The Necessity of Uncertainty
All images courtesy of Brda Foundation.
The house I grew up in was built by my father, using leftover materials from various projects he supervised at his work as a site manager. I still remember the light orange bricks, the cold, smooth composite stone window sills, and the dark green roof tiles. They were not precious materials – they were sourced, after all, in transformation- era Poland, where goods and materials were hard to find – but they are valuable in my memory, evoking a reminiscence of the first home I remember. Almost 30 years later, my father shows me around a new house he is building for himself. In the basement he has used cheap, old, laminate doors reclaimed from an office he owned at least 15 years ago. In his drive to reuse building components, he is not motivated by the climate crisis, it is simply the frugality that he learned during years of chronic supply chain issues and empty shop shelves. That sensibility has stuck with him – he does not like waste.
There are various different routes to reuse, many of which originate out of particular geographical and sociopolitical contexts. “After decades of chasing the west, we can turn around and see that as a community we have a potential that we hadn’t necessarily previously noticed, one different from conservative dreams,” says Michał Sikorski, one of the curators of Poetics of Necessity, the Polish pavilion at the 2023 London Design Biennale. Sikorski is speaking as part of an interview published in the exhibition’s catalogue and, as I research this piece, I wonder if the sense of resourcefulness that my father exhibits might be part of this potential that Sikorski describes.
Poetics of Necessity is co-curated by Sikorski from TŁO architects, alongside Zofia Jaworowska and Petro Vladimirov from Brda (pronounced br-daa) Foundation. Upon entry to the pavilion, hosted at Somerset House, the visitor is presented with reclaimed, white-framed PVC windows stacked vertically on standard wooden pallets. The windows are secured with straps and look like they have been prepared for transport. On each pane there is a sticker, with size, specification, name and location of donor – a material passport that is also an expression of solidarity. Zain from Stratford, Steve from Essex and Holly from Wembley, among others, have donated these windows, which will subsequently be shipped to Ukraine to help with rebuilding efforts precipitated by the full-scale Russian invasion. It is, Vladimirov notes, essentially “the most expensive storage unit in London”. Also in the room is a sofa whose form references Maarten Van Severen’s Blue Bench daybed, designed in 1997 for luxury brand Edra. Here, rather than the original’s smooth polyurethane, the piece is made of blue sheets of foam insulation, held together with oversized cable ties. To create the piece, its constituent standard-sized sheets have been cut in half but otherwise kept intact, such that the insulation can still be used for its original purpose after the exhibition ends. On one side of the sofa sits
a 1:1 mock-up of a slanted window, an installation method by which a pane can be installed in an opening for which its size is ill-fitted. Exhibition catalogues are stacked on the wide window sill and, on the other side of the sofa, a film is being displayed, framed by curtains made using construction site tarpaulin hung on a scaffolding pole. The installation, curated as part of the biennale’s theme of “Remapping Collaborations”, set by the Netherlands’s Het Nieuwe Instituut, won the London Design Biennale medal, which was awarded to the most outstanding overall contribution to the biennale.
Poetics of Necessity stems from a social action in support of Ukraine initiated by Brda shortly after the Russian invasion in February 2022. In spring of that year, Jaworowska, an activist and the founder of Brda, had just emerged from an intensive period of coordinating Grupa Zasoby (Resources Group), a grassroots organisation that rehoused more than 5,500 Ukrainian people in Warsaw. Once the flow of people into the Polish capital had slowed, and all of the rooms and flats that the team could offer ran out, she founded Brda in summer 2022 as a longer- term project to “enhance the quality and increase the accessibility of safe, sustainable and dignified housing”. In July 2023, the Okno (or Window) project crystallised – an initiative devised to collect windows and ship them to Ukraine, to replace glazing shattered during Russian attacks.
