Working with Ukraine and the U.S. Department of State, a 24-student lab at the UVA School of Architecture is studying sustainable ways to rebuild a war-torn city once the fighting stops. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)
While generals plan attacks with rockets, artillery, missiles and guns, two dozen University of Virginia students are looking at ways to rebuild one Ukrainian city when the fighting stops.
The students are part of a School of Architecture class working with the Diplomacy Lab, part of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Partnerships. The lab works with colleges and universities across the country on a variety of projects, and invited UVA’s Department of Urban and Environmental Planning to find ways to sustainably rebuild a war-torn Ukrainian community.
Students at the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on similar projects for the Diplomacy Lab.
“Any of the cities we could have selected were in bad shape,” said department chair and associate professor Suzanne Moomaw, who is leading the UVA lab working on the project. “We are to propose to one city how they could build back sustainably, knowing full well that they are already in the process and trying to get people back in their homes and jobs.”
Moomaw chose the city of Izium, which lies upon the Donets River in eastern Ukraine. Like UVA’s hometown of Charlottesville, a river runs through it, a major north-south traffic route divides it, it features UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and is home to about 50,000 people.
Unlike Charlottesville, Izium has been devastated by war, including an intense monthlong battle in March 2022 during which Russians captured the city, occupied it and used it as a base for further attacks in the country. Ukraine forces then battled throughout September 2022 to take it back.
Suzanne Moomaw, chair of Urban and Enivronmental Planning in the School of Architecture, leads the two dozen students in researching and designing redevelopment plans for the city. (Contributed photo)
In those six months, 80% of the city’s buildings and 70% of its services and infrastructure, including municipal buildings, utilities and roads, were damaged or destroyed. At least 1,000 people died and thousands fled.
After Ukraine took back the city, officials found mass graves holding at least 440 bodies. They discovered 10 torture sites, including a medical clinic, a school, a kindergarten, the police station and the city office building.
That level of brutality can be overwhelming.
“It’s pretty terrifying. Our early research was just going through Google maps and trying to identify where some of these buildings were located. The similarities to Charlottesville were just shocking,” third-year architecture student Ben Edlavitch said. “Before the war, you see sushi restaurants and stuff like that. Then you see more recent photographs and everything is destroyed. It just makes you realize how close this kind of thing is to you.”
Student Ben Edlavitch describes the destruction of medical facilities in Izium and ways to repair or replace them. Team member Benjamin Jacobs listens in. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communiations)
For third-year urban planning student Polina Andreeva, the destruction and the project are both personal.
“I’m Russian and many Russians feel devastated. It’s a big trauma for our nation to carry responsibility for what is happening there,” she said. “When it unfolded two years ago, it was very, very hard. A lot of people became really depressed. They were scrolling for the news every day, every hour, checking numbers, how many people died, how many buildings were destroyed.”
Like many looking at the war from the outside, Andreeva has grown accustomed to it.
“After two years of a so-called ‘special military operation,’ it is scary how you can no longer process what’s happening there,” she said. “So, it first was people and lives, then it becomes just numbers. I’m kind of just blindly doing my job, trying to not think about it too much. Because if I do it, it’s going to be much harder.”
Polina Andreeva discusses the issues of providing temporary housing and transitioning to permanent housing for the residents of Izium, in Ukraine. Elodie Price, background, and Marisa Yamamoto, in the middle, are working with her. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)
Andreeva is in the group that is studying housing – what existed, what exists now, what’s been destroyed, what materials can be reused and how to build it back. She finds herself putting emotions aside to complete the task.
“I spent probably 20 hours looking at the satellite images and I’ve seen damages to public housing, schools, administrative buildings, colleges and stuff like that,” she said. “And if you start thinking about the kids who were going to school there, people who were living there, people who died or were injured there, you get on a loop and you cannot be productive. So you just have to put that away for a second, just do your job.”
The class is divided into groups researching Izium’s past, present and possible future for housing, schools and education, medical care, memorial spaces, parks and recreation and infrastructure. They focus on safe removal of debris, providing for immediate recovery of the community and long-range planning to full recovery.
With that much destruction and the hostilities continuing, getting fresh, up-to-date information from the ground is difficult.
“[The State Department is] interested in urban planning, because that’s what the Ukrainians are interested in: How are they going to rebuild the cities so they are sustainable and reflect a Ukrainian culture and not so much of a Soviet influence?” Moomaw said. “When the students have questions, I reach out to the State Department or others working there and they put us in touch with information sources as they have them.”
Sydney Sloat discusses the difficulties of rebuilding the energy structures and grid in Izium. Utilities and infrastructure were among the first services struck during the March 2022 Russian invasion. (Photo by Dan Addison, University. Communications)
Students pore over news reports from a variety of sources and scour the internet for photos and other information as it becomes available to see what the city had, what the city needs, and how to meet those needs in a way that is sustainable into the future. They also want to know how the population expresses itself.
“The students understand that these are real people in a culture. As they’re designing, they want to be sure that when the people in Izium see the designs, they can see their own culture and it’s not like some foreign place,” Moomaw said.
Short-term, the students are looking at how to dispose of or reuse debris. Each group is drawing plans for development phases that, over time, will take the city from privation to prosperity. The process includes all four of the departments in the school: Architecture, Architectural History, Landscape Architecture, and Urban and Environmental Planning.
“I picked this class because it felt like a tangible way to help people, because in studio, you’re always creating speculative buildings and that are never actually going to be noticed. It’s just an exercise to design a space and problem-solving,” said Katherine Shi, a third-year, pre-professional student who is working with the group redeveloping kindergartens and grade schools.
The UVA architecture lab divides students up based on their majors and study areas in the Architecture School, including Architecture, Architectural History, Landscape Architecture, and Urban and Environmental Planning. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications.
“But this is very real. I really wanted to be a part of this class because I really do want to help people through architecture,” she said. “I think it’s a really important part of society. Helping people through space is something I feel that people overlook a lot. This is a very tangible way of doing that.”
The idea of the course is to have a set of phased plan and design proposals completed by the end of fall term. Moomaw believes that will happen.
“I’m so proud of the students. They’ve trusted the process and have been fantastic. They have really driven the class, which is what I hoped,” she said. “Knowing that these folks are going to be the next generation in their fields gives me a lot of confidence in the future.”
