On Feb. 24, Russia started a war against my home country and the peaceful people of Ukraine. Here where I currently live in Eugene, Ore., it was in the evening and I was watching the news. At that moment, the Russian president gave a speech about the “special military operation” in Ukraine. I could not believe that it was the beginning of a war. When I opened Facebook immediately after to see if there was any news from home, I saw a post from a journalist in Kyiv, who was reporting: “Multiple very loud explosions here in Kyiv. War has started.” Minutes later, more news came about explosions in many major Ukrainian cities. Russia started a war when everyone was asleep. They began a war that has no rules.
My hometown is Lviv, the largest city in Western Ukraine, and my family still resides there. I am currently pursuing my PhD degree in landscape architecture and teaching at the University of Oregon School of Architecture & Environment. I am also a landscape designer at Cameron McCarthy Landscape Architecture & Planning in Eugene, and a landform architect (a type of architecture that combines building and landscape) who has worked on memorials for past Ukrainian tragedies, including the Revolution of Dignity, or the Euromaiden Revolution, when protesters ousted the Russia-backed Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych. Police and government forces, however, still killed dozens of protestors.
Watching the current war unfold while far from home, it feels like normal life there no longer exists. I keep checking every notification and urgently following the news. Every air raid siren in my hometown makes the same noise on my phone and I pray for my family. I call my family and ask whether they made it to a bomb shelter. Sometimes they spend a few hours there, sometimes the entire night.
The horror of this war is growing as we see photos from the cities of Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel. These were small towns around the Kyiv region with peaceful civilians unprepared for war. A few months ago, they were living normal lives. Now, it breaks my heart to see photos of people with hands tied, or worse, murdered, killed, and raped. News from Mariupol reveals the Russian military killed more than 25,000 civilians and buried them in mass graves, while more than 500,000 were deported to different cities around Russia. How is it even possible?
Right now, in the fog of war, we cannot fully comprehend the scale of the future rebuilding of Ukraine. It is difficult to say how many more cities, bridges, schools, hospitals, cultural centers, and houses will be destroyed as this war continues and we continue to defend our country. Every shelling not only brings death and destruction of the built environment; it also creates an ecocide, a destruction of the natural environment. Many industrial structures around the country have been destroyed, releasing toxic chemicals into the soil. The bombarding of the Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol threatens the complete extinction of wildlife of the Sea of Azov. Russian missiles exploded storage fuel tanks at the Vasylkiv Air Base. And the bombardment of a chemical plant in Severodonetsk and other cities have released so much pollution into the air, and every bomb creates so much damage to the landscape, that I wonder if there is any design strategy known to recover from such a large-scale disaster.
What I know for certain is that Ukraine needs a new visionary strategy to rebuild cities that will be an example of safety and comfort for future generations. A forward-looking strategy requires in-depth research, discussion, and collaboration between architects, city planners, urbanists, landscape architects, engineers, policy makers, government, and city administrations. These discussions must begin now and include the gathering of data of destroyed cities, streets, schools, hospitals, and houses, as well as establishing an organizational framework that will be ready to employ when we begin rebuilding Ukraine.
While there are examples of Europe reconstruction after WWII, and of Japan after multiple disasters, these approaches can’t be fully adopted in Ukraine. The decision-making should be locally driven, but based on international experience. We can learn from the past experiences of different countries about the long-term effects on the built environment and make an analysis of what decisions were the most effective. However, the strategy for the future of each town requires adjustments and revisions.
One of the most recent examples of a rapid response to disaster can be witnessed in Ukraine after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. After the explosion and meltdown of nuclear reactor, more than 100,000 people from the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions were displaced to other areas due to the toxic levels of radiation. In the period of 1986 to1988, the vast team of government-led engineers and architects were challenged to build new towns and settlements for displaced people. The city of Slavutych was built in six months and is an example of rapid decision-making, design, and construction. Today, it is still the youngest city in Ukraine. However, the current scale of destruction of the built environment is already dwarfing all previous cases and will requires more time and design efforts. The outcome of this war is still unknown.
As an architect specializing landform architecture, I see the potential for future design of cultural spaces in this direction. Such buildings will not only create a healing space inside, but will also function as a landscape that can heal the environment.
The National Memorial to the Heavenly Hundred Heroes in Kyiv, a project I worked on, is one of the examples of landform landscapes in the central part of the city that works to heal and repair past traumas. The Alley of Heavenly Hundred Heroes is the main place commemorating the tragic events of the Revolution of Dignity. During the fighting armed security forces killed more than 80 unarmed protesters. This was the beginning of our fight for freedom, and after the Revolution, the beginning of war with Russia. The design is based on the metaphorical path to freedom for Ukrainians, which emphasizes the hope and values that these first victims represented in our modern history.
Historically, Ukrainians are rooted to landscape and agriculture. Landforms or earthworks throughout history have served as defense structures. The ancient system of earthworks that comprise the Serpent’s Wall, located on the right bank of the Dnipro river in the Kyiv region, was built between 2nd century B.C. and the 7th century A.D. as a fortification structure against multiple invasions. Currently, Ukrainian soldiers are building trenches along the defense line against the Russian invasion. Landforms may be a new form of memorialization after this war is over.
With each passing day, Ukrainians prove that no one can take away our freedom; no one can dictate what we should do; no one can demand we give up our values; and no one can choose our future for us. We are united by the dream of our future and the peaceful future of our children. We are ready to rebuild our country and make it even better than it was before.
The views and conclusions from this author are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine or of The American Institute of Architects.
