The Ukrainian pavilion at the 20th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia is being designed by the team from CO-HATY, a local volunteer initiative restoring abandoned buildings in the country to transform them into stable homes for internally displaced people. The team is formed by METALAB and relocated members of the Ukrainian Urban Curators agency, who have been developing CO-HATY since 2022. Titled "Pool of Questions," the project poses a question the organization argues is rarely voiced in the context of survival: not simply where displaced people should live, but when they can begin to live. For Venice, the imagined installation extends the restoration and adaptive reuse work into a discourse on affordable housing, dignity and rest during an ongoing war.
The exhibition takes on CO-HATY's tenth housing initiative, located in a former Soviet-era kindergarten in Kalush that the organization has transformed into affordable housing, now home to more than 100 displaced people. The process was carried out along with residents of different ages, backgrounds and experiences of displacement, and is used as a starting point to approach "architecture as action in a situation where every decision costs something, and none is without fault." The team moves the concept of architecture beyond form, object and square meters to give visibility to the relationships with residents and neighbors, contracts with municipalities, budgets, mistakes, partnerships, material sourcing, rules of use, trust, everyday life and a long-term operational model. They refer to these aspects of the process as "not architecture" and make it the primary material for creating and sustaining life.
"Pool of Questions" approaches the daily consequences of work through a direct inquiry: when can one start thinking not only about where to live, but begin to actually live? The curators present the problem of a long war beyond destruction and reconstruction, presenting it as "a daily practice of decisions between things that should not have to coexist: security and development, humanitarian aid and long-term policy, affordability and sustainability, one's own life and responsibility to others, necessity and desire, survival and the future." They ask the community of architects and visitors: when is it possible to think not just about a roof, but about a courtyard, shade, beauty, rest, shared space — in short, quiet and pleasure? When can one allow oneself joy? When can one build for life and enjoyment, if the war has no visible end?
The idea of the "pool" stems from the distillation of this idea of living within a specific architectural element: whether a public swimming pool, not normally justified by a "necessity," could have a place in a context defined by displacement. The installation proposal takes the form of a dark, shallow basin of water that visitors can touch and step into. Around the basin, video installations are reflected in the water's surface, depicting CO-HATY's work in Kalush through the perspectives of the people involved: a child who sees a yard for play, a grandmother who sees a bench, shade, and her tomatoes, a gardener who sees soil and season, a cleaner who sees use and wear, an administrator who sees rules and conflict, and an architect who sees a spatial system and a design table.
In the meantime, the process in Kalush is being documented by filmmaker Nadia Parfan, including community workshops, a toloka to prepare the site, and the first use of the completed space. The videos are intended to accumulate throughout the Biennale, so the pavilion develops in parallel with the ongoing work in Kalush. According to the curators, the pavilion is designed to place visitors in a state of rest before the central question, reflected in the water's surface, reaches them, disturbed each time a visitor approaches. The curators frame this moment as the pavilion's central provocation, an asymmetry between the visitor's ability to pause and the absence of any comparable pause within Ukraine's ongoing war. At the heart of the curatorial proposal is the exploration of the concept of shared space: what is a need, what is a desire, and what over time becomes a basic right.
The Ukrainian pavilion for the Venice Biennale includes the installation, a book about CO-HATY titled Beyond Shelter, and a public program to place the topic in global dialogue. Other countries have announced the topics for their pavilions. Under the theme "Do Architecture" by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, the Türkiye pavilion is exploring the reuse of architectural elements and its link with memory in "Spolia Futures"; the Australian pavilion is exploring multi-dwelling housing in "Lived In"; Austria is examining questions of national representation, diplomacy and architectural exchange by responding to the absence of a Bosnian national pavilion; and Switzerland is exploring water as a territorial, ecological and political condition, taking Switzerland's role as "Europe's water tower" as its conceptual point of departure.
Facts Only
* The Ukrainian pavilion is designed by CO-HATY.
* CO-HATY is a local volunteer initiative restoring abandoned buildings into stable homes for internally displaced people.
* The team comprises METALAB and relocated members of the Ukrainian Urban Curators agency.
* The project's theme is "Pool of Questions," focusing on when displaced people can begin to live, rather than just where they should live.
* The exhibition references CO-HATY's tenth housing initiative in a former Soviet-era kindergarten in Kalush, which houses over 100 displaced people.
* The team frames architecture as action within situations where decisions involve multiple factors like security, affordability, and responsibility.
* The concept moves beyond form to include relationships with residents, contracts, budgets, and operational models.
* The installation proposes a dark, shallow basin of water for visitors to touch and step into.
* Video installations reflecting the work in Kalush are reflected on the water's surface from perspectives of residents (child, grandmother, gardener, cleaner, administrator, architect).
* Filmmaker Nadia Parfan is documenting the process in Kalush through videos.
Executive Summary
Full Take
The narrative operates by shifting the focus from the tangible outcomes of wartime architecture—destruction and reconstruction—to the experiential and relational dimensions of existence within displacement. The core pattern involves transforming abstract political and humanitarian crises into a material inquiry about daily life, which is a form of resistance against monolithic state narratives focused solely on physical rebuilding. The idea of the "pool" functions as a deliberate disruption: it mandates a pause, forcing visitors to confront the asymmetry between a visitor's ability to rest and the lack of comparable pause within the context of ongoing war. This technique moves beyond presenting solutions (housing) to foregrounding neglected components of life—joy, beauty, shared space, and personal autonomy—as necessary prerequisites for architectural meaning. The contrast drawn between the physical act of building/reconstruction and the relational work of establishing trust, managing budgets, and acknowledging daily mistakes reveals a pattern where lived experience becomes the primary material, thereby challenging the assumed hierarchy where form supersedes social reality. What is implicitly being questioned is the systemic denial of non-essential human experiences under duress, suggesting that survival architecture must inherently incorporate the capacity for subjective well-being as a fundamental design parameter rather than an afterthought.
Bridge Questions: If the focus shifts entirely to relational practices and everyday life as primary architectural material, how might this framework challenge existing international legal or policy frameworks regarding refugee status and housing allocation? What are the long-term implications of framing "rest" and "joy" as necessary components of post-conflict architecture for displaced populations globally? What systemic assumptions about necessity versus desire must be dismantled to achieve true livable futures in unstable environments?
Sentinel — Human
The text reads as a sophisticated, well-structured journalistic piece that successfully bridges practical architectural initiatives with profound philosophical inquiry regarding survival and dignity.