Constructing Housing During Crisis: Ukraine

Join us for a discussion of the role of temporary housing as a place of care and healing during the ongoing crisis. This event is hosted in collaboration with the exhibition Constructing Hope: Ukraine which is currently on view at the Center for Architecture through September 3, 2024.  

Currently exhibited in the double-height space at the Center for Architecture, “Co-Haty” is a project by the Ukrainian NGO MetaLab that provides temporary emergency accommodations for internally displaced people in Western Ukraine, offering them solace in the aftermath of the Russian invasion. Approximately 12 million Ukrainians were compelled to abandon their homes, with 6.5 million seeking refuge in the western part of the country. However, decades of housing policy challenges revealed a shortage of affordable housing options. In response to this pressing need, the Co-Haty team closely collaborates with local governments and an extensive network of agencies. The team will present their project that refurbishes and repurposes large, vacant former Soviet municipal buildings into emergency shelters.

Speakers:
Tania Pashynksyy, MetaLab, Co-Founder of Co-Haty project
Anna Pashynksyy, Co-Founder, MetaLab; Co-Haty project
Iman Fayyad, Lecturer, Syracuse University Graduate School of Design

Moderators:
Sasha Topolnytska, Curator, Constructing Hope: Ukraine; Professor, Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York
Ashley Bigham, Curator, Constructing Hope: Ukraine; Assistant Professor, Knowlton School of Architecture, The Ohio State University

About the Speakers:
Anna Pashynska is a co-founder and curator of the MetaLab Urban Laboratory, the Biennale City Scanning Session, and a marketplace in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. She is a project lead on a wide range of projects, specialized in spatial research and design, product design, community-led public space projects, and institutional planning. With the MetaLab team she works supporting a social equal, spatial comfortable, culturally rich, environmentally responsible, and economically balanced built environment. In order to reach these goals, Metalab aims to create a supportive environment and a field for experimentation, where the social and spatial potential of the city can be developed and tested in practice. 

Tania Pashynska is a co-founder of the Co-Haty project in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine. She is an architect, stage designer, and 3D artist with over 10 years of working experience in Austria, Germany, and Ukraine. Through most of her architectural career she has focused on repurposing and planning residential buildings. She studied at the Technical University of Lviv, Ukraine, and Vienna, Austria. Her design practice is based around hands-on experimentation and collaboration with local manufacturers and the community. Her background in dance influences her interest in designing spaces for performance and movement. 

Iman Fayyad is a designer and Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where she teaches and conducts research in spatial geometry with a focus on tectonics, construction, and representation. She is founding director of projectif, an award-winning research practice that explores architectural geometry’s relationship with material economy, sensory perception, and the politics of physical space and building practice. Her writing and design work have been published and exhibited in venues including the New York Times, Technology: Architecture and Design, Nexus Network Journal (Architecture and Mathematics), Log, Pidgin, Archinect, Yale Architecture Gallery, Carnegie Museum of Art, citygroupNY, and the Roca Gallery in London.