Exhibition on Russia's invasion of Ukraine opens at Chicago Architecture Center

The exhibition Constructing Hope: Ukraine has opened at the Chicago Architecture Center’s Skyscraper Gallery. Running from March 10 to September 1, 2025, the exhibition gathers more than a dozen architectural and design-led initiatives responding to the devastation caused by Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. 

Originally presented at the Center for Architecture in New York in 2024, the exhibition focuses on decentralized reconstruction efforts, ranging from emergency housing solutions to the preservation of architectural memory, and positions architecture as a vital tool in fostering resilience, mutual aid, and hope.

Among the featured works is a full-scale prototype bed by Ukrainian NGO MetaLab, designed for emergency use in their Co-Haty housing project for internally displaced people. Also on display are models created by artist collective Prykarpattian Theater, developed in collaboration with refugees to recreate destroyed homes from memory. 

The exhibition includes drawings, videos, photographs, and furniture pieces, all curated to highlight architecture’s capacity to generate collective resistance and future-oriented solutions. Underpinning the exhibition, a visual identity by graphic designer Aliona Solomadina, inspired by the criss-cross tape patterns used on Ukrainian windows during bombings, threads throughout the space as a symbol of both fragility and defiance.