Poetics of Necessity Katalog

Polish Pavilion at London Design Biennale 01–25 June 2023

Foreword Adam Mickiewicz Institute

The mission of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute is to build up and communicate Poland’s cultural dimension by initiating international cultural collaboration and exchange and implementing projects with partners abroad. The Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale is a project that aims to present the evolution of Polish culture and how it responds to topical contemporary challenges, including the war in Ukraine.

The narrative that the Adam Mickiewicz Institute has brought to the London Design Biennale shows relationships and processes emerging in times of crisis. The volatility of the world reminds us that solidarity and empathy are at all times crucial.

This is the theme of Poetics of Necessity.

The exhibition makes us aware of our own responses to unpredictable situations. In new circumstances, the choices we make stem from our past experience, yet the resources at our disposal are changing. New situations create new communities and bring new ways of doing things and producing goods that enable us to cope better with successive emerging challenges.

In this context, the poetics of necessity has become the poetics of encounters – of architecture with people, history with elemental forces, and the individual with the community – in a creative remapping of international collaborations.

Barbara Schabowska Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute

Crisis situations act as a catalyst for change.

Compelled to embrace that change, we seek to map new potential where necessity imposes its limits. Collaborative design approaches can provide adequate, socially engaged solutions in those emergency situations.

Designing with reclaimed materials can reduce the carbon footprint and address shortage of resources.

New, flexible supply chains can change the way we share know-how and assets.

This exhibition is an attempt to present an emerging structure that binds the topics above into a new narrative, and an opportunity to ask questions. How can we scale up the use of reclaimed materials, tapping into their social and environmental potential? What is architecture’s answer to crises and what form does it take? Has the concept of comfort changed? If so, how should we be building and rebuilding to integrate that change?

Those notions stem from the WINDOW project, which called on the Polish people to donate reusable windows to Ukrainians stripped of dignified living conditions as a result of war. This gifting process unites donors and recipients in geographically unexpected duets, tracing the trajectories of the windows from one home to another over thousands of miles. In the process, a window is transformed from waste into a chance of safety and a barometer of the most pressing needs.

The question of the durability and aesthetic qualities of objects reintroduced and reinterpreted in uncertain times remains without a straightforward answer, rendering designer’s explorations all the more interesting. This is our starting point for a discussion on emerging design trends and what they can teach us about collaboration and sustainability in a turbulent world. Let’s keep looking for empathy, hidden potential and new poetics, which can help us grasp the complex emotional temperature and logic of our times.

Zofia Jaworowska Michał Sikorski Petro Vladimirov Curatorial team

Green pages in this booklet present ways to reintroduce reclaimed windows in existing buildings, in emergency situations. Open-source solutions prepared by students and architectural studios from Poland are available to anyone who is in need of instructions on how to install a window by themselves, with as few tools and additional materials as possible, even when in need of a window on the 10th floor of an apartment block. The DIY solutions, some of which are shown in this catalogue, are available online in Ukrainian, free of charge.

First things first

Zofia Jaworowska, Michał Sikorski and Petro Vladimirov, curators of the exhibition in the Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale 2023, in conversation with Aleksandra Kędziorek.

The full version of the text is published in Autoportret, no. 81, 2/2023

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ALEKSANDRA KĘDZIOREK: You are presenting the Poetics of Necessity exhibition in the Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale (1–25 June 2023). This year’s event has the theme The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations. What do you think is the reason for taking up this topic right now? How do you approach it in your exhibition?

MICHAŁ SIKORSKI: In the theme of the biennale, I find the word ‘remapping’ the most interesting, and this is exactly what our project is about. On a national scale, we see that Poland is remapping itself as a community. It is redefining its position and the way it functions from the bottom up. After decades of chasing the West, we can turn around and see that as a community we have a potential that we hadn’t necessarily previously noticed, one different from conservative dreams.

This became apparent in the grassroots aid for Ukraine after the outbreak of war. As a curatorial team, and within the scale of our activities, we have taken a similar path with this exhibition. Each of us comes from a different professional environment: Zofia is active in NGOs, Petro has an art and curatorial background, I have a typical architectural and urban design background. We remap what we can, based on our own experience and education, focusing on the object of our interest: the reuse of building materials, mainly windows, primarily for humanitarian aid, but not exclusively so.

AK: Why do you focus on windows?

ZOFIA JAWOROWSKA: The exhibition stems from a social action in support of Ukraine – the WINDOW project, which we have been running at the BRDA Foundation since June 2022.

There is a huge need for building materials in Ukraine due to the destruction caused by the war. I met Petro only after the war broke out. We started to work together, combining our expertise and Petro’s knowledge of Ukraine and we arrived at the conclusion that there was a shortage of windows in the grassroots reconstruction.

PETRO VLADIMIROV: In an explosion, the windows are the first to go. In Ukraine, most of the windows are of poor quality; they are not triple-glazed plastic windows but rather wooden windows from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They fall out even if the house has not been damaged and the explosion occurred a few hundred metres away. Before the war, 80 per cent of window frames and glass were imported into Ukraine from Russia and Belarus. The only Ukrainian glass factory was located in the town of Lysychansk in the Donbas region. It was partially destroyed when Lysychansk was occupied. The price of building materials went up. At the time that we were working on this project, Ukraine had regained the Kyiv and Chernihiv region as well as part of the Kharkiv region. People were returning from Poland and finding their houses had no windows. So we decided that it was windows that would be most needed.

ZJ: They are still needed. Almost all of the windows we have sent to Ukraine so far have gone to private individuals.

The new owners are installing them in their homes using DIY methods to gain protection from the cold, wind and rain, and a basic form of security.

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It is worth mentioning that this project is 95 per cent based on recycled windows. We can obtain these windows free of charge; new ones are monstrously expensive.

Window transport rack, front view

↓ Window transport rack, storing collected re-used windows to be sent to Ukraine, 2023

We wanted to find a way of supporting the reconstruction that was low-cost, but at the same time effective and well quantifiable, so that the help would be tangible and, of course, visible.

AK: In doing so, you have become part of the much-discussed topic of the circulation of materials in architecture.

MS: We had been interested in this subject before, but we lacked the impetus to translate the experience of the Belgians at the Rotor studio or the Swiss from baubüro in situ into the context of our own activities. The war provided the impetus, meaningful application and motivation. Indeed, the WINDOW project is part of the Zeitgeist that is connected to the popularisation of reusable building materials.

Anything that avoids the need to produce new materials makes sense because it reduces carbon emissions and preserves energy resources.

AK: How is this organised? Do you collect windows in Poland, ship them to the Ukraine and then immediately distribute them to private individuals, or do other organisations act as intermediaries?

PV: The bottom-up reconstruction in Ukraine is experimental. When we started the WINDOW project, we made contact with five community organisations in Ukraine.

In the course of our work, some of them have changed their objectives, becoming involved in the removal of debris from areas affected by the armed conflict. We have built the longest and most fruitful relationship with the District #1 Foundation, which operates in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kherson regions. It was this team that took in Polish windows and began distributing them to private individuals.

District #1 receives the windows from us and then manages the needs on the ground. By coincidence – but stemming from need – whenever Ukraine recovers some territory, this is where our windows go. More than half of them went to Kherson.

ZJ: In fact, 56 per cent in 2022 to be precise, although this is difficult to track exactly: there is a war going on and our partners are very busy. Currently, among other things, they have been building modular houses for families who have lost their homes.

AK: Recovered windows come in different shapes and sizes. How do people cope with installing them?

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Mock-up, front view

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MS: Not everyone can install a window themselves. It’s not easy if you have a mixture of windows from different places, and of different types and sizes. It is not often that a recycled window fits perfectly into the opening left by the broken one. So, how do you fit a window that is too big or too small? Miastopracownia studio – curators of DoFA, the Lower Silesian Festival of Architecture – asked Zofia and me to lead a workshop as part of the festival. The topic that we set for the workshop with the students was this seemingly simple question: how do you fit a window of a given size into an opening of a different size?

Working with the students was super interesting. Instead of reinventing the whole world and tearing down the foundations of architecture, as happens in such workshops, we asked the students to draw the details. The results were so interesting that the topic was picked up by the architects from the Prolog group (who also participated in the festival).

Then, together as part of the BRDA Foundation, we created an open source catalogue showing various possibilities for assembly. It is reminiscent of the instruction manuals that come with Ikea products. This is an example of remapped collaboration: we initiated it at the invitation of the curators, the idea was picked up by others and complemented by other studios. Now we have taken it back and are presenting the results as part of an exhibition at the London Design Biennale.

AK: As the BRDA Foundation, you also participate in the demolition of buildings, for example the Atrium office building in Warsaw.

ZJ: The Strabag company decided to donate 215 windows from the demolition of this building. With frames. That’s the most important thing with demolition windows, because without frames you only get a fixed window, so one that cannot open or tilt. Windows with frames are sought after and the company’s employees did try to make an extra effort during demolition not to break or cut the frames, but to dismantle them in their entirety. We have sent them to Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Atrium has given way to larger developments, but it is an example of quality construction from the 1990s. We saw in such demolitions an opportunity to source materials on a larger scale – and not just windows. We want to get involved in this, donate some of the materials to aid efforts in Ukraine and Poland, and sell some of them and thus raise funds to continue the WINDOW project.

PV: The case of Atrium is important in the context of reuse. In 2020, a taxonomy regulation came into force in European Union countries that promotes environmentally sustainable investments. Demolition materials have to be reprocessed somehow, something has to be done with them.

It is a good solution to donate them to humanitarian aid.

Large demolition and development companies are beginning to understand that it should not be all thrown away as rubbish; the circulation of materials can have a tangible benefit – it has social potential.

We are witnessing changes in how the construction industry thinks.

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ZJ: This is, however, a complex process. Firstly, some materials legally qualify as waste. How can you bring the waste back onto the market? After all, waste is not traded. Secondly, demolition companies derive a profit from diverting these materials at their discretion. How do we encourage them to share part of their earnings with NGOs, for example? How to involve designers in these activities? If they knew that some materials were going to be dismantled at a given time, they could use them. Could there be a system for reserving these materials? How do you guarantee that they will be available? How do you create their database? How do you describe them? How do you re-certify them? Linking all the threads is very complicated, and I don’t think anyone in Poland has dealt with this before.

