Linda Kinstler went back to Ukraine in late September to report on the architects and urban planners who are hard at work re-envisioning the physical contours of Ukraine’s liberated future, even as continued military attacks and rolling blackouts threaten their ability to work.
The city of Irpin, which was 70% destroyed during the Russian invasion, held off an attack on Kyiv and has become a symbol of defiance for the entire nation. There, the city council has already commissioned ambitious designs for the reconstruction of its landmarks, apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals. In Mariupol, the city-council-in-exile has begun consulting with architects about how they can rebuild as soon as Ukraine retakes their city.
In many ways, this is a story about political imagination as much as it is about the material obstacles of reconstructing decimated cities. Check out the story in The New York Times Magazine: Architects Plan a City for the Future in Ukraine.