Casagrande Laboratory

Despite the destruction of centralized infrastructure, Kharkiv is still functioning. Children study in metro stations, and traces of war are visible on almost every building. The metro and shelters have become crucial for its functioning.
The city is large, and the threats — although real — do not destroy it completely. However, the accompanying tension builds something more: greater attentiveness, care and concentration, which rarely appear in conditions of full comfort.
From a psychological perspective, the city’s “nervous” infrastructure plays a key role — primarily the extensive metro network. It is a kind of underground city, capable of receiving residents during attacks, and at the same time maintaining the functioning of what is happening on the surface. The experience of Kharkiv shows clearly: such a decentralized, multifunctional infrastructure is not a luxury, but a necessity.
Resilience begins with collective awareness and a sense of community. Civilian shelters should be seen more broadly — as social and cultural centers. Today, the dual-use model means more than that: both physical and mental protection.

.buska writes: Psychologia przetrwania: w jaki sposób architektura schronów wpływa na dobrostan psychiczny i fizyczny człowieka w sytuacji kryzysowej?

Na to pytanie, podczas konferencji YIT „Schrony w budownictwie fundamentem bezpieczeństwa narodowego”, odpowiedział Marco Casagrande, architekt z Finlandii, który działa w Ukrainie jako konsultant i wykładowca, wspierając proces powojennej odbudowy miast, zwłaszcza Charkowa.

Poniżej tłumaczenie, które zostało mi udostępnione przez organizatora konferencji YIT - Urban developer and construction company

Schrony można podzielić na dwie podstawowe kategorie: schrony interwencyjne, wykorzystywane krótkoterminowo podczas nagłych alarmów oraz schrony o podwójnym przeznaczeniu, używane na co dzień w warunkach długotrwałego konfliktu — np. jako podziemne szkoły czy placówki medyczne. Najbardziej traumatycznym momentem jest sama ewakuacja do schronu. To właśnie przestrzeń schronienia powinna tę traumę łagodzić, oferując środowisko psychicznie kojące i wspierające regenerację — podejście to określamy jako „architekturę bliskości” (Skin-to-Skin Architecture).

W schronie nikt nie jest sam — to nie jest okop. Przestrzeń powinna wzmacniać wspólnotowość i zbiorową psychikę, wspierając wzajemną troskę i zachowanie człowieczeństwa. Kluczowe jest uwzględnienie potrzeb najbardziej wrażliwych grup: dzieci, osób z niepełnosprawnościami, kobiet w ciąży, seniorów czy osób zmagających się z lękiem i paniką. To fundament długofalowej odporności społecznej. Troska o dzieci oddziałuje na całą wspólnotę — aż po tych, którzy znajdują się na pierwszej linii. Jeśli nie zadbamy o najmłodszych, trudniej oczekiwać gotowości do poświęceń od dorosłych.

Schronienie leży u samego źródła architektury — to jej pierwotna funkcja i odpowiedzialność. Jednak obok bezpieczeństwa musi pojawić się także komfort i estetyka. W przeciwnym razie mamy do czynienia jedynie z rozwiązaniem technicznym, a nie architekturą. Człowiek jest istotą wielozmysłową, a w warunkach zagrożenia wrażliwość ta jeszcze się wyostrza. Dlatego schron powinien odpowiadać na te potrzeby poprzez świadome kształtowanie przestrzeni i doświadczenia.

Conversations with journalists at the YIT Polska Dual-Use Shelter Conference in Warsaw. A bit heavy talks, but UKRAINE shows the way.

1. Q - The Psychology of Survival: How does shelter architecture affect human mental and physical well-being during a crisis?

A - Shelters are either emergency-shelters, used temporarily due to acute air alert, or dual-use shelters used daily bases during long-term conflict – such as underground schools or medical facilities. Evacuation to the shelter is the most traumatizing part. The shelter itself should overcome this trauma by providing psychologically calming and restoring spaces – we call this Skin-to-Skin Architecture.

Nobody is alone is the shelter – this is not a foxhole. The shelter should protect and enhance collectivity and collective psyche, taking care of each other and expressing humanity. Especially focusing on the most vulnerable segments of society – children, disabled persons, pregnant women, old people, panic disorders, and more. This is fundamental for long-term resilience. If you take care of the children, it resonates through the whole community - all the way to the father and brother in the trenches. If you don’t focus on the child, why should the father stay and fight?

Shelter is in the core of architecture. Providing shelter is the original meaning and duty of architecture. But, together with survival must come comfort and beauty; otherwise, it is just a technical solution, engineering – not architecture. People are multi-sensory and sensitive organic machines, and war only heightens these senses. Shelter must respond to that with architectonic psychology.

