At least two million homes destroyed. Over 1,600 hospitals damaged and 3,300 schools razed to the ground. These are the partial figures — bound to rise — of the devastation caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A devastation that continues, compounded by the massive Russian bombardment between 24 and 25 May that caused at least twelve deaths. Ukraine responded with heavy drone attacks on Russian cities.

According to the Kyiv School of Economics, from February 2022 to November 2024 the war destroyed infrastructure worth 170 billion dollars. A figure that accounts for neither the damage caused, from 2014 onwards, by the nearly decade-long conflict between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, nor the 29 per cent of GDP that went up in smoke following the large-scale invasion.

But destruction also means reconstruction, because life must go on and chase after some semblance of normality. Even at a time when nothing normal remains.

And reconstruction is indeed one of the themes chosen this year by the Ukraine Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Which until 23 November 2025 presents to the public the exhibition "Dakh: Vernacular Hardcore".

The water crisis in cities

"It's not just about the bombings. It's everyday life that has come to a halt. You arrive in a city and it seems as though life is carrying on, but in reality it's a broken existence. Every daily gesture becomes enormously laborious — even accessing water." Evgenia Belorusets is a Ukrainian photographer, writer and artist.

She is moved to tears, as are many people around her during the opening address of the exhibition installed at the Ukraine Pavilion and curated by Bogdana Kosmina, Michał Murawski and Kateryna Rusetska. For over ten years Belorusets has been documenting the invisible fractures running through the social fabric of her country: through her photographs she has told the stories of factory workers, inhabitants of poor villages in western Ukraine, persecuted Roma people and members of the Lgbtq+ community. Today some of her most recent shots are on display at the Venice Biennale, in the "Places: Mykolaiv Region" section of the Ukraine Pavilion. And they tell the story of the hard work carried out daily by water network staff to keep water flowing through infrastructure devastated by Russian attacks.

"In Mykolaiv the water system is in a state of constant emergency," Evgenia Belorusets told LifeGate. "Every day it breaks down and every day they try to repair it. People work day and night. And they can never stop, because the city's life depends on it. People now have to go and collect drinking water from filtration stations, which only work when there is electricity. But when the power goes out, the city is left completely without water."

There are so many vulnerable people even in peacetime — just try to imagine what war means for them. The elderly cannot even carry water home. And sometimes they die, simply because they can no longer cope.

Evgenia Belorusets

The roof as a symbol

If water services sustain life from below, the roofs of homes protect it from above — from drone attacks and bombardments. But when the bombs rain down, roofs are the first to collapse and are therefore among the first things that need to be rebuilt. Because life must go on, and a roof over one's head is the first step towards reclaiming normality.

"For the people who remained in villages along the front line, many of them elderly and therefore particularly vulnerable, home repairs are essential", said Matthias Schmale, United Nations representative and humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine, to the Financial Times.

This is why the heart of the exhibition staged at the Venice Biennale is precisely the roof: "dakh", in Ukrainian. The most basic form of architecture, one that offers shelter from the elements and protects life even in wartime.

"We chose the roof as the symbolic element of this exhibition. In many European cultures, the thatched roof was once something very common, and we regard it as an element that unites cultures", Bogdana Kosmina, curator of the Ukraine Pavilion, explained to LifeGate. She also curated the archival materials of the "Atlas of Traditional Ukrainian Dwellings from the Late 19th to the Mid-20th Century": a monumental fifty-year study conducted by three generations of women architects — Bogdana Kosmina, her mother Oksana, and her grandmother Tamara. This section of the exhibition draws a comparison between the traditional architecture of Ukrainian villages and the forms of self-organised reconstruction that emerge out of necessity in wartime.

"Today in Ukraine there are two types of vernacular architecture: the traditional and the emergency — Bogdana Kosmina explained to LifeGate —. Both speak to the capacity to rebuild, even without government support, relying solely on the heart, the sense of responsibility, and the love of local communities."

The challenges of reconstruction

Yet rebuilding is becoming increasingly complicated, because some of the elements most vulnerable to bombardment, such as window glass, are growing ever harder to source in Ukraine: before the war, supplies came predominantly from Russia and Belarus. Now they must be imported from other European countries, at far higher costs. The costs of roof repairs are equally steep: around two thousand euros, according to estimates from the volunteer organisation Livyj Bereh, which has rebuilt approximately 400 roofs across Ukraine. "If the roof is damaged, it's only a matter of time before the entire structure begins to collapse", explained Ihor Okuniev, a member of the organisation.

According to the United Nations, in 2024 humanitarian groups supported more than 114,000 people in Ukraine with "light and medium repairs to apartments or houses". Repairs that most often have a short lifespan: until the next bombardment.

"There are organisations that have tried to rebuild homes three or four times, but each time they are brought down again. Despite this, reconstruction continues", Ukraine Pavilion curator Bogdana Kosmina told LifeGate. "In Mykolaiv, in the south of the country, it is not even possible to begin rebuilding because the bombardments are continuous."

To convey the sense of anguish that has accompanied the inhabitants of war-affected regions for three years now, the Ukraine Pavilion features an immersive sound installation reproducing the noise of drones.

"Art is there to tell these stories that often go untold", artist Evgenia Belorusets told LifeGate. Stories that in Venice take shape through documents and images bearing witness to the emergency vernacular landscapes born in wartime in the regions of Chernihiv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia.

"Of course, one must not overestimate the power of art: it certainly won't be by selling a photograph or winning a prize that anything will change. What is truly needed is to stop the war and rebuild Ukraine. But if those who work every day to keep the country standing realise that there are people listening to them, people who know their story, then perhaps they will find a little more strength to carry on. And exhibiting here in Venice matters for telling the world what is happening. The truth, however, is that many people in Ukraine continue to live in an emergency that makes no headlines."