Reconstruction - e-flux

Editors Daša Anosova, Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Michał Murawski, Dan Jonas Roche

Contributors Ievgeniia Gubkina, Kateryna Iakovlenko, Galyna Sukhomud, Joanna Kusiak, Oleksandr Kravchuk, Simon Johnson, Vladyslav Rashkovan, Luke Cooper, Yuliya Yurchuk, Oleksandr Anisimov, and more…

How is it possible to envision rebuilding when the field is in a constant state of flux? How long will it take until any strategy proposed is rendered obsolete? What value can scholars offer when war, destruction, and resistance are still underway and there is no end in sight?

Reconstruction is a project by e-flux Architecture drawing from and elaborating on “The Reconstruction of Ukraine: Ruination, Representation, Solidarity,” a symposium held on September 9–11, 2022 organized by Sofia Dyak, Marta Kuzma, and Michał Murawski, which brought together the Center for Urban History, Lviv; Center for Urban Studies, Kyiv; Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture; Re-Start Ukraine; University College London; Urban Forms Center, Kharkiv; Yale University; and Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv.

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11 essays

Restitutions: A Roundtable

Joanna Kusiak, Oleksandr Kravchuk, Simon Johnson, Vladyslav Rashkovan, and Denise Ferreira da Silva

We all are now witnessing what globalization is all about. We realize that our degree of interdependence is such that it is not only our shared humanity that makes us care about what’s happening to the population of Ukraine, but also our daily lives, sometimes in painful ways.

Comparison and Its Discontents

Gruia Bădescu

Amidst these ongoing debates and reconstruction efforts, past experiences of rebuilding are continuously being invoked. There are comparisons being made not just with reconstruction precedents, but also with regard to the war itself. Reconstruction is indeed often linked to the type of war fought, the levels of destruction, the impact on cities, the morale and cultures of memory connected to it.

Non-Exigent Spaces

Polina Baitsym

Narratives that brashly equate “Soviet” with “russian” have been noxiously amplified both within and beyond Ukraine since the beginning of russia’s full-scale invasion. These narratives are complicit in the obliteration of Ukraine’s twentieth-century cultural heritage, which was already threatened by the indiscriminate process of decommunization and scornful ambitions of urban developers.

Narratives of Destruction

Ammar Azzouz and Ievgeniia Gubkina

Allowing myself to talk personally is something that’s helped me a lot during wartime. I’ve had to lean on these emotions, on the belief that it’s okay to feel all these things. It’s really difficult to allow yourself to go through such a traumatic experience and try to understand, to feel everything.

Spatial Planning in the Face of Crisis

Oleksandr Anisimov

These numbers are immense. Where the funds to rebuild will come from and in what form (loans, investments, grants) are questions of great importance. But of equal importance are the questions of what gets rebuilt, where, when, and how.

Resistance, Rebuilding, Resilience

Yuliya Yurchuk

Lost lives cannot be rebuilt. The human psyche and culture has, however, developed mechanisms to cope with loss. This is the work of the living to mourn and remember. But the lives of the dead will be never repaired. Reparation is a gift to the living, those who can repair and reconstruct their lives and their environments.

Restitutions: Appropriation, Expropriation, Regulation

Joanna Kusiak, Oleksandr Kravchuk, Simon Johnson, Vladyslav Rashkovan, and Luke Cooper

The expert panel and open roundtable “Restitutions: Appropriation, Expropriation, Regulation” was held on September 11, 2022 as part of the international symposium “The Reconstruction of Ukraine.” An edited transcript of the panel is below, and a transcript of the roundtable which followed will be published separately.

The Pain of Ruins: On Urban Trauma and Collective Healing

Galyna Sukhomud

Through the systemic protracted destruction of networks and connections between bodies, places, and things, trauma gains a “collective, spatial, and material dimension.” This trauma, or rather multiple traumas, is also emplaced in the urban fabric, as cities and the urban way of life has become a particular target of attacks in attempts of what can be called “forced demodernization.”

Flavors of Freedom: Rethinking the late 1980s and early 1990s

Kateryna Iakovlenko

It was the summer of 1989. Residents of Fergana, one of the largest cities in what was then the Uzbek SSR, brought carefully picked garden fruits, vegetables, and herbs to the bazaar, their sweet-spicy smells beckoning. Cats crawled around, trying to get any kind of attention. Locals and tourists alike flocked to the square.

The Right to Prosecute: On Russia’s War Crimes Against Ukrainian Cultural Heritage

Ievgeniia Gubkina

As the most social, eternal, and solid form of heritage, architecture is also the most vulnerable and fragile during the war. It’s impossible to protect it.

Editorial

Daša Anosova, Michał Murawski, Dan Jonas Roche, and e-flux Architecture

Subject

Ukraine, Politics

Contributors

Daša Anosova, Michał Murawski, Dan Jonas Roche, and e-flux Architecture Editorial
Ievgeniia Gubkina The Right to Prosecute: On Russia’s War Crimes Against Ukrainian Cultural Heritage
Kateryna Iakovlenko Flavors of Freedom: Rethinking the late 1980s and early 1990s
Galyna Sukhomud The Pain of Ruins: On Urban Trauma and Collective Healing
Joanna Kusiak, Oleksandr Kravchuk, Simon Johnson, Vladyslav Rashkovan, and Luke Cooper Restitutions: Appropriation, Expropriation, Regulation
Yuliya Yurchuk Resistance, Rebuilding, Resilience
Oleksandr Anisimov Spatial Planning in the Face of Crisis
Ammar Azzouz and Ievgeniia Gubkina Narratives of Destruction
Polina Baitsym Non-Exigent Spaces
Gruia Bădescu Comparison and Its Discontents
Joanna Kusiak, Oleksandr Kravchuk, Simon Johnson, Vladyslav Rashkovan, and Denise Ferreira da Silva Restitutions: A Roundtable

Category

Subject