‘Ukraine: Design for Real Time’ Sheds Light on Life Before and After the Russian Invasion
For Ukrainian designers, there is a clear before and after: the world previous to Russia’s invasion of their country on February 24, and the chaos, carnage, and courage that came after. As part of Barcelona Design Week earlier this summer, design historian Larysa Tsybina and architect Mykola Kornilov—both Ukrainian themselves—gathered work made in each time period as a way to make sense of the senseless for the exhibition “Ukraine: Design for Real Time.”
“Ukrainian design kept pace,” said Tsybina, “focusing on the ecology, materials of the future, new architypes of forms and additional functions that solve the problem of the human in modern society.” In wartime, designers and others most focus on what she calls “objects that help solve problems in storage, dugouts, temporary hospitals, bombed houses.”
Given professional realities, most participants contribute virtually: a monumental 13-by-20-foot poster offers the work of 18 designers, and more are included via video material. One commissioned work straddles the temporal boundaries of the exhibition. Katerina Sokolova’s Military Gropius chair for NOOM was designed in peacetime. Here, in a collaboration with the VinnSolard volunteer center in Vinnytsia, it’s covered in the camouflage netting used in the rear and front lines of the war. It’s a striking example of what she calls “objects that are more a tool for life than design.”
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