MS: In other European countries, however, enthusiasts have been exploring the subject for years. A whole league of avant-garde material reuse has come together; it is an open environment. Everyone is keen to help one another.

AK: All these activities are grassroots, and not part of a top-down material reuse registration system.

Is the material reuse movement mainly based on self-organisation?

Mock-up, an example of how to mount a window that does not fit into an opening, 2023

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MS: They are grassroots, but they are all aiming at a structure: creating databases and systems. They want to get into the mainstream. I think recycled materials will follow the same trajectory as photovoltaic cells and energy-efficient buildings. A few decades ago, people who were reaching for these solutions were seen as niche post-hippies; today such policies are top-down mandated at a European level.

ZJ: Barbara Buser’s RE-WIN project also sends windows to Ukraine, and off her own bat, Buser incorporates large amounts of recycled materials into architectural designs. She recently sent a truck full of reclaimed items such as furniture, sanitary objects and so on to the CO-HATY group, which equips vacant buildings in Ukraine and adapts them to the needs of IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons).

MS: Many people independently undertake similar activities. Lara Moutin was involved with sourcing windows for Beirut when, in 2020, windows shattered in a ten-kilometre radius of a gigantic explosion at the port. In any conflict zone or emergency situation, windows and doors are among the first line essentials.

ZJ: That’s why we felt it was important to highlight in the Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale, in the exhibition space and the accompanying catalogue – in the context of the theme of Remapping Collaborations – that windows are a universal object, needed in all places where a crisis befalls. In the catalogue, we showcase Barbara Buser’s work in Switzerland, Windows for Beirut in Lebanon and our WINDOW project, and look at how these threads intertwine and outline the broader theme of remapping collaborations.

Mock-up of a sofa made of XPS reusable boards, an application of standardized building components in design, 2023

Curtain from construction tarpaulin, front view

Sofa, front view

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AK: What does the exhibition look like?

MS: We came up with a simple set-up of two adjacent rooms: one recreates the warehouse space where the windows are stored, and the other is a symbolic representation of the domestic space with examples of their reuse. We are engaging the London Design Biennale – a popular education-cum-entertainment-cum-commercial event – to organise another windows collection. The windows collected in London will go to Poland, and ultimately to Ukraine.

PV: In this way, we want to show a not run-of-the-mill way of helping Ukraine, and simultaneously to broaden the perception of the exhibition as a means of achieving additional goals. An exhibition does not have to be limited to presenting something that has already happened; it can also encourage future action. The understanding of the exhibition shifts from the object on display to the process itself: to what happens to the objects after the biennale is over.

ZJ: Of course, it would be nice if our exhibition also travelled a bit. After the exhibition in London, the windows – the central object of this space – will disappear because they will already be in Ukraine, so we will have to acquire more windows for each place we visit.

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MS: The exhibition is a protocol that can be implemented in different locations. In London, it involves a few dozen windows, due to the limitations of the exhibition space and the likely load on the ceilings of the exhibition building. We could rescale the event for a larger space.

AK: It’s great that one activity gives spontaneous rise to another and that you have been networking with other organisations working on similar themes. What other themes have you smuggled into the exhibition space?

PV: Our exhibition is primarily about the theme of reuse, but triggered by social action. This is an interesting issue.

The reuse of building materials is usually discussed in the context of ecology and environmental protection: it reduces the carbon footprint and thus helps to fight global warming.

We are looking at this issue from an unprecedented angle: the social nature of reusing building materials in times of crisis. Polish people are eager to donate windows to us and are curious to see where these windows will be sent.

MS: It is also about aesthetics. The aesthetic thread, implicit in the title of our exhibition, seems crucial to us: familiar definitions of architecture – with the Vitruvian triad of permanence, utility and beauty at the forefront – have taken on new depths in the context of reuse.

Architecture is at an interesting juncture. We have the impression that aesthetics resulting from the reuse of building materials and new definitions of rationality are beginning to crystallise.

‘Aesthetics’ is a more capacious term than a mere opinion that something is pretty or not; it is about a more in-depth meaning, woven from different values.

Aleksandra Kędziorek is an art and architecture historian, curator, and editor. She has curated exhibitions on modern architecture and design, including The Clothed Home, Oskar Hansen: Open Form, and Desk in Exile. She was a curator of the Oskar and Zofia Hansen House in Szumin and co-editor of CIAM Archipelago and Oskar Hansen—Opening Modernism. She is currently affiliated with the Museum of Warsaw.

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Over the past decades, architecture has been strongly associated with the designer’s ego, with style, with a recognisable aesthetic. This phenomenon culminated, of course, with the arrival of the architect superstars. This is not the kind of architecture that you can design with reclaimed materials. We assemble buildings from fragments that are durable and utilitarian, but we don’t fully control the aesthetics of the final product. Nor can we recycle these materials excessively, as such interference would be missing the point – it would increase energy consumption and the carbon footprint. We design buildings that are easy to demolish. When I started my studies, as a role model I was given a Swiss architect, who would have concrete poured over and over again until perfection was achieved. This was how he demonstrated total control of and mastery over his work. Working with secondary materials precludes such behaviour, but this does not mean that designers have to give up on aesthetics. It’s just that these aesthetics will be different. We are curious to see what will be born out of it. In the exhibition, we are showing an object with the working name of ‘The Totem’: an example of how to mount a window that does not fit into an opening. There is also a curtain made from building materials and a seat made from recycled extruded polystyrene. So we are modestly experimenting with designing objects from reclaimed and recycled materials.

ZJ: We respond to the main theme of the biennale – Remapping Collaborations – in multiple ways. The area of recycled materials engages a myriad of collaborative issues.

MS: I must say that in my professional life I have never previously encountered such good will as that which exists in the reclaimed materials niche. I think this is characteristic of people committed to a higher cause. In the pursuit of a noble goal, partisan interests and the designer’s own wellbeing become secondary to the drive to systemically change ways of doing things.

PROBLEM

Window too high, opening too low SOULTION BY TŁO AND STUDENTS: MATYLDA WOLFF, MARINA ALIMPIEVA, DANIIL DAVIDYUK, MACIEJ SMOLĄG

Slanted window

LIST OF MATERIALS 23 × wood screws 2 × panels 2 × strips to cover the outside edges of the panels 1 × board with a notch for fixing the upper edge of the window; the notch must ensure stability of the window mounted at an angle, length = width of the window 1 × sill board, length = width of window opening

1 × timber strip to close the window fixing, length = width of window 2 × boards – external window sill, length = width of window opening 1 × car air vent (ventilation grille) 24 × expansion screws 1 × thermal insulation board 1 × drip cap 1 × silicone sealant

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Assembling the timber frame fixing the window.

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Installation of the timber frame in the window opening.

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Installation of window.

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Installation of a timber window closing strip and sealing of the window from the outside with silicone sealant.

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Installation of the board under the window sill.

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Assembly of the board fixing the upper edge of the window.

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All done.

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What a view!

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Existing building lintel Board with cut-out for window Timber window closing strip Reclaimed FIX window Timber slat covering window frame Panel (façade material, wind insulation, thermal insulation boards, timber finish) Wood screw Board Recycled car air vent (ventilation grille) Expansion screw Door Existing building wall Silicone sealant Drip cap Thermal insulation boards Existing insulation

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Field operations

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Zofia Jaworowska in conversation with Lara Moutin (Windows for Beirut, France/Lebanon)

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ZOFIA JAWOROWSKA: When we started to ship used windows to Ukraine and explore the topic of reuse of building materials as a way to provide humanitarian aid, Windows for Beirut was one of the first initiatives that we came across. There are many differences in what we do and how, but it is interesting that no matter whether you are in Central Europe or in the Middle East, there is a similar answer to a crisis.

LARA MOUTIN: As a daughter of a French father and an Armenian mother, born in Beirut, I know what Ukrainians are experiencing now – I experienced the war. I survived a booby-trapped car in 1989 and massive bombings. Such experience enables you to empathise with people, but it also gives you an ability to focus on what is essential in life.

I was in Beirut one week before the blast. I went there to get some rest and boost the morale of my friends who were in turmoil after the financial crisis of 2019. I had rented an apartment in a central location for my stay. When the blast occurred on the 4th of August, I gave my rented apartment free of charge to a family of displaced people, whose house was blown up, and moved to my cousin’s place. The following day I met a young lady with two kids; they had no place to stay either. I went back to the place from where I rented the apartment with intent to rent another one. I thought I would pay the same amount, 800 dollars in cash. But after two days it was already 2400 dollars!

I became so enraged that I felt like demolishing everything there.

ZJ: The same thing happened when Ukrainians started migrating to Warsaw. Some landlords – although not all of course – did see it as a financial opportunity…

on the 13th we were already raising money through the foundation that had its own logo and a website, with the can-do mindset applied to every aspect.

ZJ: What was the scope of this organisation?

LM: I am neither an architect, nor an engineer. I wanted to act fast and help people with low income whose houses had been partly damaged – broken windows, damaged doors, all stuff that you could easily fix. Architectes de l’urgence gave us guidelines on how much money should be spent on each apartment to replace windows and/or doors on a permanent basis – I wanted the project to be sustainable and have lasting effects; I don’t go for temporary solutions. We decided to collaborate with three local NGOs. Windows for Beirut, with support of Architectes de l’urgence, provided them with drills, tarpaulins and other tools worth 72,000 euros.

Port grain silos damaged by the explosion, Beirut, Lebanon, 2020

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LM: It is unbelievable! I called a friend of mine who was a former civil servant in France and asked him: ‘Is there a kind of “commando” group focused on architecture?

I need one to help people go back to their houses.’ He told me that there was a specialist organisation called Architectes de l’urgence; their representative, Patrick Coulombel, came on the CNN just as we were talking.

