The excerpt below is the introduction to a roundtable discussion originally published by Harvard Design Magazine in its most recent issue under the title "Ukraine in Times of War: Reconstruction as Strategy, Tactics, and Practice.”
Russian aggression against Ukraine began with the occupation and annexation of Crimea in 2014 and escalated into a full-scale invasion in February 2022. While destruction continues, efforts to rebuild are already underway. The following conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, focuses on emerging practices of reconstruction in Ukraine—practices being forged in the midst of ongoing war.
The biggest challenge in planning Ukraine’s recovery is responding to the vast scale of destruction and displacement. Providing shelter, care, and community for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) is urgent. But reconstruction must also grapple with long-term imperatives: developing planning strategies rooted in sustainability and resilience, especially strategies for mitigating the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Even before the war, Ukraine had the most energy-intensive economy in Europe. These circumstances raise fundamental questions about how architecture, urban design, and planning can respond effectively under conditions of profound instability and change. How can they combine rapid response with long-term vision, integrating the strategic, tactical, and practical modalities of war in the project of reconstruction? What specific strategies, tactics, and practices will help designers and planners respond effectively to crises of this magnitude?
Our panelists engage with the built environment in Ukraine from a range of perspectives, expertise, and organizational settings—NGOs, architectural practices, universities, and municipal agencies—working across the diverse regional and urban contexts of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv. They include Oleg Drozdov (founder, Drozdov&Partners, and cofounder, Kharkiv School of Architecture), Anastasiya Ponomaryova (architect and cofounder, Urban Curators and CO-HATY), Anton Kolomeytsev (chief architect, Lviv), Sergiy Bezborodko (head of the board, Eco Misto Chernihiv), Oleksandr Shevchenko (CEO, Restart Agency), and Iryna Matsevko (historian and vice-chancellor, Kharkiv School of Architecture). Our discussion here extends a long-running dialogue that we’ve continued as part of two courses I taught at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2024 and 2025.