Jaworowska developed the idea for Brda following conversations with Ukrainian curator and urban designer Petro Vladimirov and Sikorski, an architect. This all happened following Sikorski’s move in with Jaworowska, which then freed up his flat for resettled Ukrainians. Vladimirov moved into the vacant apartment (although he had been studying and living in Poland for a while at that point) and, since he also was interested in organising aid, the three began sharing ideas. “Housing has always interested me as an expression of universal human needs – the need for home, security, shelter and belonging,” Jaworowska explains. Even before starting Grupa Zasoby, she had helped initiate Refugees Welcome Polska, the Polish wing of the international Refugees Welcome initiative – a project started with friends and other activists to organise accommodation for Syrian civil war refugees. She quotes her encounters with people’s experiences of homelessness and resettlement as her personal drivers for engagement with the topic of the home. As such, Brda is expressly focused on the built environment, with its broader goal including the improvement of housing in both Poland and Ukraine – a mission shaped partly in response to the Russian war, but also in relation to Brda’s home country, where housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable in big cities. This ethos is reflected in the name: a brda is a common type of A-frame timber house, usually used for holiday stays. In Poland, it holds a special place in the hearts of many who spent their summers in these cabins as children. Its construction is simple and efficient, and given that the design is not patented, it has been widely replicated – an accessible and recognisable yet humble piece of design, epitomising ideas that stand at the core of Brda’s mission.
“At the beginning, we wanted to ship everything,” says Vladimirov, referring to the multiple building materials that the group had originally considered sending to Ukraine. After speaking to Vladimirov’s friends who were still in Ukraine, however, as well as local organisations rebuilding homes and towns, Brda decided to focus on windows. Glass is first to go in the event of an explosion and, if windows are old or poor quality, even distant blasts can shatter them, leaving the inhabitants exposed to the elements and with no means of locking up and securing their homes. Temporary solutions, such as cling film or chipboard, have poor thermal qualities and do not allow proper access to daylight and ventilation. It quickly became apparent that reused PVC windows with frames, ones that can open or tilt, were the architectural element most needed by Brda’s Ukrainian partners. They were also low-cost, easy to source, and the project provided a meaningful way to reuse building components that might otherwise end up in landfill.
This is where the Okno project fits into broader narratives around the environmental impact of architecture and construction, and the untapped potential of material reuse. Where it differs, however, is in its interest in cheap, commonplace materials – such as PVC – which are not normally seen as sustainable choices. Most material salvage projects focus on noble and natural materials including stone or wood, but PVC windows are long-lasting and often discarded during demolition of buildings, even in the case of those built as recently as the 1990s. In her 2022 book Building for Change: The Architecture of Creative Reuse, architect and researcher Ruth Lang writes about the short lifespan of buildings, with warranties that anticipate 30 years of use, despite the actual durability of materials potentially lasting for 50, 100 years or longer. “Yet fashion and changing patterns of use curtail this lifespan,” she explains, “which sometimes barely stretches to a decade, at huge environmental and economic cost.”
When I first meet Jaworowska at the press launch of the biennale, it seems her mind is already set on the next project and further goals. “We don’t want to do too many exhibitions; we prefer to focus on the aid projects,” she tells me. She is impatient and driven – the traits of an effective activist – and it is clear that Jaworowska and her team know how to utilise this sense of urgency. On the foundation’s social media channels, I often see calls for volunteers asking people to spend the afternoon packaging and loading windows onto trucks in their Warsaw storage yard. They call it “window crossfit” or “window bikram”. Jaworowska, Vladimirov and Adam Przywara – another member of Brda and an architectural historian – are hands-on in the early stages of the project, driving around Poland, collecting and loading windows. For the logistics to come together, they work with the support of Ukrainian partners such as Unity and Strength in Kharkiv, Our People in Kherson, and Vdoma and District #1 Foundation in Kyiv. These organisations receive and distribute windows shipped by Brda. As to what happens next, we don’t exactly know.
“We don’t want to do too many exhibitions; we prefer to focus on the aid projects.”
The mode of operation pursued by Brda requires the relinquishing of control, something architects and designers infamously like to keep for themselves. Within this kind of initiative, things happen fast – windows are in huge demand in Ukraine and need to find a way to their new homes quickly. As Jaworowska explains: “If you are an NGO and you are gifting something, it has to be with no strings or expectations attached.” Brda has, however, developed a set of tools to help those who receive their windows fit them. Firstly, the windows come with a description sticker (similar to the one used at the biennale) that includes dimensions, type and donor name. A list cataloguing these descriptions usually accompanies every shipment to support the organisation’s Ukrainian partners in their distribution efforts. The challenge with using reclaimed windows as elements with which to repair existing buildings is that the glazing may not necessarily fit the opening – which is where the catalogue comes in.
