Slava Balbek is one of the most famous architects in Ukraine. His professional interests are quite wide – apartment design, design of houses, art objects and public places and even the restaurant business.

Kievans can see in the center of the day a bench with solar panels from Balbek. And one of the last international architectural awards he received for how he transformed the old shops of the defense plant in Pechersk into a modern food hall.

The war forced the 38-year-old architect to radically change the vector of activity. Balbeck volunteered and helped war victims.

His emotional post on social media about the complete abandonment of the Russian language and the transition to Ukrainian went viral and received support from other famous Ukrainians.

Balbek saw a chance to return to architecture during the war in the creation of housing for immigrants.

According to his plan, these should be comfortable and modern multifunctional houses, where people will be pleasant and comfortable to stay.

Another idea from the architect is the Open Fracture project, which aims to preserve the bombed bridge in Irpen as a historical object. These ideas of the Kyiv designer received support in the office of the President of Ukraine.

BBC News Ukraine spoke with Slava Balbek about his architectural plans and how they were affected by the war.

BBC: Thank you, I want to start not with architecture, but with how you found the war. Do you remember that day on February 24? What were your thoughts then? Have you already packed your anxious suitcase and figured out how to escape to the nearest shelter?

Slava Balbek: I had a “half-assembled” suitcase. He was more likely than he was. When it all happened, we never used it.

Everyone was in a slight panic then, but we knew for sure that we would stay in Kyiv until we found out what was going on. Sudden panic does not lead to anything specific, except traffic jams and up to 12-13 hours of standing in cars. We decided to understand the situation in terms of how and where we, our family and our friends, and then act.

Every time I try to remember that day, I remember that it was a moment of shock. But we tried to act prudently.

BBC: Did you expect such a full-scale invasion with missiles and air strikes?

Slava Balbek: No, of course. It was a kind of sur and like a heavy dream. It came to my understanding that this was a fact when (Russian) troops were already in the Kyiv region. When the Russian Federation was approaching Kyiv, it was getting closer and closer.

In 2-3 days I saw this progress and understood. that this is a full-scale invasion. Why these bombings? At first you think it’s a provocation or some kind of sabotage. And now for 60 days (war) you are already a little in context.

BBC: Did you immediately realize that you would be volunteering and helping in some way, or did this understanding come gradually?

Slava Balbek: Yes, it was gradual. You cannot (in advance) put yourself in such a situation and predict your actions if this has never happened to you.

When we win this war and restore our normal lives, and if, God forbid, such a situation ever happens, we will be better prepared morally, physically, strategically and structurally.

Then it was a daily impromptu. We watched the news every day, followed the information (telegram) channels of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and President Zelensky. You sat stupidly every day and watched what was happening and adjusted things to it. That was the plan.

BBC: Your post about the Ukrainian language at the time also raised a good hype. I understand that you are diligently trying to keep your promise (switch from Russian to Ukrainian)?

Slava Balbek: That was a couple of days before the war. Then there was just escalating the situation, the troops stood (near the Ukrainian borders) and said that now there will be an attack. My foreign friends started leaving. And I decided to take such a step for myself – switch to ukrainian (“switch to Ukrainian”) and start speaking Ukrainian.

But it was not a call to everyone, it was a call to me. It was a call: “Hey, support me not to switch to Russian!”

But somehow it happened that everyone heard “support me in the same way”, and the hype was quite serious. None of my posts had such feedback. He received 6 times more (likes) than my top-rated Instagram post.

When I won the international award in New York on the red carpet – there were 10,000 likes, and here 60,000. I’m so “oh!”.

BBC: Didn’t expect such an effect?

Slava Balbek: Yes. I am now trying to communicate in Ukrainian in everything related to social networks, as I planned. Everything follows the script. In all social networks, I switched to 100% writing posts in Ukrainian, somewhere I answer or in the circle of my friends I also communicate in Russian, because I can’t switch so quickly.

