The Russian invasion in Ukraine started last week and so far we have seen tragic images arriving from the country: people fleeing or taking refuge in makeshift bomb shelters, children crying and a woman who gave birth in a bunker in Kyiv.
People are the protagonists of these tragic moments, but there are obviously also photographs and videos showing buildings being hit by missiles and cities under constant shelling.
Kyiv, the capital and the southern port of Mariupol, are under siege, while Artem Semenikhin, the mayor of Konotop, stated that they were given an ultimatum: if they start resisting, the Russian army will wipe out the town using artillery.
While the war in Ukraine is first and foremost a human tragedy, it also urges us to stop and think about architecture, about cultural and government landmarks being destroyed – there were indeed missile strikes on the government HQ in Kharkiv, and Russian forces also struck the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv. Thousands of people abandoned their cities and their houses may have been hit or destroyed by missiles.
Images of the destruction prompt us to think about reconstruction – this nonsensical war has to stop immediately and rebuilding must restart, but architecture will have to play a major role in planning and thinking about the present and the future. We must indeed start pondering how we can use modern technologies to rebuild in faster ways, and, in the meantime, create temporary shelters for those Ukrainian refugees who fled the country.
Last December Lesley Lokko was appointed curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition that will be held in Venice in 2023. The architectural academic, educator and best-selling novelist, is also the founder and director of the African Futures Institute, established in Accra, Ghana, a postgraduate school of architecture and public events platform, and of the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg.
For the past thirty years, Lokko has studied and researched the relationship between race, culture, and space, so we can be sure that, as a curator, she will tackle these themes through very intriguing projects. Hopefully, by the time the next Architecture Biennale takes place the war in Ukraine will be a long-distant memory, but let's hope Lokko will include in the event projects about the reconstruction of buildings and cultures after tragic events such as this war.
The Biennale President Roberto Cicutto calls architecture in an official press release about the event "a discipline so closely intertwined with the needs of humanity and the planet in general". Climate change has pushed many architects to think about more sustainable solutions to build new houses, or to face the challanges posed by the frequency, intensity, and impacts of some types of extreme weather events. Covid-19 also inspired architects around the world to come up with ideas for temporary health structures, and the war may provide architects with fresh inspirations, reshifting the attention on temporary shelters and on faster ways to rebuild cities.
Hopefully, First Lady Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will also become an asset in rebuilding Ukraine. While she is a screenwriter for Ukrainian production company Studio Kvartal 95, she also studied architecture at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at Kryvyi Rih National University.
Zelenska, who has remained by her husband's side in Kyiv after he refused to leave the country, and has been using social media to rally support among her followers and praising the local women, the "face" of the Ukrainian resistance, has so far focused her work as First lady on nutrition reform in Ukrainian schools, gender equality and a barrier-free society.
In the meantime, maybe architects could start preparing renderings or even creating fantastic drawings to show how they may reimagine the future of Ukrainian cities. An inspiration? Conceptual and visionary architect Lebbeus Woods (will he be rediscovered maybe during the next Venice Biennale?).
Inspired by architecture firm Archigram, Woods came up with drawings and models for buildings in places such as war-torn Sarajevo, post-earthquake San Francisco and divided Berlin. Woods also wrote a pamphlet entitled "War and Architecture" in which he highlighted how "architecture must learn to transform the violence even as violence knows how to transform the architecture."
Woods presented in this pamphlets his views about how to fill those spaces voided by destruction and in a paragraph entitled "Building on the Existential Remnants of War" he stated: "Whenever buildings are broken by the explosion of bombs or artillery shells, by fire or structural collapse, their form must be respected as an integrity, embodying a history that must not be denied (…) The new spaces of habitation constructed on the existential remnants of war do not celebrate the destruction of an established order, nor do they symbolize or commemorate it. Rather they accept with a certain pride what has been suffered and lost, but also what has been gained."
The war may still be raging in Ukraine, but starting to think about the reconstruction of those cities that have been shelled and of those buildings that were destroyed during the Russian attacks, may provide hope for their inhabitants and also help children to reimagine their cities.