In 2023, the Ukrainian architectural studio Balbek Bureau launched the RE:Ukraine Villages project, an online construction planning and design editor that allows users to "assemble" a typical Ukrainian village house in just a few minutes. The resulting blueprints are sufficient for construction. The project aims to facilitate the reconstruction of rural homes destroyed by Russian shelling and to preserve the organic image of Ukrainian villages from typical and "fast" projects.

The project now covers six regions, including Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. It began in 2022 and has since evolved from a simple construction editor into a comprehensive research platform that studies the authenticity of Ukrainian rural houses built over the past 100 years.

"It turns out that our architectural authenticity has always been right under our noses; we just didn't notice it," says Vitalina Hoshovska, lead architect of the RE:Ukraine Villages project at Balbek Bureau. In an interview with LIGA.Life, Vitalina shares the subtleties of studying the Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, explains how the construction editor works and who can use it, and discusses why the project team decided to shift their focus from reconstruction to preserving national heritage (and what opportunities this opens up).

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architectureBalbek BureauUkrainian traditionsnew architectureUkrainian village