Dear friends, colleagues, international community of architects.
It has been 1297 days since russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine.
In times when our government, army, territory defense forces and citizens are doing everything they can to foster peace in Ukraine, we call for your proactive political position.
We ask you to stop any cooperation with russian developers, seize completing public and private commissions from russia.
Working for russian clients you support putin’s criminal regime that is currently destroying our country. Given the latest threats from the russian government, we might face an entirely new world order — the world after nuclear war — when architectural design is no longer in need.
Prove your dissent of russian aggression through action.
Go out for a public protest, spread information among colleagues and friends and keep supporting Ukraine.✕
✕
ФОРМА is independent office driven by research and experiments in architecture. Our approach is to work at the intersection of the disciplines. In a constant dialogue with specialists in theoretical and practical fields, we use different representation forms for the projects. From spatial development strategies, master plans, renovation programs and buildings to books, interfaces, installations and exhibitions. Dealing with constant changes in ecology, economy, political and social systems allows us to think broadly and initiate cooperation for interdisciplinary growth.
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Location: Malopidvalna st. 12/10, office 10b
01034 Kyiv, Ukraine
Tel/Fax.: +38 (044) 279-04-39
For your suggestions or contact,
drop us a line: info@formaarchitects.com
Program: Scenography
Written and Directed: Richard Maxwell
Curator: Marta Kuzma
Organiser: Faktura 10 is a core initiative of RIBBON International
Partners: Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theatre
Status: Completed
Year: 2025
Galicia, a play written and directed by Richard Maxwell, will be staged for the first time at the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater in Kyiv, Ukraine, from Friday, August 22 through Monday, August 25. Commissioned by Faktura 10, as curated by Marta Kuzma, Artistic Director and Chief Curator of Faktura 10, Galicia is a continuation of Federico García Lorca’s seminal play La Casa de Bernarda Alba (1936), a tragedy that takes place in a small village in Spain.
Program: Cultural, Renovation
Partner: RIBBON International
Status: Ongoing
Year: 2025
Originally opened in 1967 to showcase Ukraine’s coal industry, the building is one of several pavilions on the National Complex Expocenter of Ukraine (VDNG) campus. Commissioned by RIBBON International, the project marks a turning point in Ukraine’s approach to Soviet architectural heritage, reframing Pavilion 13 as a dynamic platform for contemporary culture.
Reconstructing Kounellis’s work from 1997 in Ukraine today is to recognize that Kounellis was an artist informed by war, having lived through World War II and the Greek Civil War. His integration of industrialized materials common to wartime production as remnants of destruction, spoke as much to the postwar human condition as it did to fracture and disruption. As the artist noted, “since the war, we have only contradictions.”
Program: Exhibition
Status: Completed
Curators: Isabella van Marle and Sonya Kvasha
Partners: pavilion of culture, BlckBox, Patriot
Graphic design: Faye and Gina
Digital design & consulting: Bureau Antoine Roux & David Broner
Web development: Tristan Bagot
Supported by un/fund, hup.foundation and Sarah van Rij
Year: 2024
Reflecting the landscape of Ukrainian photography today, Essential Goods is a group
exhibition featuring works by more than 20 young artists. Produced from 2014 to 2024,
their varied projects are held together by a common thread: of what it means to make
art in and of a time of war. When the future is uncertain, they ask: ‘what constitutes an
essential good?’
Opening in Kyiv on the 23rd May, Essential Goods is set across the Pavilion of Culture:
a 1967 modernist landmark, now a curatorial institution at the intersection of contemporary
visual art, music and architecture. With the outbreak of full-scale war, its programme was
suspended, and its buildings became a depot for humanitarian aid.
The question "Is culture the first necessity during the ongoing war?" formed the basis of the architecture of the exhibition Essential Goods with which the Pavilion of Culture begins a new season of activity after a two-year pause.
The uncanned building with the remained items of aid form the body of the exhibition, creating the possibility of coexistence between wartime needs and art.
Program: Theatre, Opera, Event hall
Site area: 34 928 sq m
Area: 62 300 sq m
Status: International competition. Honorable Mention Award
Year: 2011
Project is awarded an Honorary Mention at the International Ideas Competition for Busan Opera House in South Korea. The competition was promoted by the Busan Metropolitan Mayor's Office seeking international ideas to build an opera house that would become "a future-oriented cultural space that can raise local performing art culture one level up with its hi-tech facilities and differentiated contents".