2. Q - What Truly Works and What Is a Myth in Shelter Design: Commentary based on lessons learned from Ukraine’s experience.

A - People don’t want to go to the shelter, if they have a choice. They get used and numb to the air alerts. Carpet bombing is not going to happen, drones are mainly psychological terror (slowly flying crisscrossing the whole country causing air alerts all the way then hitting something or being hit), missiles are expensive and will go to their targets (and you cannot do anything for them anyhow). Real horror is glide bombs, rockets and tube artillery – but then then the enemy must be close. Or missiles specifically decided for civil casualties – like the market bombings of Kharkiv. But city is big and cannot be leveled with drones or missiles alone – they are always punctual impacts. Leveling the city needs rockets and tube artillery, and this is what the Russians are doing for any settlement, if they can – no matter a rural village or a big city. There is no other strategy.

Air alert is mentally on all the time. It causes fatigue, one must get used to it and continue day-to-day life. Forget the stress, ignore it. City is a fortress, a shelter itself. Resilience lives in the collective subconscious. It wants to be seen on the streets. Shops must be open and people go to work. For the resilience of the city, it is bad if the citizens are in the shelters. Resilience can be even stupid; it definitely can take some risks. This goes for adults, taking the risks, but children must be safe, otherwise adults cannot work – for the community or on the front.

Dual-use shelter is an architectonic question and requires sensitivity. The most striking examples are the underground schools around Kharkiv. We should not look at this as a technical question. These shelters are used every day. They become the new normal for the school kid. Shelter must have a skin which holds the child (Skin-to-Skin Architecture). It must reflect care and humanity.

Resilience is local. When war economy takes over the central government cannot construct shelters for you, that is why we must act before. Local communities will build their own shelters and underground schools.

3. Q - Frontline Architecture: What can Polish cities learn from Kharkiv? Why safety must be embedded in a building’s foundations already at the master planning stage.

A - Kharkiv is a big city with 1,5 million inhabitants – quite comparable to the big cities of Poland. It is located 40 km from the Russian border and has been fighting for survival more than 4 years in a new kind of a war – drones, missiles, and glide-bombs. Total destruction of centralized infrastructure but still surviving. Children go to school in metro stations. Crippled veterans and civilians everywhere, not one house without scars. Metro and shelters are needed for the city to keep going. But since the enemy has been pushed beyond the artillery range and carpet bombing cannot happen with modern anti-aircraft missiles, the impacts of air strikes are punctual. City is big, drone is small. Of course, the sense of horror is in the air all the time, but this also brings up beauty, care and focus that we normally don’t see with total comfort. Psychologically the metro network is a fundamental thing. Decentralization of infrastructure is another. Kharkiv is blessed with a very extensive underground metro network. This is essentially an underground city, which can absorb the population during air attacks. It is also a nervous network which keeps the city at the top alive. It is empirically proven that this kind of a nervous infrastructure is a must-have.

Dual-use shelters should be spaces where you can be proactive and thrive, no matter what. Not just sit and stress.

Kharkiv is focusing on its children and that they can go to school. Remote learning is not enough; children must see other children to play and fight. It is too risky to have children going to school on the ground. Many children together become a target. There are no Geneva Conventions or rules of war. It’s all about targets, war-economy and terror. We are educated for European civilization, which is the anti-thesis of domination and the rule of force. We are easy to terrorize. Small drones can terrorize a big city, but resilience overcomes terror. War is changing rapidly – we don’t know how the next war is fought. Tube artillery and rockets can physically grind off a city, yes, but terror is remote-control. First, we must shelter the minds of the citizens, protect and support their collective consciousness. Physical civil shelters should be viewed more as community centers or cultural centers. Dual-use means sheltering mind and body.

Biourbanism ISB
Харківський національний університет міського господарства імені Бекетова
Sweco

Resilience - Sheltering Humanity in Kharkiv, Ukraine
Keynote speech at YIT Shelter Conference in Warsaw. Observations from the Kharkiv Region, now 5th year in war some 40 km from the zero-line. Children go to school underground every day. This is not a shelter anymore - it is daily architecture. Sheltering hearts and minds, and collective conscious is the key for social resilience. And everything culminates in protecting the children.
We Finns know how to build civil shelters - over 55 000 done, but Ukrainians are the ones, who really know what they mean. We must work together.

BIOURBAN ACUPUNCTURE
- Lecture at the Lviv Polytechnic National University. Lovely to see architecture students in classical training - painting. ❤️
Kindly organised by Blago.

