Dear friends, colleagues, international community of architects.
It has been 987 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 on the projects 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.
We ask you to prove your dissent of russian aggression through action.
Go out on public protest, spread information among colleagues and friends and keep supporting Ukraine.✕
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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: 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.
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.
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.
"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
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.
The most significant cultural projects of modern Ukraine are initiated by independent researchers, curators, and artists. The potential of these independent creators, intellectual and artistic level of their work is much more ahead of the existing institutional capacity. There is a lack of institutions in Ukraine, that could provide a decent level of support and development of cultural initiatives. This absence of institutional sustainability led to the idea of creating the Pavilion of Culture – an institution that will provide the audience, space, and opportunities for the realization of the leading cultural creators.
The Second Biennale of Young Art was held in 2019 in Kharkiv and became the second edition of the biennial project, initiated by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine in the aim to support and represent contemporary Ukrainian art.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
“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.
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".
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.
Guilty wine bar was conceived as a place to start the evening, and the exhibition program, curated by Maria Lanko and Liza German, extended this conception into the context of art. Drafts and sketches by local artists, such as Lucia Ivanova and Ksenia Hnylytska, gave an alternative view on the idea of the origin and preparation.
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.
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
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: 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.
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.
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.
Medyk
Program: Park, Mixed-use
Area: 2000
Status: Ongoing
Year: 2022