‘Building Back Better 2 – Odesa’ brought together students and academics from University of Limerick, Kharkiv School of Architecture, University of Brno, Umea University Sweden and professionals to explore approaches to the sustainable reconstruction of the city. This international workshop has been running for two years with the previous iteration exploring the sustainable re-imagining of the Dnipro River and the re-building of the city of Dnipro. Bi-located in both Warsaw and Lviv over two weeks, we zoomed out (WARSAW GROUP) and we zoomed in (LVIV GROUP). We worked primarily across the large groups of SEA and CITY. Given Odesa’s coastal relationship to the sea as well as its hinterland relationship to the Pontic-Caspian Steppe zone there was a lot to consider in terms of history, sea level rise, river basins, pollution, agriculture, water quality, drainage, urban nature, trade, war and the ongoing geo-political context and indeed myth and story. In Warsaw we made a hanging tapestry of the Black Sea SEA with further suspended models of architectural episodes to represent each new story at the re-imagined macro-scale. SCALE Team: Peter Carroll / Hanna Chernat / Norman Price / Steve Heuchert / Ruth Minogue.