As I said, first it will be social networks, then all the writing so that you can safely check the grammar, in communication during the interview I also try to communicate exclusively in Ukrainian.

In conversations I switch from Ukrainian to Russian somewhere else, but less and less. I can’t “hop and switch” like that, because for me it will be a rejection, I have to come to this organically.

BBC: By the way, about acquaintances. Did you have many fellow architects from Russia who are now in contact with them after the invasion?

Slava Balbek: Almost all contacts have been exhausted. It was more, and then less and less. I have a very clear position on the war – “n … and the Russian Federation!” – and not all Russians can stand it. They come in contact with me less and less. At first I apologized, supported, wrote that “we are with you, hold on”, and I appreciate it, but less and less.

BBC: Who do you feel more like now: an architect, a volunteer or a restaurateur?

Slava Balbek: A conscious person. You know, now I’m on a balance sheet. If at first it was volunteering and purely men’s affairs of a conscious Ukrainian, now I am gradually connecting architectural skills, teamwork, I began to add sports to my life. And I came up with a wartime balance that allows me to switch between responsibilities.

Almost everything is aimed at one main goal – helping Ukraine, fighting evil and preparing yourself for different scenarios. That is, I know I need to keep fit.

I will understand a little about architectural and volunteer affairs and find time to study a small part of military affairs. This is also very important to me, namely military affairs, possession of weapons and teamwork.

BBC: Do you personally want to study for yourself, or do you plan to enlist in the Armed Forces or Terrorism?

Slava Balbek: I do not want to enlist in the defense, I think I can be useful somewhere in the Armed Forces, but not as an “attacker”, but more as a staff coordinator in certain areas.

I do not want, being a great strong dude, not to have such a skill as to hold a weapon and, if necessary, join paramilitary groups.

I 100% know this business and own this skill. Moreover, I already have little experience, as I have been practicing tactical shooting for about a year, and for me it is a close science.

I own a car, I keep myself in shape, and I can’t just be a designer-architect and sit at a laptop. I understand this for myself.

BBC: Let’s move on to architecture. I want to ask what are your feelings when you see how the historic quarters of Kharkiv and Chernihiv are being destroyed? How do you feel as an architect? Is it a pity or is it cool, because you understand that you can rebuild better than before?

Slava Balbek: You know, I don’t have a feeling of architectural pity right now. Because my pity for the human is dominated by some of my architectural observations or sympathies.

I’m just starting to plan, to think in this direction, but now I understand the priority is the safety and comfort of people.

And I don’t even spend my energy and resources watching houses being destroyed. Because there is a priority for me personally – I do temporary housing. Because this is housing that is needed not just anymore, but it was needed a month ago.

When we solve this issue and close this project process and this information niche, I will be involved in urban renewal, urban planning and everything else. But I have a clear priority – it’s the people.

BBC: So you do not rule out that you will somehow join the restoration of destroyed cities just as an architect? Are you interested?

Slava Balbek: Of course it’s interesting, I’m already working on it, I’m making an action plan, my vision. My entire professional career is just an announcement of my vision and my team.

We don’t teach anyone how to do it, we just let them know how we do it. That is, I myself realized that there is a need for temporary housing, no one invited us to do so when we started working on March 10, and on March 20 we released our vision.

I will do the same with regard to the reconstruction of cities in the category and to the extent necessary.

I don’t see any sense in working on the revision of urban planning directions now, because there is no such destruction that the streets had to be moved.

You can rethink, make a refunction of the house, but you need a lot of information. Now there are clear steps: we need to restore what was destroyed.

Not such a high percentage of destruction, except for some cities, to rethink globally. Norman Foster (the most titled British architect – Ed.) Said that he would rebuild Kharkiv, but no one understands why. Why spend such a resource, when it is available, where to spend it. Everything must be balanced.

BBC: But this is a cool image move that will be Kharkiv from Norman Foster? Don’t you think so?

