city authorities. Lviv, for example, is definitely focusing on improving the quality of architecture, and some really interesting projects are being developed there. One of them is the implementation of houses for pregnant women, initiated by the city. Designed by Sulyk Architects, the estate is an example of very qualitative architecture, which is lacking in modern Ukraine. As for the market and the system, this one has been changing strongly over the past months. The first idea was for the state to buy up from developers whatever was on offer at what was probably the market rate. These apartments would then be given to people who had lost their previous homes to the war. We also have a law that stipulates that a returning war veteran must get an apartment from the social stock. This, of course, would have been a very good situation for the developers—the market and demand slowed down, no one was buying apartments, but the state appeared, which would have bought everything. But this did not happen. At the same time, initiatives to build the resource by state or regional institutions began.
Kacper: How do you perceive the voices coming from outside in this context. We have starchitects of the likes of Norman Foster who have taken an interest in rebuilding Ukraine. Polish studios also see opportunities for themselves in reconstruction. In the discussions organized on this topic, the Ukrainian side is often a minority. How do you approach such discussions?
Petro: Of course, we as researchers or architects are critical of the likes of Norman Foster. By the way, this is not the first time Foster has tried to enter the Ukrainian market. In the early 2000s, his office was involved in the construction of a skyscraper in the center of Kiev; the city authorities then demanded that a competition be held, in which Foster refused to participate. These types of big offices and names tend to circumvent procedures, laws and formalities. Nonetheless, I think that his visit to Kharkiv, his photos and handshake with the mayor of the city worked in a positive way. Such activities by well-known architects have a promotional effect, and their value is the very fact that people start talking about Kharkiv. As for Polish architects, as well as Western offices, the matter is not so simple. Of course, there is some threat of colonization by big companies, but also construction in Ukraine has its own problems—in many areas there is a lack of knowledge and expertise, often technologies and the way buildings are erected are Soviet heritage. Developers who build there are often entrepreneurs who got the resource of the construction industry during the transition thanks to corruption. They are completely out of step with the challenges of the modern world, the climate crisis. Therefore, I think that this flow of knowledge and experts from Europe and Poland has its good points, if only in the field of investment planning and urban planning. It is important to work together.
Kacper: Thank you for the interview.
exhibition spaces
Photo: Tomasz Kaczor