We adapted the 60s glass modernist pavilion into a space for electroacoustic performances. Scene 13 is series of music concerts that features academic multichannel electronic music and held on the 17-18th of August by the Pavilion of Culture in collaboration with the Cultural Platform.
Program: Museum, Concert Hall
Building area: 3 496 sq.m.
Year: 2014
The idea of the building as architectural incarnation of synthesis of vision and hearing, metaphor of music as a complicated system of simple primitives, as a shell for sound experiments, multifunctional stage for learning Hungary Music in all it’s manifestations.
The core of the building is the rooms that make up the complex space of "volumes" and "voids". This multifunctional spaces provide an active social life inside. Their shared amenities brings together professionals into friendly companies and can exist as a neutral zone for presentations or negotiations. A children's room, a shared dining area, or a small movie room and game room will allow to work overtime but not neglect rest or family.
The exhibition “Our Years, Our Words, Our Losses, Our Searches, Our Us” is accompany the opening of the Jam Factory Art Cente on November 18, 2023 and will be the first large-scale exhibition in the history of the art center. The exhibition present the works of Ukrainian artists from 2022-2023 and a longer chronology – from the 19th century to the present.
Promprylad.Renovation is an investment center on the territory of a revitalized former factory in Ivano-Frankivsk. The project embodies the idea of impact-investment and combines the advantages of commercial and socially significant enterprises. Based on the intersection of four different directions, which are new economics, urbanism, contemporary art, and non-formal education, Promprylad aims to become the center of the creative potential of the city and thus influence the development of the region.
ФОРМА was involved in the organization of Cxema parties from 2015 to 2019, rethinking from the perspective of architectural practice the typology of rave and creating a holistic visual image of the space. Every season had a specific concept that directly influenced spatial and lighting solutions.
Zigzag is a city cafe located on one of Kyiv’s most fashionable streets, which became popular among the local creative community. Zigzag is a symbol, which is widely represented in Ukrainian avant-garde poetry and art.
i am u are is a platform for empowering the creative industry of Ukraine. Fair & exhibition will take place in New York on March 24-26th at the heart of NYC, Skylight at Essex Crossing.
“Today that never happened” curators Lizaveta German, Maria Lanko, and Kateryna Filiuk applied to the categories of changes and fluidity, reflected through the aspects of blurring of topographic boundaries, the fragility of nation-states, the variability of identities, and the disappearance of the boundaries between the private and the public. ФОРМА was responsible for the exhibition design of the festival.
The United Nations' Climate Change Conference (COP27) will be held at Sharm EL Sheikh International Convention Center in Egypt from 6 to 18 November 2022. Ukraine, which had previously participated in the event for many years, will be represented by its own pavilion for the first time. The Ukraine pavilion consists of 3 sense blocks. In its center is an installation in the form of a shell funnel. Fertile Ukrainian lands are now dotted with them. Inside the funnel visitors will find more than 500 cubes with 16 types of Ukrainian soil — a reminder of Ukraine's enormous potential and its importance for global food stability. Thematically, the pavilion is divided into 2 blocks - the consequences of the war for the climate and the vision of the future of Ukraine, as one of the guarantors and participants of the climate goals of the UN.
Before the Future. Arsenale. The pavilion of Ukraine at 18th International Architecture Exhibition–La Biennale di Venezia
Ukraine is participating in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition curated by Lesley Lokko (20 May – 26 November 2023), with a Pavilion at the Arsenale (Sale d’Armi) and an installation in the Spazio Esedra at the Giardini. Before the Future is the title of the participation, organized by the commissioner Mariana Oleskiv, and curated by Iryna Miroshnykova, Oleksii Petrov and Borys Filonenko. Ukraine had not participated in the Biennale Architettura since 2014.
Yalta European Strategy (YES) is a leading forum for discussing Ukraine’s European future and global context. YES fosters new ideas. It connects Ukraine to international partners, supports forces for change in the country, and builds networks of supporters for a new Ukraine worldwide.
Together with an architect Oleksander Burlaka, ФОРМА developed the project for the main pavilion.
Program: Cinema, Conference
Site area: 0,65 ha
Building area: 950 sq.m.
Collaborators: Front Pictures
Year: 2011
"Skystone" is a new type of prefabricated building with a 360º screen projection system presented at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Beijing."Skystone" is a self-sufficient prefabricated building in a hall with 250 seats with interactive technology. The building is closed from outside and looks monolithic. It will let people get an immersive experience in understanding the universe
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, essential routes were equipped with defensive fortificationsーcheckpoints. All of them were built hastily from locally available materialsーconcrete, metal, wood, earth, or sand.