Slava Balbek: Not a very cool image move. Because we have a cool or not cool image move is decided by the masses. And when this mass of people understands that a billion billion dollars have been spent on Kharkiv, and not spent on all other cities, the question will arise “is it wrong?”

That image is not worth the effort. This must be weighed, you can’t love one child more than others.

BBC: Let’s move on to your project of housing for migrants. It looks very cool visually, but there are allegations that it is “too cool” as for temporary housing.

Everyone is accustomed to the fact that temporary housing for migrants is a container where a person will live for some time and then move to normal housing. In your project, it looks like a cottage town. Don’t you think so?

Slava Balbek: No. For me, the measuring level is me. In which town (for migrants) I would like to spend a year or half a year, for example.

I would not want to live in containers. I understand that I, my family and my friends are average Ukrainians. If a bomb hits my house in Kyiv or Kharkiv or Sumy region, and I lose my home, I want to have a certain level of comfort, even in temporary housing.

If I have to choose whether to live in a sports hall or in a “change house”, then for me this is not the level (life), I will degrade. I will not be able to remain a mentally calm and balanced person if I spend even a week in such conditions.

Of course, I can withstand any conditions – I can live in a tent on the street – but this is not the level of comfort of my family that I would like to have.

That’s why I emphasize the level of comfort, even for temporary residence. In addition, I emphasize that this is not “temporary” housing, it is “transit” housing.

These towns should have such a plan that people live there while waiting for the restoration of their home, street, house. Even if you have to live there for several years, you must have a comfortable level. There is a situation with Donbass, where people have left and all, most can not return to their homes.

This town should be near the ruined city, and people live there while it is rebuilt and partially return to their homes.

And in their place can settle others who are waiting, or those who are rebuilding the city.

Or a military unit may be formed there, because now it makes sense to be located near large cities. That is, this housing will have several re-functions, you will be able to update and update it.

BBC: So the basic idea is that these modular buildings will be near ruined cities and people will actually stay in their environment, right?

Slava Balbek: Today there are several scenarios for using this type of town.

The first is to build them near ruined cities so that people can expect to move quickly to their restored homes.

We talk a lot with people who can be called the main audience that has lost their home, and almost everyone says they do not want to go to Western Ukraine. If they don’t bomb tomorrow, they already want to live in their home.

They want to be near their garden, their 9-story building, their friends. There should be no such gap, a person should not be removed from his society and transported to another society with a completely different mentality.

Even if everyone there is friendly, hospitable and everything is fine there. That is, you want to be involved in the restoration of your city, you will come as a volunteer to your Bucha and fix the fences, and then go in the evening and spend the night in your temporary transit housing. Here is the idea of these houses.

BBC: Such houses at the presentation were two-story, which is not typical for such housing. In addition, it was seen that playgrounds and paths will be arranged around the houses. Is it all in the plans or is it just for good visualization?

Slava Balbek: It should be, yes, of course. I tell everyone involved in this project – designers, developers, investors – that this is how it should be. There is no option to remove something, such as reducing the distance between houses, remove greenery.

But no one has built it yet, we are only very close to the start of projects in several locations. I will keep this concept to the last. Because it loses its meaning if you break it, so to speak.

BBC: I’m suggesting that this will increase the cost.

Slava Balbek: It will not increase the cost. And the cost there is very low – about $ 500 per square meter of general construction work with the implementation of exterior and interior decoration and furniture. This is a super low price.

We set ourselves the goal of making construction costs very low. So that it does not cost as a dacha, as a new house, it should cost as a temporary solution.

This is almost the same price as importing these houses from Poland or Turkey. But there they earn on it, and we build here with the minimum financial appendix for builders. Because they are building it for themselves, not for sale. The same price is obtained.

BBC: But they look, at least in the picture, much better than Polish containers.

Slava Balbek: Of course, that was the idea.

BBC: There is already a specific agreement on where to start building them, who will do it and at what cost?

