When the war hit Kharkiv in 2022, the urban space transformed at a scale impossible for its inhabitants and artistic community to process. As it turns out, the urban space of Kharkiv was difficult to process long before the impact of drones and missiles. Kharkiv has been transforming for centuries, collecting monuments and memories from the ebbs and flows of history. The authors zoom in on three events over the past decade that reflect how different actors used the cityscape of Kharkiv to make sense of and shape their context: Architect and visual artist Vasylysa Shchogoleva explores the urban space of Kharkiv in 2023 as a place of healing and compassion. Cultural anthropologist Viktoriia Grivina takes us back to 2018 when a piece of street art on a wall became the epicenter of a community conflict. Anthropologist Hjørdis Clemmensen opens a window to the workshop of a group of architecture students in 2013 who wished to not only influence the space around them but also time itself.

Hjørdis Clemmensen is a Danish anthropologist and writer based in Vienna, Austria, previously residing in Kyiv, Ukraine. She holds an M. Sc. in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on urban identity in Kharkiv. Hjørdis’s diverse career spans academia and the IT sector.
Viktoriia Grivina holds two Master’s degrees in English, German and Cultural studies from Kharkiv and Tübingen University, and studied also in Bergamo and St Andrews. In 2020–21, she participated in the (Un)Archving (Post)Industry Project dedicated to the photographic legacy of the Donbas.
Vasylysa Shchogoleva, M. A., studied Architecture at the Hochschule Anhalt at Dessau-Roßlau (Germany) and at Kharkiv National University of Civil Engineering and Architecture. She worked as an architect both in Ukraine and Germany while developing her practice as a visual artist with a focus on art in public space.
Bohdan Volynskyi is an architect and founder of the “dash!” Design School for Children in Kharkiv.