My friend found his number. Coulombel is an expert in rebuilding after disasters. Whenever there is a catastrophe, there he is – in Haiti, Nepal, AZF (fertiliser factory in Toulouse, France). I got in touch with him and he gave me proper advice, but he told me that I needed to establish a non-profit foundation. ‘Non-profit?’, I said. ‘Do you think I have time for such things?’ I thought there was already some external task force I could mobilise, like a United Nations of architecture; I would just need to convince them to come to Beirut. But he said that first I needed to start a fund-raising campaign to collect money and then I could work under the aegis of Architectes de l’urgence.

So within five days, I set up Windows for Beirut. The explosion happened on the 4th of August at 6 pm, on the 8th I decided I would set up an NGO in France, and

Our aim was to equip local artisans with tools to enable them to work with our partners on the ground, thus using local materials, and shorten the supply chain while boosting the local economy.

↓ Traditional Lebanese house in the Gemmayzeh neighbourhood left with no windows, Beirut, Lebanon, 2020

Patrick Coulombel came to assess what type of work was necessary. He had seen many disasters around the world. His diagnosis was quite clear: apart of the vicinity of the blast where there was huge damage, the rest was mainly the matter of broken windows. ‘We are going to allocate 500 euros per apartment to replace them’, he announced.

That sounded very modest; nevertheless, his estimate proved right, since we were buying local materials and using local

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Skyline Tower, Beirut harbour area, Lebanon, 2020

Laminated window panels on the street as a result of the blast, Beirut, Lebanon, 2020

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artisans. We learned that sourcing materials locally and paying local artisans in cash helped not only to get the right result at the right time, but also provided an income for the local artisans.

ZJ: Who helped you accomplish this task?

LM: Two highly dedicated women worked with me: Reine Rouman and Denise Chamassian. Denise’s role was to identify those that would genuinely benefit from the scheme – people in actual need – and visit them to understand their needs. The list of beneficiaries was proposed by our partner local NGOs, but we also inspected every single proposal ourselves. Once agreed upon the list of beneficiaries and the list of work to be done per apartment, we asked the partner NGOs to provide a bill of quantities (BOQ) for each apartment: what had to be repaired, what replaced and what should be built from scratch as well as the cost estimate. We looked at the BOQs building by building, apartment by apartment. The BOQ had to match our overall budget: we might spend 100 euros on one apartment and 1,000 on another, but there was 500 euro available per apartment on average. We paid a 50% down payment to the NGOs at the start of the work, to enable them to contract the local artisans and pay for the materials. We used to inspect the workplaces during the project. Reine works in a construction company. This was very helpful as she could properly monitor costs and feasibility. Our goal was to allocate the maximum amount to the beneficiaries, not to the staff, and Reine knew architects and engineers who could help us pro bono. When the work was

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completed, she would organise a formal inspection review and we would visit each apartment to check with the beneficiaries and the artisans sequentially the works that had been carried and that the materials used matched the delivery note in terms of specification and price. If everything was fine, we would immediately pay the remaining 50%. We also asked our partner NGOs to provide us with the narratives of the work done, i.e. reports including information on families and individuals who benefited from the repairs and description of the work done. The reports were then sent to the donors, so they would be informed of how exactly their funds had been used to help those in need. For instance, a public bank in France had donated 30,000 euros. I was able to tell them how many apartments were repaired, who the beneficiaries were, and even pass their names and phone numbers to the donors so they could satisfy themselves that everything was in order.

ZJ: This is very important! We also get most of our funding from donations and I just cannot imagine doing it otherwise than by being perfectly transparent.

LM: Exactly. I take a very strict line when it comes to public money. Holding myself and others accountable is key. The main problem in Lebanon is endemic corruption at every stage and the lack of accountability becomes a bigger issue than ever. As you may know, Lebanon has been experiencing horrible times where people’s money is locked in banks and devalued. People did not have access to their own money to repair their homes. We had to make a good job of targeting the ones in need and be very diligent to make sure we were identifying those beneficiaries. Denise did that, whilst Reine oversaw the BOQs and inspected the work, and I managed the overall programme and potential conflicts between stakeholders. I spent almost 14 months of my life on the ground in Beirut. Despite the fact that I am French, I speak and read Arabic well, which helped a lot.

ZJ: Did you ever experience someone asking for help in repairing their homes, but in fact having other purposes in mind?

LM: Oh yes, you wouldn’t believe it! Once we went to an apartment of a 92-year-old lady. She wasn’t there, but only her grandson (I even doubt now if he was her grandson at all!). We asked around in the neighbourhood. It turned out she had passed away two years earlier, and he wanted to turn the apartment into an Airbnb. Another time, a wealthy

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lady told us that she could afford the repairs of her house, but there was another building with rental apartments, where people could not afford the refurbishment. ‘Maybe you could at least repair their windows,’ she said. Usually, we did not want to have more than any one agency working on an apartment because this is how they can play with people’s money. You do the work and another NGO sells the results to a donor pretending that it has been done with their donation. However, when we went to see the rental apartment, it turned out that the owners of the other building were her daughters… and they were as wealthy as she was. She didn’t expect us to go and check. We also encountered crooks among the workers. Our partner NGO had mandated a worker to repair some stuff we agreed upon in a kitchen. The water tap was damaged when the window was blown away, so we decided that we would repair it, because the inhabitants could not even afford to replace that.

The workman wanted to charge 30 dollars for the materials.

Reine said, ‘Where did you buy this for 30 dollars? Let’s go to the shop to buy another one for 30 dollars.’ Then he had to admit that the actual price was 9 dollars. So transparency and proper allocation of funding requires scrutiny.

ZJ: Did you collaborate with local authorities or architects?

LM: When Patrick Coulombel from Architectes de l’urgence came to Beirut, we had a meeting with the head of the local architects’ syndicate, so we could tell him what we were doing and learn about their activities. You see, the explosion happened in an area where there was a lot of real estate speculation. One would have expected some corrupted politicians or their families wanting to exploit this situation: order to pull a building down, buy the land, expel the owners.

The head of the architects’ syndicate declared that even if a building was going to collapse, he would evacuate its inhabitants, but would not sign an order to have the building demolished, to prevent it from this kind of speculation.

We collaborated a lot with architects and engineers – I always wanted both to be present in case there was a structural problem; we did not want surprises.

Architectes de l’urgence are, I guess, the only non-profit organisation with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) accreditation. They themselves have a construction licence. They have rebuilt a significant number of schools around the world following disasters.

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Coulombel is very committed and vocal about safety and durability: the situation of emergency should never compromise safety and durability. Schools built post-disaster had to be safe enough that he would feel able to send his own children there. If we had collected enough money, we would have been delighted to repair schools. From the remarks he made to local authorities, you could tell that Coulombel was the expert in evaluation of the amounts needed for reconstruction. Recently, in the case of the earthquake in Turkey, he assessed the cost of repair at more than 31 billion euros and shared his opinion widely. The World Bank came up with the same number one week later… That’s reassuring.

Through Windows for Beirut, we focused on replacing glass, windows, and sometimes doors. In some cases, the front façade of the building had a specific format of window or heritage cachet. If the back of the building had similar features, we would remove the window in the back, install it on the façade and replace the back – we wanted to respect the architectural features of the building. In the end, we helped 691 beneficiaries to return to their homes.

ZJ: That’s fantastic!

LM: There were around 300 households, many of elderly people or single parents with one or two kids. I was left with 30,000 dollars on the foundation’s account. I thought, ‘OK, all the low-hanging fruit (eg, apartments where you could make a difference with a targeted amount of money) have been picked, I won’t be able to focus further on people with low income in Beirut’. I spoke to one of my donors, a remarkable lady from Switzerland, and agreed with her to use the amount of her donations to refurbish nine buildings in Tripoli in the north of Lebanon. I visited an area inhabited by people with almost no income or very low income living in extremely poor conditions. Kids were living in rooms where humidity had made their walls black with moisture – they could have developed asthma or other illnesses. Unbelievable! Humanly unacceptable. It is a city where the prime minister of Lebanon (one of the richest man on earth) comes from, and there are several billionaires, but their city is in shambles, 90% of the people are living below poverty level.

I told them: ‘I will not do a cosmetic refurbishment, renovating the buildings from the outside. I will focus only on the interiors. If we are left with means and enough money,

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we will also renovate the exterior. Otherwise, we won’t.’ If there was water pouring down, condensation on the ceiling or fungi, we fixed it. We removed insects, dried the places and painted them, fixed the electricity, and in some cases, we bought some furniture to enable people to sit or sleep.

We fixed the staircases, and so on. We focused on these nine buildings in a highly vulnerable area. This refurbishment really changed people’s lives; I am extremely proud of this initiative. For instance, one father told me that his son wouldn’t visit him anymore with his grandson because of the condition of his apartment, it was that bad! We managed to refurbish 39 apartments in that area, getting 141 artisans from Beirut and Tripoli involved.

ZJ: How many people did your NGO help in both cities?

LM: Nine hundred and five. This experience taught me a lot.

I learned many things from Patrick Coloumbel during his visit at the early stages. His expertise in emergency architecture and sustainability helped me define how I would run this. Without Architectes de l’urgence who shared with me the basics at the beginning, I wouldn’t have got as far. There were three of us: Reine Rouman, Denise Chamassian and myself to run it.

ZJ: It is incredible that, with architecture and construction sectors still largely dominated by men, your core team was composed only of three women. I can observe a similar change in Ukraine: there are many women taking over the reconstruction initiatives, as men are engaged in the war.

LM: ‘If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman’, said a famous British prime minister. Women are very good at this, especially when it comes to supply chains. Although they still need to be twice as good as a man to survive in this area.

ZJ: Based on your experience, what should we do to be prepared better for similar crises in the future?

LM: First, a new generation of architects should be trained in preventive and curative measures to embrace environmental and social risks. They will be our new ‘business as usual’. Architects must be able to read the environment, foresee and accommodate external risks and protect people.