Slava Balbek: We have several lines, we work with private local areas in several cities – Ternopil, Lviv, Zbarazh, Uzhgorod and others. There is also communication at the state level about their chosen locations. This is just an experience, I still can not say exactly where, what and how.

There are two concepts. The first is investments from private investors, which are partially involved. The second is the state level.

BBC: Previously, how many people could be the first to settle there?

Slava Balbek: The smallest area is 1,200 people, the largest is 8,000.

BBC: If you take only official statistics, we have about 12 million migrants, it’s not even 1% of them.

Slava Balbek: Yes, it is very, very little. Need more. I constantly emphasize that this should not be a single project, there should be other options, other projects, other solutions.

If anyone ever builds this typology – and I hope it will be built sooner or later – I don’t want them to come to this concept after living in these caravans.

They will say: okay, it is very expensive or looks very expensive now, but after living 3 months in these cars, they will understand that it was necessary to return to the concept of balbek bureau.

I don’t want this to be the way. That is why we are now spending a lot of effort to prove that this is a rather low-cost and quite efficient housing.

BBC: You spoke to the president’s office on this issue. Was there support from them or did they just listen and look for other options?

Slava Balbek: Yes, we received the green light and now we are working with specific developers in their areas, which they indicated to us.

I can’t say that it is accepted at all stages, but yes, they liked this project. But this is not the only task now, the goal is to cover the tasks much more and more widely than just helping migrants.

This is just a decision in the general system of reconstruction (Ukraine), and not just to give temporary housing to a group of people from a particular city or village. The task itself is broader, but this does not mean that we need to pause everything and wait for some global solution. We need to start building this housing, because it is multifunctional.

BBC: How much does the process of building and assembling this housing module take?

Slava Balbek: About 4 months. That is, for 1,200 people you can build housing in 4-5 months, depending on the number of contractors involved.

BBC: Is this more of a business project or a volunteer one for you?

Slava Balbek: We do it for free. I don’t take money for design, we share it with everyone. Investing our resources is joining us in the global idea of rebuilding Ukraine. Of course, this is not a business, because I do not earn on this project, no one earns.

We have a donate link (“donation account”) and we get some money from people there to support the team. But our team is 10 times bigger than we get now donation.

BBC: Is your architectural office working now? Are employees scattered in different cities?

Slava Balbek: The bureau is working. 25 out of 50 people are working on this project (housing for displaced persons). That is, half of the bureaus are working on this project, the other half – on current international projects.

BBC: The Open Fracture Project of the memorial on the site of the destroyed bridge in Irpen. Is it just a concept or is it already formed?

Slava Balbek: It’s really a bit premature. There was a request for our vision of this project. We made our concept.

But this (bridge in Irpen) is not the only place that will be worked out. Most likely, there will be an open competition for several places and several concepts.

A large team is now working on this global vision of how to honor the memory (of the war), how to make this archive of the memory of all cities and all elements, how to classify them. That is, we were asked to make our decision, our vision of what a place to honor this bombed-out bridge might look like.

This made us understand that we need to involve much more elements, to make an examination of what is left of all the temporarily occupied territories or those territories where there was a war.

BBC: Did I understand correctly that you are in favor of museification of certain key objects of this war?

Slava Balbek: Currently, several institutions are working on this – the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Ministry of Culture. It is not my idea, it is a global task for different structures to come to a common vision.

We are now trying to combine this to develop a unified strategy and approach to museification, to create a virtual and physical archive of what is happening in Ukraine.

It is very important to remember this and it is very important to do it in time, not to lose pace and then try to analyze it. Therefore, this is a very important issue, which we are also working on now.

BBC: Do you think that after the war there will be a certain leap in Ukrainian architecture, perhaps Ukrainian architects and designers will become more famous in the world?

Slava Balbek: It depends on them. This is a chance for them to prove themselves. In the sense that now the attention to Ukraine is too great.

If most engineers. architects, artists, artists can work on the restoration of Ukraine, then they 100% need to join. Spend a little time and share good ideas, bad ideas, any ideas.

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