Ruotuväki 3/2026
"Casagranden arkkitehtitoimisto suunnittelee rakennusprojekteja Harkovasta Lviviin, eli eturintaman läheisyydeltä lähemmäs EU:n ja Naton rajaa. Hankkeisiin kuuluu muun muassa maanalaisia kouluja, terveysasemia ja elementtitehtaita.
Casagranden mukaan kriisialueen rakennusten suunnittelu eroaa suuresti perinteisestä arkkitehtuurista. Siinä missä siviilimaailmassa taloudelliset tarpeet jyräävät, sota-alueella suunnittelu lähtee asiakkaiden ja ihmisten perustarpeista, kuten turvallisuudesta.
Tärkeimpinä projekteinaan Casagrande pitää Harkovaan rakennettavia maan-alaisia kouluja.
- Niissä on 300-600 lasta per koulu kahdessa vuorossa. Lapset ovat maan alla koko päivän isossa pommisuojassa, joka on se koulu.
Maanalaiset koulut ovat pitkään mietittyjä kokonaisuuksia. Kiinteistöjen käyttövesi pumpataan ja suodatetaan itse. Sähkökatkojen aikana esimerkiksi ilmastointi tehdään lihasvoimin.
Rakennuksissa on Casagranden mukaan terveydenhuolto, psykologin vastaanotto ja erilliset rauhoittumishuoneet. Tarvittaessa bunkkerissa voi myös yöpyä. Maanalaisten koulujen lattiataso on 14 metriä maan pinnan alapuolella.
- Sisätiloissa puu on psykologisesti rauhoittavin materiaali, hän toteaa.
Casagrande on kehittänyt termin "Skin-to-Skin Architecture".
- Suunnittelussa painoarvo on löytää sellainen herkkyyden taso, että psykologinen kuntoutuminen alkaa tai jonkinlainen rauhan ja turvallisuuden löytäminen. Siitä lähtee kaikki muu."
https://lnkd.in/dmVGAh5x
Ruotuväki

Ulkoministeriö - utrikesministeriet Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriö Харківський національний університет міського господарства імені Бекетова

The Biennale’s second main exhibition is KASTE / DAGG / DEW, the annual summer exhibition of The Onoma Cooperative of Artists, Designers and Artisans in Fiskars, curated and architecturally designed by Marco Casagrande. 🌊

Now in its 32nd edition, the cooperative’s summer exhibition explores the cycle of water and its role as the engine of the machine of life, positioning the human being as dew, too. 💧

🔎 Meet the curator: Marco Casagrande

Casagrande is a Finnish architect, biourbanist and professor whose motto is: “There is no other reality than nature.” He is known for his work in ecologically and socially sustainable architecture and reconstruction, including projects in Ukraine, where he serves as a professor at two universities.

👀 Read more about the curators and exhibitions at fiskarsvillagebiennale.com

Villa Ristinselkä
- Toivakka, Finland

Set along the natural slope between forest and lakeshore, the building follows the existing terrain rather than altering it. The elevated volume allows the ground plane to remain continuous, preserving the site’s geological and ecological integrity.

This spatial strategy minimizes physical intervention while maintaining an uninterrupted relationship between land, light, and structure. Seasonal change and shifting light conditions remain integral to the architectural experience.

Casagrande’s design positions the building as part of the landscape’s ongoing continuum. Architecture does not impose itself upon the site, but emerges from its existing order.

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Villa Ristinselkä
-Toivakka, Finland

Calmly watching the frozen Lake Päijänne. If you ask this house, if it can ski? The answer is probably YES.

Villa Ristinselkä

Toivakka, Finland

Villa Ristinselkä is located along a remote shoreline of Lake Päijänne in central Finland, in proximity to the Haukkavuori escarpment. The terrain, formed by glacial withdrawal, is defined by exposed granite, boreal forest, and open water. The escarpment rises abruptly from the lakeshore, establishing a geological presence that predates human occupation.

The site carries a quiet historical continuity. In July 1976, Queen Elizabeth II visited the nearby escarpment during a state visit hosted by President Urho Kekkonen. The landscape remains materially unchanged, preserving the event not as artifact, but as part of the enduring condition of the place.

The architecture, designed by Finnish architect Marco Casagrande, is conceived as a measured response to this context. Rather than imposing form upon the landscape, the structure is positioned as a temporary inhabitation within a much older continuum. Casagrande’s approach rejects architectural autonomy, allowing terrain, light, and seasonal change to define the experiential framework.

The building is composed of restrained volumes and precisely calibrated openings. Glazed surfaces establish continuity between interior space and the surrounding environment, allowing the atmosphere of the forest and lake to permeate the architecture. Material expression is intentionally quiet, enabling the structure to recede into the tonal and spatial order of its surroundings.

Here, architecture does not seek visual prominence. Its permanence derives instead from alignment with the processes and rhythms of the landscape itself.

Villa Ristinselkä exists as part of an ongoing continuity between geology, memory, and habitation.


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