Secondly, we need to have an ability to unlearn what we know and learn the new. We also need to get rid of what I call the ‘not-invented here’ syndrome. If things are working

Lara Moutin (centre) and Patrick Coulombel (right) distributing construction materials to local residents, Beirut, Lebanon, 2020

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somewhere else, just copy them. Privilege short and slim supply chains, use local materials and local work to help rebuild the local economy. People in crisis are displaced, devastated. If you allow them at least to earn some money while rebuilding their environment, you will accelerate the whole process.

We saw that it is absolutely useful to have architects and engineers in the team. With people affected by disasters, Architectes de l’urgence recommends collaboration with psychologists who can help people understand what has happened to them and go through the mourning process. You cannot just pop in between people who have just lost everything and start lecturing on technical things; you need a lot of empathy.

I also think there is no need to rebuild everything identically. In the port of Beirut, everything was vertical. If we had lower, horizontal constructions, they would have probably been more resistant. Now, to make the good out of the bad, people can use this catastrophe to rebuild for durability: design urban spaces, preserve biodiversity, and privilege local materials. Acting local also means that you reduce carbon emissions.

Lara Moutin is an independent consultant with extensive experience in ESG and sustainable development. With a background in Procurement and Supply Chain management at Unilever spanning 18 years, Lara has built a reputation as an expert in driving large-scale transformational projects that deliver economic, social and environmental impact. Lara is known for her work with the French humanitarian NGO Windows for Beirut, where she played a key role in rehabilitating 691 homes after the Beirut explosion in 2020.

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ZJ: Carbon emissions are an important issue we are also facing. We get reclaimed building materials from Poland and ship them to Ukraine. We have less funding than Windows for Beirut, but we are also getting donations, mostly to cover transportation costs, which consume most of our budget.

LM: Couldn’t you buy glass directly in Ukraine, or have the donors pay to the local plants?

ZJ: That’s the issue. Most glass in Ukraine was imported from Russia and Belarus, so now there is a huge shortage of glass. Most of the factories are not working due to lack of electricity. Geographically, the closest source of windows is Poland, and Poland is one of the largest window producers in Europe, so our collaboration makes sense. But there are also other initiatives e.g. by Swiss architect and activist, Barbara Buser, who has been shipping windows and other building materials from Switzerland to Ukraine. And she is also concerned about the carbon footprint – how far one can ship things so the carbon footprint is not too large.

LM: In emergency situations, we should unquestionably always choose people over carbon footprint! People come first. They are now being bombed day and night. First, we must help them fix their houses, then we will focus on other things. In emergency situations, helpers should not compete, they should collaborate. We are not running a competition. Just because you have many ships out on the sea that does not mean that you have a fleet.

Systemic improvement can only work if actors from different disciplines and/or ecosystems work together and people are humble enough to learn from one another.

PROBLEM

Poor window thermal properties SOLUTION BY WIDOKI

Box window

LIST OF MATERIALS boards for making the frame of the box window and the drawer – e.g. OSB, plywood, MDF, thickness min. 18mm, the part exposed to atmospheric conditions protected by varnish, varnish stain or coating insulation, the dimension adjusted to the window size 2 × c30mm × 30mm timber sections for the drawer (can be replaced by system runners)

32 × steel angles timber wedges for positioning the frame in the opening min. 8 × universal wall plugs, length approx.

100mm mounting foam for windows, silicone screws/wood screws/ nails – min. 72 No

1.

Prepare the box by joining the 4 boards together using nails (if the dimensions of the board allow) or angles and screws. The boards should have a width equal to the thickness of the wall. If the materials are not available, the boards can be replaced by a 50mm × 50mm timber framework.

2.

Fit the centre panel so that it marks the edge of the window you wish to install. Fix it on the outside with screws or nails.

5.

Fix the window directly to the boards or use steel angles and screws. Seal the joints with silicone or mounting foam.

6.

Place the frame with the outer window in the opening. It can be fixed directly to the wall with wall plugs. Seal joints with installation foam.

4.

Install an external window in the upper chamber of the frame. This can be either fixed or operable.

If it will open inwards, it should be smaller than the other window to avoid collision between the two parts.

7.

Fit the internal window. It can be fixed or operable.

8.

Fix the window directly to the panels or use steel angle brackets and screws. Seal joints with silicone or installation foam.

a

b

3.

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From the outside, attach the cover panel to the bottom of the frame. Drill a few holes in it with a drill to allow natural cooling of the cabinet.

Protect the outside with varnish or stain.

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9.

Prepare the cold box insert – this can be a panel drawer that moves on the battens fixed to the frame or an operable front that closes the existing shelf.

10.

We don’t make things – we assemble them

ALL DONE!

Anastasiya Ponomaryova in conversation with Louis Schulz and Asia Zwierzchowska (Assemble, United Kingdom) Collaboration: Aleksandra Kędziorek

ALTERNATIVE OPTION Window narrower than the opening – cold frame next to the window, closed with a hinge-mounted casement sash.

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ALTERNATIVE OPTION Window the size of the opening – use the space between the windows as a cold frame.

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ANASTASIYA PONOMARYOVA: I am involved in the CO-HATY project in Ukraine, an initiative that provides shared accommodation for people displaced by the war. The war has affected our building industry dramatically and we are struggling with material and financial shortages. Hunting for used materials turned out to be the best way to reduce our costs.

You are members of Assemble – a British multi-disciplinary collective that has a long-standing practice of hunting for old building components. It seems that this practice is even reflected in the name of your collective, isn’t it?

LOUIS SCHULZ: The name ‘Assemble’ comes from two aspects of our practice. The first is about bringing people together.

But one can also talk about assembling parts. That is what we do, we don’t make things – we assemble them.

AP: This twofold approach is visible in many of your designs, including the Cineroleum, Assemble’s foundational project. A disused petrol station was turned into a temporary cinema with the use of cheap industrial and reclaimed materials, including scaffolding boards and roofing membranes. Another project is a long-term refurbishment of the Granby Street neighbourhood in Liverpool. Can you tell us a little more about your activities on Granby Street and how they are embedded in Assemble’s practice?

LS: In 2013, we met a group of residents who had formed the Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust. It was one of the first community land trusts in the UK. The area

Abandoned hotel building to serve as housing for internally displaced people, by Co-Haty, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, 2022

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where they lived had been completely decimated by various misguided local authority projects that had aimed at regenerating the area but ended up with hundreds of houses boarded up and the heart ripped out of the place. When we got there, there were very few residents, but it was a really strong community. They established an organisation in order to turn the area around. We helped them in putting together an alternative masterplan for the area. Even though it was a development of beautiful Victorian terraced workers’ housing, the official development proposals focused on low-density housing that would have demolished the terraces. Our alternative masterplan looked at what could be done with the existing housing stock. People are very attached to the original houses, which are extremely adaptable and are already there. We developed a more detailed plan for refurbishing 10 houses that was paid for by a philanthropist – it was the first project of the Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust. Later, we got funding to build a winter garden.

We put a glass roof over one of the houses, which was in poor condition, so as to create an indoor garden for the local

Future residents, with the help of the Co-Haty team, refurbishing their own homes, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, 2022

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community. We also set up the Granby Workshop, an employee-owned ceramics manufacturing company in Granby.

We collaborate with the Granby Workshop on projects: they sometimes make tiles for us, or we exhibit some of their work. There is a strong relationship between us.

ASIA ZWIERZCHOWSKA: For instance, I am now working on a project at St Anne’s College, commissioned by the University of Oxford. We are refurbishing 10 existing Victorian villas that will be turned into student housing.

We want to use terrazzo tiles made of demolition materials found on site, including bricks and rubble, and the Granby Workshop will produce the tiles for us.

AP: This relationship between crafts and reclaimed materials is a very interesting part of your practice.

Does your co-operation with the Granby Workshop or your direct engagement in the studio work in general help you come up with new solutions or experiment with different aesthetics?

LS: Yes, we have a workshop, which is the same size as our office.

← Bedroom in the former hotel building refurbished by the Co-Haty project, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, 2022

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This might give you an idea of the importance that we place on making new materials for our projects by ourselves.

We also run a building with studios rented by carpenters, metalworkers and ceramicists, there are around 50 people with whom we can collaborate.

We are currently working on an office refurbishment project in London where we are planning to retain as much material as possible. However, the walls are made of OSB. Most architects would get rid of it, it is ugly. We treated them as a challenge – and have developed a system of sanding the OSB and then staining it. It looks quite cool.

This project is still in the design phase.

Another project we are currently developing is for the Triennale di Milano – we are making furniture, ceramic bowls and plates. The plan is to utilise all the offcuts and random elements that are lying around in our workshop – making a virtue of using a mishmash of different materials.

AZ: Even the clay that we are using for the ceramics is recycled clay from the Granby Workshop. It was about to be just thrown away and we took it to make our bowls and plates out of it.

AP: When you collect old components with the intention to upcycle them, reuse or adjust to your ideas, do you have any strategy or criteria for selecting those materials? Is reuse in your case also a financial decision?

LS: Using reclaimed materials is difficult, to be honest, and adds a lot of extra work. Quite often it turns out that second-hand materials are more expensive. For example, in London, all second-hand bricks are more expensive than new ones because they are used for conservation projects.

We are now planning a couple of community-led projects where we want to set up a laboratory on site, so we can research from very early on which materials can be

Preparing for Triennale Milano International Exhibition – Sugarhouse Studios, London, United Kingdom, 2023

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Granby Clay at Sugarhouse Studios, London, United Kingdom, 2023

salvaged and which others can be made using local industrial waste streams. This research phase will last at least for a few years before any construction works begin. We would also like to use that space to offer training and educational space for people to come and learn how to work with reused resources.

AP: Do you also collaborate with other practitioners or organisations that promote reuse?

LS: Most people we are currently working with are involved in researching material cultures, looking for new sustainable materials, and manufacturing them. For instance, Lewis Jones, a former member of Assemble, is now working on a method to produce low fire ceramics out of incinerator ash, a leftover from burning rubbish in incinerators.

AZ: Assemble is now working in collaboration with BC Architects and Materials on a project for a new workspace for the LUMA Atelier in Arles. LUMA Atelier is

45

a think tank, production workshop and learning network.