A checkpoint provides movement control and defense and can be part of a more extensive fortification system with surveillance, cover, and fire functions. The most effective protection of defensive structures is provided when combined with natural obstacles, such as mountains and ravines, rivers and lakes, swamps, and impenetrable forests.
Today, the space of Babyn Yar is filled with multiple scenarios. They are played out daily in the area, which rather disorients and makes it impossible to spend time consciously within the memorial and preserved areas. This study is an attempt of a comprehensive look at further work with the territory based on the landscape analysis of Kyiv ravines.
Program: Research, Strategy, Masterplan
Collaborators: Bassinet Turquin Paysage
Site area: 2000 ha
Year: 2011
The main reason why Kyiv islands have become a wasteland is that they almost have no access from both sides of the river. For a 12-kilometer piece of land of Trukhaniv and Muromets islands there are only three points from which one can get into the area (from the Northern bridge, from the pedestrian bridge and from Hydropark). Hardly anybody can cover the distance on foot and get pleasure from walking and contemplation.
JOMO is an abbreviation of “joy of missing out”, which could be interpreted as the concept of abandoning the internet and technology without compunction. The JOMO burger cafe seems to be ironic about its surroundings and context: space is located in a bustling area, full of office workers and students. Rejecting the trivial representation of burger cafes, ФОРМА created a holistic clean space, disposed of unnecessary decoration.
GARAGE is a new gastronomic venue by @goodwine located on the territory of the former Tetra Pak plant in the Podil industrial zone. The building is divided into two independent parts. In the general planning approach, the function of the garage is retained – technological and service blocks are disposed not along the perimeter of the venue, but deliberately moved to the center. This provides the adaptability of the space to temporal scenarios, ensures democracy between volumes and free movement around the area. The blank industrial building becomes public and open, emphasized by the glazed line of the facade.
Create! for UNICEF and Cultural Platform Zakarpattya
The important stage in the implementation of a major renovation project of the Promprylad factory in Ivano-Frankivsk. As part of an ecosystem, the space of interaction and cooperation promotes a new culture of innovation. It facilitates the creation of projects and supports those who change the rules of the game.
"The display symbolizes exhaustion on many levels. Besides the obvious – depletion of humanity’s resources and credit with the environment – it’s about psychological exhaustion due to social media abuse, the pandemic and economic recession." Pavlo Makov
Program: Book
Status: Completed
Partners: pavilion of culture, ist publishing
528 p. ISBN 978-617-7948-32-1
Year: 2024
Before the Future marks the return of the Pavilion of Ukraine to the Biennale Architettura 2023 after a nine-year absence. The catalog contains texts and images by the curators and collectives, as well as additional articles and essays that expand on the discussions initiated within the project.
In the exhibition and its accompanying program, the grass-covered defensive earthworks in the Giardini and the dark, enclosed shelter in the Arsenale are spaces for Ukrainian architects and practitioners from various fields to raise questions—questions about telling stories during wartime, about the value of collective action in the face of threat, about the multitude of topics that unite architects in Ukraine today, about questions that must be asked today, before the future.
Over a period of four months, five temporary collectives create a program of changing exhibitions in both locations of the Pavilion—about reconstruction, ecology, care, commemoration, and the future. These exhibitions originate from within the Ukrainian context and involve a wide range of participants, with the aim of creating spaces and dialogues fostering mutual understanding.
The Biennale takes place at a time of the greatest doubts of Ukrainian men and women regarding personal life and professional strategies, a time of rethinking the role of architects in wartime, and a time of transforming relationships with space due to the experiences of war and experiences of regular terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities and civil infrastructure. But at the same time, at the moment of greatest need to be present in the international dialogue, speaking on our behalf.
Program: Residential, Cultural
Building area: 6 185 sq.m.
Year: 2018
The project provides a unique solution for the planning structure, which adds new qualities to the area. The residential area with the cultural centre is located in the centre of the regular lattice of the Rybalsky peninsula general plan. Its unique role for the district is expressed by the transformation of the shape of the plan: an oval volume is inscribed in the quadrangular perimeter.
Program: Research, Mixed use
Site area: 9 180 sq.m.
Building area: 46 600 sq.m
Year: 2018
Gamma factory (Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine) was built at the beginning of 1960th, specialized on the production of high-tech electronic products for the space, aviation and nuclear industries. After 1991 the company declared bankruptcy and declined. ФОРМА’s proposal for the mix-used development was based on the idea of creating a cultural, business and retail core of the city.