Slava Balbek on designing for Ukraine

What are design’s role and responsibilities in horrific wars like Vladimir Putin’s illegal. conflict in Ukraine? How can designers help their countries during – and after – such terrible tragedies? In this episode, Alice Rawsthorn talks with a designer who is confronting all those challenges – and more – the Ukrainian architect and interior designer, Slava Balbek.

As founder of Balbek Bureau in Kyiv, Slava runs one of Ukraine’s leading architecture and design groups. When Alice first interviewed him for Design Emergency in March 2022, a few weeks after Putin’s invasion, Slava and his colleagues were already running a community kitchen and delivery hub to support the local community in Kyiv and had launched a design proposal to build temporary housing for refugees returning to Ukraine after the war ends.

Those projects have since accelerated, and construction has begun on a refugee settlement in Buca, near Kyiv. Slava describes how a 3D-printed school, designed by Balbek Bureau in Lviv, is also under construction, and the plans for a project designed to protect Ukraine’s beloved historic monuments during the conflict. He also discusses the challenges of running an architecture and design agency during such a brutal war, and how he juggles those demands with his personal responsibilities as a military volunteer in the Ukrainian army. A few days after this Design Emergency interview, Slava returned to duty on the frontline.

Thank you for listening to Slava’s account of designing in a war zone. You’ll find images of the projects he describes on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. And you can tune into this episode of Design Emergency and the others on Apple, Spotify, Amazon and other podcast platforms. Please join us for future episodes when we’ll interview other design leaders who, like Slava, are helping to forge positive change. Slava Ukraini.

Design Emergency is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

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