They are experimenting a lot with new materials, e.g., they have been developing leather from olives and olive oil. They share those ideas with us when they come, it is very interesting. We are developing the design of their new workspace in collaboration with them through various prototypes.

AP: In your portfolio there are two types of projects made with reclaimed materials – long-term refurbishment projects and designs for temporary structures. In the latter you often use elements of scaffolding, e.g., in the temporary Cineroleum cinema, or a concert spot for the Horst Festival in Newcastle. It is an interesting choice as scaffolding allows for multiple use. Do you see any other, maybe less conventional materials that could be reclaimed and used repeatedly?

LS: Scaffolding is quite exceptional – it can be taken down and reused by a scaffolding company.

I don’t think these repeat temporary projects can be considered a success in terms of reuse of materials. They tend to be designed specifically to be put up and taken down many times. People often think: let’s do something temporary, it will be cheap. But if it is for multiple use, it may turn out to be more expensive and more engineered than a permanent building.

Something that needs to be put up and taken down multiple times needs to be robust and resilient.

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I think many people are coming to terms with that.

Temporary systems based on containers are not pretty.

The challenge is how you work with these things that are much more environmentally friendly – how to turn them into nice spaces?

With temporary structures, you have to be really careful not to end up being really wasteful. Thus, we are always looking for a possibility of using a part of these temporary buildings as our studio spaces. I think our early, temporary projects, including the Cineroleum, the Folly, or even the Yardhouse, were certainly successful on their own terms; they were great projects. However, nowadays we would be a lot stricter in how we view the reuse or the waste of materials.

AP: In long-term refurbishment projects, there is also an issue of maintenance and repairs. In Ukraine, there is a tradition of ‘glue buildings’ (mazanka).

They are built collectively by a local community; their construction requires only low-level skills, and then they can be easily adjusted and repaired over the years. Do you also get local communities involved in maintaining the refurbished projects to guarantee them a longer life?

Exterior of Yardhouse at Stratford, London, United Kingdom 2014

↓ Cineroleum curtain, created by handsewing of approx. three kilometres of roofing membrane seam, London, United Kingdom, 2010

LS: In Granby, we don’t take responsibility for maintenance for most of the projects that we have done. That is the responsibility of the Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust. So that is not something that we have done to date.

AP: Today the topic of reuse forms part of a broader narrative of architects’ engagement in environmental issues. There is great pressure on architecture to change, to abandon some practices and adopt others.

How do you find yourself within this narrative?

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Anastasiya Ponomaryova is co-founder of Urban Curators agency (est. in 2015) and the CO-HATY project. Before the fullscale Russian invasion, she worked in Kyiv with projects at the junction of art, architecture, urban design, and the development of regional communities. She has devised concepts and strategies for various forms and scales of the urban environment. Anastasiya graduated from the Donbas National Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture. She completed her master’s and postgraduate degrees in Kyiv. In 2017–2018, she did an internship at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen.

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AZ: It is now quite easy to slip into greenwashing and claim that everything can be reused. But if something was custom-made for a specific building, it often cannot be reused.

For me, the answer is not to not build anything, but maybe to think more about the actual value that a building brings, for instance, to a local community.

Anyway, the construction has to be balanced out and as sustainable and wastefree as possible.

LS: There is still so much demolition. It generates a lot of waste – one building is demolished, the materials removed and then there is just another building constructed in the same place. I feel this is the thing that really needs to be looked at now and this is what we are doing. However, as Assemble, we are in a privileged situation. We work with people who like unusual briefs; they employ us because they want an architect who is going to explore things in detail. Many architects don’t have that choice, they just receive a brief and a budget. We are lucky to work with people with similar attitude and approach, and through that we can have an even bigger impact.

PROBLEM

Lots of small windows, large opening, damaged wall SOLUTION BY JKL

Installation of windows on a timber frame

LIST OF MATERIALS When windows of equal width have been received.

Condition: 3 × A + 480mm ≥ B + 10% A – width of window received B – width of opening C – height of opening 4 × 120mm × 120mm vertical timber sections, length ≥ C+10%; 6 × 60mm × 120mm horizontal timber sections, length = A; 4 × 28mm × 150mm horizontal timber sections, length = 3 × A + 480 mm;

20 × wood screws, length ≥ 140mm; 56 × wood screws, length ≥ 50mm; 10 × universal wall plugs, length ≥ 160mm; mounting foam for windows; 12 × assembly screws; PE foil; OSB / plywood / plasterboard width = A, height = C; mineral wool / polystyrene

1.

Measure the structure and place 2 No vertical 120mm × 120mm timber sections on the ground.

2.

Fix the 28mm × 120mm bracing boards to the face of the sections with ≥50mm screws.

5.

Attach the OSB boards to the timber frame from the outside using ≥50mm screws.

6.

Stand the twisted frame against the wall and fix with ≥160 mm universal wall plugs.

10 ×

12 ×

16 ×

3.

Fix the 60mm × 120mm horizontal sections to the timber frame with ≥140mm screws.

4.

Fix the PE foil with nails to the timber frame, cut the openings for the windows with a margin of 200 mm for turning the foil up inwards.

7.

Fix the remaining 28mm × 120mm bracing boards with screws ≥50mm.

8.

Insert the windows into the frame and fix with assembly screws.

16 ×

20 ×

24 ×

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9.

Fill the frame with insulation material (mineral wool/ polystyrene).

Taking rubble into our own hands

Adam Przywara in conversation with Andrii Kopylenko (District #1 Foundation, Ukraine)

10.

Attach the OSB boards to the timber frame from the outside using ≥50mm screws.

12 ×

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ADAM PRZYWARA: How did District #1 – a grassroots organisation focused on improving urban life in Kyiv – come to be involved in the refurbishment of houses damaged during the war?

ANDRII KOPYLENKO: In 2018 our foundation was not yet a foundation, but an event. Our aim was to renovate Reitarska Street. Andrii Titarenko, the co-founder of the District #1 Foundation, was at that time the co-owner of the Riot Division clothing brand and, as their store was on Reitarska Street, it had a high-profile presence there and so they wanted to put the street itself on the map and, at the same time, the businesses that were located on this street. The main idea was to show people that they could visit Reitarska Street not only for the food market, but also to spend some time there.

I am not an architect. Before the war, I was an event planner and stage designer. I observed how Berlin or Warsaw had changed over time. For me about five years ago, it was really a huge question why Berlin had much better urban spaces than Kyiv. It was clear that the issue was not the money, but rather the mindset.

Since 2018 we have organised several events on Reitarska Street, but they stopped with the outbreak of the COVID pandemic. When the war started, my partner from the foundation, Andrii Titarenko, and I realised that we could use our resources not only to improve the urban life on one street, but also expand our activities throughout the country. We have turned District #1 into a bigger organisation and made it more useful for Ukrainians in

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the current context. We want to come back to organising events once the war is over, but right now we are focusing on more urgent matters.

AP: How many people worked with you at the beginning?

Did your team change after the Russian invasion?

AK: Two years before the war we stopped our projects, so there was nobody, only Andrii and me. When we announced our first action of cleaning up the rubble and debris in the streets, our team grew to five people. Now there are twenty-five: our production team, people working with local government and citizens, lawyers, accountants and fundraisers. We have grown into a really big foundation. 90% of our team are our former volunteers. They had different jobs before the war, now they want to be useful for the country. They joined us and started learning different skills, often new to them. We make a really great team together.

AP: How does your organisation work? Do you have an operations centre? How do you expand your activities to other cities and oblasts?

AK: We work from an office in Kyiv. There we have staff meetings every week to co-ordinate our different teams and projects. In Kyiv we have the main office, but also the main storage warehouse, as the city is well-connected with other places by the Ukrainian railways, and it is cheaper to collect all the stuff in one place and then distribute it. Kyiv is the central hub.

In our team, we have people from different regions: Kherson, Kharkiv and Eastern Ukraine. Sometimes we travel between the cities, but we also look for other foundations and people in different regions we can work with.

Then, we tell them, for instance: we have 500 windows, please provide us with 500 addresses where we can deliver them or help us with delivery and distribution. All our activities are based on connecting things, initiatives and individuals.

AP: How do you finance your operations? Do you rely on public funds, foreign grants, or private donors?

AK: At the beginning in 2022 all the District #1 projects were funded from my and my partner’s private savings.

It was difficult because we knew that we risked losing everything. We were determined to perform all our activities in a transparent, legitimate way. Ukrainian

Collected bricks stored for later reuse, Irpin, Ukraine, 2022

↓ Arrival of reclaimed windows from Poland received by District #1 team, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2022

government has had a rather bad press as being corrupt. It is a big problem, because it results in a lack of trust from international organisations. When we started, I told my team: if we prove we do everything in an honest, cheap, progressive, and creative way, the people responsible for international funds will notice.

After a few projects, a German organisation IsraAID Germany donated 10,000 euro to us to test how we worked. With this money, we said, we can do a lot of things – and we did. After that, they trusted us and so did other organisations. Now, international grants form a large part of our budget. We have three donors from abroad, and some businesses that support us financially. We also have ‘donate’ buttons on our website that allow for individual donations.

We don’t apply for public funding in Ukraine because we know that it could result in pressure from the government in the future.

AP: I am a researcher working with the history of the post-war reconstruction of Warsaw. When I was listening to one of your talks, it struck me that there were many similarities between the activities performed in the 1940s in Warsaw and those that are happening now in Ukraine – for instance, rubble clearing and damage assessment. You have already mentioned that you organise rubble clearing actions.

What form do these actions take?

Do you focus on cleaning up the streets, or do you also deal in any way with the collected debris?

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Debris removal from a building, Myla, Ukraine, 2022

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Clearing the rubble in Warsaw, Poland, 1947-1950

AK: We started these actions as a charity event. We saw that many young people wanted to be useful and didn’t know how to, so we got them involved. We had been carrying out these actions for two or three months, weather permitting.

While clearing up, we were trying to collect and segregate metal, plastic, concrete and wooden elements with an intention of setting up a recycling plant. It isn’t operational yet, as during the war there has been so much debris that, after clearing it up, everything ends up in one garbage dump. But maybe after the war we will start to recycle.

AP: Do you see any potential in reusing these materials? During the post-WW2 reconstructions, rubble was turned into a building material.

AK: Bricks can certainly be reused. Also concrete can be reused. And sometimes we can use all types of construction waste to create a sub-base for rural roads where there is no budget to do something higher-quality.

AP: Another aspect reminiscent of the post-WW2 reconstructions is damage assessment. There are thousands of buildings across Ukraine that need renovation. How do you decide which buildings your organisation should focus on?

AK: First, we make a list of people whom we are trying to help: parents with children, the elderly, those who cannot work or those with health or mental health problems. In the next step we check who has all the necessary documentation. It is a big problem in Ukraine – many people have been living somewhere for many years without having any

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registration documents – the standard building registration certificates that show that the building has been completed and can be inhabited. And without the paperwork we cannot help them, so we try to help them with the compiling of all the documents. If on our list there is a family that now lives abroad and doesn’t want to come back in the near future, we look for another one that lives in the vicinity. If our donors want to support a specific region, we look for houses there.

AP: Can people reach you individually?

AK: Yes, they can send us information by post or email. We also collect information from local government – they often provide us with lists of people living in specific places. One part of our team checks all the names, others travel by car to visit those places in person. This is because we sometimes receive false information – houses are not damaged, but the local government wants us to give them money. We need to double-check everything.

AP: After you have decided which building will be renovated and you have checked everything, what are the next steps you take?

AK: Next, we do a damage assessment. We have three categories: low, medium or heavy damage, and different budgets for repairs corresponding to each category: up to 5,000 euro for low, 5,000 to 10,000 euro for medium, and over 10,000 euro for heavy damage. The assessors from our team go to the building to take photos and measurements and check what percentage of the roof has been damaged,

← WINDOW project team in action, Warsaw, Poland, 2022

or the size of the destroyed windows. Then they come back to our office and pass all the information to our engineers, and we do the budget calculations and renovation plans.

Currently, we have been working on a mobile application for our assessors. The application should help us understand better how many buildings are damaged and how much money we need to renovate them. There is the Diia government application where people can submit similar data, but it is not accurate and does not include photos, so you cannot assess the actual scale of the damage. The government puts out various figures such as there have been 16,000 buildings destroyed, but these are numbers plucked out of the air. We don’t know how many exactly have been destroyed. We need to have this information collected for us.

AP: You also collaborate with the BRDA Foundation on the WINDOW Project whose aim is to collect used windows in Poland and ship them to Ukraine. How does this co-operation look from your side? What form does the process take from the moment when the truck with the windows arrives in Ukraine to when they are installed?

Have you encountered any surprises or challenges?

AK: This project is very important for us. When we started renovating houses, we realised that windows were really expensive.

Sometimes the cost of replacing two windows was as high as the restoration of a roof or doors.

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When the windows arrived from Poland, it was a very happy day. We would be able to help a lot of people. We made a list of those who needed windows and another list of available windows with all the measurements. It was four or five months after the invasion, Kherson had just been liberated.

In the region of Kyiv many people had already bought windows, because it is hard to live without them for a long time.

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So we sent a request to Kherson: if you know somebody who needs windows, send us a message or show them our list.

In about two weeks, 300 people replied and all the windows were distributed. We got a big truck and delivered them to Kherson; some people also came to Kyiv to collect them directly from our storage.

AP: You mentioned that windows are very expensive in Ukraine – is it connected with the scarcity of building materials in general, or is the case of windows somehow exceptional?

AK: In Ukraine there is no proper glass production. Before the war glass was imported from Belarus. The only factories manufacturing windows were in the Kharkiv and Dnipro regions, but they stopped their production because it was too dangerous to work so close to the front line. There are only small manufacturers who can produce only a small number of windows, so the prices have been increasing very quickly. It is much cheaper to get windows from Poland, and they are of better quality.

AP: We have talked about repairs, but you also came up with an initiative to build new houses.

AK: Yes, it is actually the main part of our work now. There is a government project to build temporary, modular houses, but we are trying to find a better solution – cheaper and with more square metres per person. The modular houses provided by the government are of only 20 square metres, the houses are inhabited by families, they are not cheap and not adapted to Ukrainian cold winters. And let’s be honest, they won’t be temporary – similar houses were built after WW2 and they are still standing, so it is possible that people will live in those houses for, say, 15 or 20 years.

AP: You proposed an alternative design of a pre-fab – a typical house.

AK: It is a frame house made with wooden beams, like a classic North American or Scandinavian house. We start by constructing a frame, then add insulation. It looks good and it is warm. Ukrainian builders were sceptical and said these houses wouldn’t be sufficient for Ukrainian winters; here people prefer big brick houses. But in many countries, including Finland or Norway, people live in wooden houses, and they have cold winters, too. There are also many buildings in the United States and Canada constructed with similar technology, and it has worked well for hundreds of years. The houses are cheaper and energy-efficient; we can build them very fast and use

local materials. We have made all the calculations – while the construction of a modular house from the governmental project costs between 10,000 and 15,000 euro, we have managed to build 26 houses for 455,000 euro, thus for some 17,500 euro per house. We have already built three houses in the Kyiv region, 26 houses in the Chernihiv region and we are planning the next 50 in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kherson regions.

AP: Do you have any figures for the renovations you have done?

AK: At the moment, we have already restored one multi-apartment building with 50 apartments and two kindergartens in Gostomel, we will start repairing another one in a week.

And in a month we will enter the Kharkiv region to repair 4 kindergartens. We also repair and build private houses.

To date, we have already built 30 private houses for families who have lost their homes in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions.

We will start building the next 30 houses in the next few months in the Kherson region.

Regarding repairs, we have already repaired a hundred houses, and we are repairing 50 more now (most of the houses in Borodyanka), and in two or three months we will start repairing another 60 houses.

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Thus, by the end of the year, we plan to finish a fairly large amount of work – not to mention the large amount of work in humanitarian areas, involving food, insulation, water, etc.

Andrii Kopylenko is a co-founder of the charitable foundation District #1. Since 2014, he has worked in the east of Ukraine as a project manager, helping the local population affected by military operations. Since 2017, he has organised many festivals in Ukraine, including the first District #1 festival. Together with Andrii Titarenko, he decided to reformat the festival into a charitable foundation whose aim was the renovation of Kyiv and the Kyiv region as well as other regions of Ukraine following the occupation. During almost one year of full-scale war, the foundation has developed into one of the largest bottom-up reconstruction funds in Ukraine.

Adam Przywara is an architectural historian and researcher. He received a PhD from the University of Manchester for a dissertation on the history of the transformation of rubble and ruins during the post-war socialist reconstruction of Warsaw.

He is currently affiliated with the University of Freiburg in Switzerland.

His research interests focus on the changes in the materiality of twentieth-century architecture, as well as the circular economy in contemporary and historical construction.

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In addition to that, we are working on projects with heating appliances, stoves, and generators, because in many regions there is no electricity. We are looking for donors who can help us buy emergency equipment for those regions. We have renovated kindergartens in the Hostomel and Irpin regions, and are about to renovate three more in the Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions. We are trying to find funds to make a hub for internationally displaced people, so there is somewhere available for those who want to flee from the occupied territories. Together with Martin Duplantier, a French architecture studio, we are working on the new museum of Maria Primochenko, a building that was completely destroyed by the Russian army.

AP: What about the future? How do you want District #1 to develop? Do you already have any long-term plans, or are you focusing on what is on the table currently?

AK: After we win the war and rebuild our country, we would like to help other countries that have also suffered similar destruction – not only caused by wars, but also by natural disasters. Like Turkey, for instance. We already understand how to clean debris from the streets, how to co-ordinate people, and how to work with local government. We are not big, but in the future our experience may be useful for others.

AP: And what about the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine? What form will it take, in your opinion? How should it be organised? Should private bodies or NGOs take the lead, or should local government do it?

AK: I only believe in NGOs, as our government has done nothing for 30 years. Post-war reconstruction will be a chance to make Ukraine better. We need people from Europe and the United States to understand that they can do business in Ukraine and not worry about corruption.

We can rebuild Ukraine fast – in five, 10 or 15 years – but we must not attempt to do it according to old, Soviet-style visions. There are many young professionals who know how to make master plans, connect villages and cities, integrate transport and other infrastructure, and improve the quality of urban life. It is not difficult. We just need to do it.

PROBLEM

Window too big, opening too small SOLUTION BY PROLOG

Window installation on a frame inside a room

LIST OF MATERIALS VERSION A

LIST OF MATERIALS VERSION B

2 × 45mm × 120mm timber sections, approx. length = height of room in which the window will be installed 2 × c45mm × 120mm timber sections, length equal to the width of the window to be fitted 20 × wood screws 6 × steel angles 2 × timber wedges 6 × universal wall plugs, length approx. 100mm mounting foam for windows 6 × assembly screws

2 × c45mm × 120mm timber sections, length = height of the room in which the window will be installed 2 × timber sections, cross-section approx.

45mm × 120mm, length = width of the window to be fitted 20 × wood screws 6 × steel angles 2 × timber wedges 6 × universal wall plugs, length approx. 100 mm mounting foam for windows 2 × boards of the window height 2 × boards of the window width 8 × wood screws

1.

Prepare the frame.

2.

Position the frame at the opening.

5.

4.

Assemble the angles for the frame.

7a.

Prepare the holes for wall plugs and their installation.

6a.

Window with casing: set the window with the casing into the frame using installation foam.

Install the casing with screws into the timber frame.

8a.

All done.

y x

3.

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Secure the frame with wedges.

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6b.

Embed the window without the casing in the frame using mounting foam.

7b.

Towards new aesthetics

Install the vertical grilles (boards) holding the window in the frame using screws.

Michał Sikorski in conversation with Barbara Buser (baubüro in situ, Switzerland)

8b.

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Install horizontal grilles (boards) holding the window in the frame using screws.

9b.

All done.

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MICHAŁ SIKORSKI: The archetype of Swiss architecture is a perfectly executed box with tailor-made details, flawlessly poured concrete and a limited colour palette.

The K.118 – Kopfbau Halle 118 in Winterthur, designed by baubüro in situ and finished in 2021, is quite the opposite.

BARBARA BUSER: The K.118 is a pilot project for re-use.

The aim was to execute a building with 100% used materials that shouldn’t cost more than one built with new materials.

The building contains studios, workshops and offices. It was a turning point in our practice. We were invited to exhibit this project at the Swiss Architecture Museum long before it was built. It was very different. My impression is that since it was put on display, people have begun to understand that the Swiss aesthetics of Herzog & de Meuron and my other famous colleagues are not the only options. The building industry has really damaged our planet and it is not possible to keep building with new materials only. Most of my famous colleagues don’t want to acknowledge this fact, especially those who make the most noise about aesthetics and architecture with a capital ‘A’.

MS: How did you convince your client to adopt a different approach?

BB: We had been working on the Lagerplatz development project, a former industrial site of 50,000 m2 in Winterthur, for 12 years. It was based on the re-use of all the existing structures. We wanted to transform the last building into a symbol of the development of the whole area. Klara Kläusler, the representative of the owner of K.118, was firmly convinced that we had the right idea. They had proved successful

and financially profitable, so she commissioned us to do the work. The owner made two conditions. First, the construction shouldn’t cost more than one made entirely of new materials. We ended up with 70% re-used material.

Technically, we could have done 100%, but inventing anything takes time and sometimes there is also a learning cost. The other condition was to have a scientific follow-up.

MS: And this is how the publication Re-use in Construction: A Compendium of Circular Architecture (2022) came about.

BB: We teamed up with the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and this book was the result of this team work.

At the conclusion of construction it was calculated that we had saved 60% of CO² in comparison with a typical contemporary construction.

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We wanted to share this accomplishment with the world – we believe this to be the most efficient direction in contemporary architectural practice, and one that needs to be explored further. We wanted to share our know-how as open source, so architects could build upon one another’s experience.

We don’t pretend to be the only ones who know how to do it.

We are still one of the few who try, but it is getting better.

MS: You are one of the pioneers of circular architecture in Western Europe. How did you get involved in this topic?

BB: I began to think about re-use when I was working in Sudan and Tanzania. In Africa there is no waste – if someone stops using something, another person takes it over. It happens with cars, houses, clothes, food; everything eventually finds another user. When I came back to Switzerland after 10 years, I was shocked by the incredible amount of

K.118 building exterior, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2021

↓ Used windows to be incorporated in the new façade of the K.118 building, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2021

waste we produce. At the same time, I appreciated the quality of things made in Switzerland – Africa was flooded with plastic goods coming from China. Swiss products can be used forever if properly maintained. I had built up a maintenance unit at the Dar es Salaam University and directed it for 6 years. There were about 400 employees, from carpenters and painters to gardeners. They had no tools, no materials and no guidance. I introduced new management and job training for craftspeople, I collected Swiss tools of good quality and locally available materials, I introduced an incentive scheme which allowed the workers to feed their families without cheating, etc. And I learned that you can maintain everything.

In Switzerland we destroy thousands of buildings every year. That is mountains of rubble. I felt the need to do what I could within my professional area to change this. In 1995 I founded Bauteilbörse, a second-hand building market. It functioned like eBay: one could post things one didn’t need any more and find others who were looking for them. After a year we realised that a virtual store alone did not work well.

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Entrance, Bauteilbörse, Basel, Switzerland, 2022

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Customers wanted to see, touch and measure the parts themselves, and take them away immediately. So we started a physical store as well. Initially everybody admired the idea, but when I asked someone to use the store, I heard, ‘Ah, you know, the owner of the house doesn’t want a used toilet’.

I said, ‘He could never distinguish a used one from a new one because they have been so perfectly cleaned’ – but ‘No, he can’t’. For about 25 years it went on like that.

Around the year 2000, there were 24 Bauteilbörse all over Switzerland. Each one was an independent organisation: a co-operative, a limited company, or even an initiative of local authorities. As the president of the umbrella organisation Bauteilnetz, I advised people who wanted to create a Bauteilbörse. We offered them an opportunity to become members and participate in an internet platform, Bauteilclick. We managed to match different municipal programmes for unemployed people with the reconditioning of old construction elements. About five years ago there were fewer and fewer jobless people placed by these programmes with the Bauteilbörse, and the places began to close one after another. There was a threat that the one I had started with in Basel might be closed. I had to do something.

Together with my friend Klara Kläusler, with whom I had started Bauteilbörse Basel, we decided to design a building – an entire building made from used construction elements.

We wanted to scale up. And we managed to do the K.118.

And eventually through showing new ways of using existing materials and thus increasing the demand, we managed to save the Bauteilbörse from being closed.

MS: Working with reclaimed materials requires a different approach, ‘collage aesthetics’. How do you understand it?

BB: It is a matter of accepting what is available around; seeing treasures in what already exists, in what had been designed before. We can preserve the most beautiful buildings as heritage, but we won’t keep everything, and it can’t just become rubbish.

I have a lot of respect for old buildings. When I see a piece of wood that has been touched by millions of hands, or steps which have been rounded by people going up and down the stairs, I am incapable of destroying them. Once I took floors from houses that were going to be demolished – if you can’t save the whole building, at least you can give its floor a new life.

Kintsugi, a Japanese art of joining broken elements with gold, is a great inspiration for me. It shows that you cannot control how things break down, but you can decide how you put them together.

This is the philosophy behind re-use – when I saw kintsugi for the first time, I immediately thought: this is what I am doing.

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MS: As architects we are trained to be sensitive to the quality of new materials and details. When you design a building with reclaimed materials, are details equally important?

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BB: They become even more important, because you need to invent new ones or refer to the times when those materials were in use. This can be seen as a limitation, but it is also a great advantage – in this way you can afford materials you would never be able to buy. They are there and free of charge. Sometimes you have to invent something unconventional. For example, we found windows that were not fulfilling contemporary thermal standards; we layered them, and this way got four layers of glass, even more than required. Sometimes you need to decide e.g. that this window is not going to open, but the next one will. You have to be inventive. I think this is fascinating and gives a new dimension to our profession. It requires humility but is also enriching – allowing you to do things you would never otherwise do.

For instance, the external staircase we reclaimed from a demolition site for K.118 initially did not fit. The building had five floors and the staircase was for six floors. We added an additional floor: a platform leading to the roof. We would have never done that upper balcony, which has no use except to provide a view, if it weren’t for the staircase. It is a surprise, it is great! The whole office was excited that year when we were collecting things. Someone would say, ‘Oh, I’ve seen something there, let’s see if it fits.’ And if it was a match, then there would be a great celebration. And then we would find another match.

MS: So losing control over a project can also generate unexpectedly good results?

BB: Yes, exactly, you get more than you expected in the first place.

MS: When you work with parts of a building, re-assemble them into a new structure, you act a bit like a DJ, playing and sampling someone else’s records. Thus, it also has an impact on the authorship: you are no longer a genius architect who creates everything from scratch, but someone who designs with components, elements from other buildings. Does authorship matter to you?

BB: I think it is a man’s thing [laughs]. Women are less into it. For example, we never named our office after us. It is called ‘in situ’, which is also our programme: we are working with the site. We want to have other people participate on equal terms. We don’t claim authorship of the outcome, but of the process. It is the process that is important.

I always recall Hundertwasser, who allowed other people into the process: he gave them the framework and then the

Used building materials on display at the Bauteilbörse, Basel, Switzerland, 2022

craftsmen were allowed to paint their fantasies. I don’t really want to promote Hundertwasser’s style, but rather the way he had got there. His buildings lived. Contemporary constructions don’t – they are a result of rigid laws and finance, set in tablets of stone.

MS: Why do you think the practice of re-using materials is not widely implemented nowadays? Is it a matter of legal restrictions or our prejudices?

BB: It is in our heads, of course. But it is also a problem that we are now constructing buildings that were planned 10 years ago – a change in a running project is almost impossible. You can add a few items, but you won’t change a general concept.

MS: Should the legislation change to allow more frequent re-use of materials?

BB: Firstly, one should forbid the use of new materials, so that people would have to look around for alternatives. If new materials were more expensive, it would also help a lot.

If people had to pay for the tons of CO2 that were emitted during the production of new materials, you would also see an immediate change; in Switzerland at least, people are highly motivated by money. I am currently working on several competitions. I could straight away introduce a programme of re-use there, but it is difficult: the commissioners don’t understand it – they see mostly problems, not advantages.

In order for things to change, everyone has to rethink construction, its legal and financial reality.

RE-WIN window shipment for Ukraine, Basel, Switzerland

A linear industry has to become a circular one.

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MS: When you teach the youngest generation, do you see an openness among the students to this different approach and different sense of aesthetics? When I joined the ETH as a teaching assistant a few years ago, I first imagined that everybody would focus on expensive materials, perfect details, etc., and I was positively surprised by students’ ecological awareness. Would working with reclaimed materials be, in your opinion, more effective in the next generations?

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BB: Absolutely. I think the problem with my generation, and also the slightly younger one, is that we are prisoners of a financial game of construction and demolition.

The youngest generation can free themselves from it.

Students often ask me: ‘I don’t see any sense in the construction industry today. How can we turn it around? What can we do in our profession?’ The only thing they see is coming to work with me, but then I must say: no, you have to create your own projects. I can’t employ everyone [laughs]. I don’t have enough work and I don’t want us to be bigger. We already have four different companies, three different offices and about 100 people to feed every month, so it is enough.

MS: How do you imagine the future of architecture?

What might it look like in Europe in 2050?

BB: I think no building would be destroyed anymore. Or if it has to be, everything would be re-used. We would add only renewable materials to the construction, including straw, wood, clay – everything that is renewable and safe for the environment. We would also reduce our demands, taking into account our shrinking population, and reflect profoundly on what we really need.

Barbara Buser is an architect. Ever since she co-founded the first Swiss building component exchange in the 1980s, she has been committed on many different levels to sustainable, circular construction.

As a co-founder and joint managing director of baubüro in situ and member of the project management team at the Abendrot Foundation, she has played a key role in getting the K.118 project off the ground.

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MS: You also act in the here-and-now, by sending reclaimed building materials to Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

BB: We have sent nine lorries so far. It is voluntary work done with our Ukrainian counterpart, an NGO called Proactive Generation. We collect money for transport, get Ukrainian lorries to come here, collect the materials and transport them to local storage places. Then they distribute those materials and send us photos. In Switzerland there are thousands of unused windows. In the last two lorries we sent to Ukraine there were brand new, triple-glazed windows with wooden and metal frames – the Rolls-Royce of Swiss window construction. If we had not sent them, they would have been destroyed. They are all now in Ukraine, in Kyiv.

When we saw photos of houses which were left more or less intact after the bombing, but with all the windows gone, we decided to act. However, we didn’t expect it to take on such a dimension. Now there are at least 15 people working on this project, one person is paid for some of the work, but all the others are volunteers. It is not easy to find money to finance this activity and convince house owners not to throw windows away and dismantle them carefully. We also started to collaborate with companies that install windows, so they can bring old windows directly to our warehouse rather than to a recycling place. We called this action RE-WIN and we don’t want to focus only on Ukraine. There is also Turkey and Syria, there is so much demand in the world and not only for windows. There are 17 million tons of construction waste in Switzerland every year. We can bring anything.

The Adam Mickiewicz Institute The Adam Mickiewicz Institute is a national cultural institution whose mission is to promote and communicate Poland’s cultural dimension through international co-operation and cultural exchange. Over the past 23 years, the Institute has carried out projects all over the world, thus gaining unique experience from working in a mix of cultures, worldviews and traditions. The relations developed and maintained over the years with major institutions and festivals from around the globe have allowed Polish artists to take part in projects spanning 70 countries across five continents.

The Adam Mickiewicz Institute has been the host of the Polish Pavilion since the very inception of London Design Biennale in 2016.

The Clothed Home, the project presented at the Polish Pavilion in the preceding edition of the LDB, was subsequently exhibited in Krakow, Lisbon and Ljubljana.

The Institute also publishes the Culture.pl web portal, with daily updates on the most interesting events related to Polish culture across the world. Culture.pl is available in three languages: Polish, English and Ukrainian, with selected content also in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. In addition to news about numerous events organised by the Institute, Culture.pl carries biographical profiles of artists, reviews and essays. www.culture.pl

Curators Zofia Jaworowska (b. 1991) is an activist and founder of the BRDA Foundation. When the war in Ukraine began, she launched Grupa Zasoby, a grassroots initiative dedicated to finding shelter for thousands of refugees arriving in Poland. For many years, she worked in the film industry and non-profit sector. She currently combines that creative experience and social engagement in projects dedicated to housing and material reuse.

Petro Vladimirov (b. 1993) is an architect and curator with a background in the arts.

He gained professional experience in the Henning Larsen architecture office in Denmark before working as a product designer for real estate development. Together with the BRDA Foundation, he co-created the WINDOW project.

He initiated and participated in numerous multidisciplinary projects throughout Europe – the most recent one, Ukraine Reconstruction Office, at the Museum of Warsaw.

Michał Sikorski (b. 1983) is an architect and urban planner with a background in campus planning and research. Before founding TŁO, his own practice in Warsaw, for a decade he collaborated with the Belgian architect Xaveer de Geyter on the Paris-Saclay science cluster master plan. Later, he was the architect in charge of the University of Warsaw planning and coauthored a monograph on the topic. He taught architectural and urban design at ETH Zürich and the Warsaw Technical University.

List of illustrations p. 10 Window transport rack, storing collected re-used windows to be sent to Ukraine, 2023, photo: Jędrzej Sokołowski © Adam Mickiewicz Institute p. 14–15 Mock-up, an example of how to mount a window that does not fit into an opening, 2023, photo: Jędrzej Sokołowski © Adam Mickiewicz Institute p. 16 Mock-up of a sofa made of XPS reusable boards, an application of standardized building components in design, TŁO, 2023, photo: Jędrzej Sokołowski © Adam Mickiewicz Institute p. 19–22 Slanted window by TŁO Architects, 2022, © Michał Sikorski p. 24 Port grain silos damaged by the explosion, Beirut, Lebanon, 2020, photo: Ammar Abd Rabbo © Ammar Abd Rabbo p. 26 Traditional Lebanese house in the Gemmayzeh neighbourhood left with no windows, Beirut, Lebanon, 2020, photo: Ammar Abd Rabbo, © Ammar Abd Rabbo p. 28 Skyline Tower, Beirut harbour area, Lebanon, 2020, photo: Ammar Abd Rabbo, © Ammar Abd Rabbo

p. 28 Laminated window panels on the street as a result of the blast, Beirut, Lebanon, 2020, photo: Ammar Abd Rabbo, © Ammar Abd Rabbo p. 33 Lara Moutin (centre) and Patrick Coulombel (right) distributing construction materials to local residents, Beirut, Lebanon, 2020, photo: Ammar Abd Rabbo, © Ammar Abd Rabbo p. 35–38 Box window by Studio Widoki, 2022, © Łukasz Stępnik p. 40 Abandoned hotel building to serve as housing for internally displaced people, by Co-Haty, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, 2022, photo: Anastasiia Kubert © Metalab p. 41 Future residents, with the help of the Co-Haty team, refurbishing their own homes, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, 2022, photo: Anastasiia Kubert © Metalab p. 42 Bedroom in the former hotel building refurbished by the Co-Haty project, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, 2022, photo: Oleksandr Demianiv © Metalab p. 44 Preparing for Triennale Milano International Exhibition – Sugarhouse Studios, London, United Kingdom, 2023, photo: Assemble © Assemble Design Ltd

POETICS OF NECESSITY p. 45 Granby Clay at Sugarhouse Studios, London, United Kingdom, 2023, photo: Assemble © Assemble Design Ltd

p. 62 WINDOW project team in action, Warsaw, Poland, 2022, photo: Ievgen Stepanets © BRDA Foundation

p. 46 Exterior of Yardhouse at Stratford, London, United Kingdom 2014, photo: Assemble © Assemble Design Ltd

p. 67–70 Installation of a window on a frame seen from the interior by PROLOG, 2022, © PROLOG

p. 48 Cineroleum curtain, created by hand-sewing of approx. three kilometres of roofing membrane seam, London, United Kingdom, 2010, photo: Assemble © Assemble Design Ltd p. 51-54 Installation of windows on a timber frame by JKL, 2022, © Konrad Zaborski p. 57 Collected bricks stored for later reuse, Irpin, Ukraine, 2022, photo: Viktoriia Mokhova © District #1 Foundation

p. 76 Entrance, Bauteilbörse, Basel, Switzerland, 2022, photo: RE-WIN Association, © Fabio Soldati

p. 58 Arrival of reclaimed windows from Poland received by District #1 team, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2022, photo: Viktoriia Mokhova © District #1 Foundation

p. 79 Used building materials on display at the Bauteilbörse, Basel, Switzerland, 2022, RE-WIN Association, © Fabio Soldati

p. 61 Clearing the rubble in Warsaw, Poland, 1947-1950, Public Domain Archive, Source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe

Organised by: Adam Mickiewicz Institute Curators: Zofia Jaworowska, Michał Sikorski, Petro Vladimirov

p. 73 K.118 building exterior, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2021, photo: Martin Zeller, © baubüro in situ ag p. 74 Used windows to be incorporated in the new façade of the K.118 building, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2021, photo: Martin Zeller, © baubüro in situ ag

p. 60 Debris removal from a building, Myla, Ukraine, 2022, photo: Viktoriia Mokhova © District #1 Foundation

Polish Pavilion at London Design Biennale 2023 1–25 June 2023

Exhibition design: TŁO Architects (Michał Sikorski, Nicolò Signori) Visual identity & graphic design: Nicola Cholewa Video: Aga Beaupré Production: Marcin Baranowski London window collection: BRDA Foundation, Jess Gillchrist

The Adam Mickiewicz Institute would especially like to thank the jurors in the open-call for the best curatorial concept: Ivan Blasi, Victoria Broackes, Anja Radovic and Tomasz Sławiński.

The curatorial team wishes to thank all those who helped to research and produce this project: Kateryna Shylo, CENTRALA, Martina Bischof, Dorota Leśniak, Helena Czernecka, Michał Murawski; architecture offices PROLOG, Widoki, JKL, naive, TAK., Zygmunt Borawski, Ziemia Studio, Rewizja, Miastopracownia; DoFA workshop participants Joanna Szczepańska, Matylda Wolff, Marina Alimpieva, Daniil Davidyuk, Maciej Smoląg.

Publisher: Adam Mickiewicz Institute

Interviews editor: Aleksandra Kędziorek

Printing and binding: Drukarnia Klimiuk

Translation, copyediting: Anda MacBride

ISBN: 978-83-60263-69-3

© Copyright of the texts First things first (Autoportret), Field operations (Lara Moutin, Zofia Jaworowska),

p. 84 Curators, photo: Jędrzej Sokołowski © Adam Mickiewicz Institute

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The Adam Mickiewicz Institute would like to thank all copyright owners for their kind permission to reproduce their material.

Should, despite our intensive research, any person holding copyright have been overlooked, legitimate claims shall be compensated within the usual provisions.

Warsaw 2023

Organised by:

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© Adam Mickiewicz Institute, 2023

Catalogue editorial co-ordinator: Petro Vladimirov

Graphic design and layout: Nicola Cholewa

p. 81 RE-WIN window shipment for Ukraine, Basel, Switzerland, RE-WIN Association, © Fabio Soldati

We don’t make things – we assemble them (Asia Zwierzchowska, Louis Schulz, Anastasiya Ponomaryova), Taking rubble into our own hands (Andrii Kopylenko, Adam Przywara), Towards new aesthetics (Barbara Buser, Michał Sikorski), 2023

Printed in Poland

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, information storage or retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

POETICS OF NECESSITY How crisis collaboration results in unexpected solutions