Developed during workshops with students at DoFA architecture festival in Poland’s Lower Silesia region, the collaborative Okno catalogue contains multiple inventive methods and instructions for installing ill-fitting windows. The suggested configurations address various potential issues – window too high, opening too short; wall section is damaged; window too small, opening too large – in addition to hybrid applications such as installing an assemblage of smaller windows to fill in a large gap. The instructions feature IKEA-style detailed diagrams, and the catalogue is well designed and laid out. The occasional appearance of a crumbling, partially demolished wall is a stark reminder of the context in which the windows might be used. The instructions are devised to be simple and accessible, featuring a preference for drawings over text, and span the chasm between architectural students in Poland and Ukrainians attempting to repair their homes with all the limitations of being in a warzone. Most proposals, for example, are developed for people installing windows from the inside of a building, which deals with the challenge of repairing upper-floor flats in apartment buildings without access to scaffolding. The instructions also specify the number of people required (usually two) as well as the materials and tools needed. Non- specialist items such as hammers, screwdrivers and handsaws are given priority, and the materials specified are either generic (a window sill) or accessible (a timber board, a reclaimed car vent grille).
All illustrations courtesy of Nicola Cholewa, JKL and Widoki.
The Okno project considers reused PVC window seriously and multidimensionally. For instance, the team has received a large number of idiosyncratic, magenta-pink windows from the demolition of Atrium, a 1990s postmodern office building in Warsaw, some of which have been used to repair schools and other buildings in Ukraine. But Sikorski has also explored proposing such components for his practice’s high-end residential projects in Poland. These ideas are being developed in parallel, with the hope that the supply chains of reused windows established during the Russian war can remain in operation after the conflict ends and be put to use in Poland. Here, increasingly stringent rules around insulation would mean that the windows from the 1990s no longer comply with building regulations. As such, the architect has proposed a bespoke design with two layers of fenestration, in which a secondary internal window would ensure the required standard is met. This is to say that the materials sent to Ukraine to help with the humanitarian effort are not considered by Brda as being second-rate, spare or lower quality. While the war in Ukraine has provided an impetus to act, the long-term vision of material reuse is a foundation of the Okno project. Sikorski’s practice, TŁO, treats reuse as a necessity, but also a creative opportunity. It is a departure from a rigid, visionary practice, and instead embraces the role of an architect as being akin to a DJ – “sampling different elements and putting them together,” as Sikorski puts it.
In Building for Change, Lang writes about the benefits of reusing building materials over simply recycling them. “[The] recycling of materials into new formats requires more energy for transportation and processing,” she says. “The often inferior quality of the material produced, known as ‘down cycling,’ fails to capitalise on the qualities of the original source material[...].” To an untrained eye, a PVC window is not the most sustainable material choice. But the most sustainable building and, by extension, building component, is one that already exists. Shipping fully functioning, openable windows, and installing them in another building, is the best way of preserving both the energy and resources spent on producing the window in the first place. What both Brda and Lang emphasise, however, is that reuse does not have to be an unwelcome sacrifice for designers, but rather an exciting new way of working and a redefined aesthetic. As Sikorski explains in the London Design Biennale project catalogue: “‘Aesthetics’ is a more capacious term than a mere opinion that something is pretty or not; it is about a more in-depth meaning, woven from different values.”
Developing this deepened vision of the meaning and aesthetic of reuse is important for Brda. While documentation in the case of the Ukrainian rebuilding projects is often limited – Jaworowska explains that they cannot, for ethical reasons, ask the end users for photographs of the installed windows – the foundation places an emphasis on the way its broader work is presented and communicated. At the time of writing, it is developing its next project, titled Budo, which will focus on sourcing, cataloguing and selling reused building components to consumers and designers in Poland. This expansive plan for developing systems and infrastructures for material reuse is a logical extension of the team’s work in Ukraine (and clarifies that the donations to its eastern neighbour are not carried out in a neocolonial manner), expanding its ideas around the removal and reallocation of unwanted, spare materials. Any generated profits will contribute to the foundation’s aid projects.
The Budo project is about material reuse: reducing the carbon footprint and environmental impact of the construction industry and supporting networks of reuse in architecture and design, but also helping developers fulfil the requirements of sustainable development and improving their ESG (environmental, social and governance) goals. Members of Brda are aware that developers can be their ideal partners, due to their involvement in the process of demolition, but they require persuasion and incentive to carry out the process more slowly and carefully in order to salvage elements that can be saved. As Vladimirov explains, currently, “reuse and [the] construction industry do not necessarily go together”. Part of Brda’s challenge is to narrow the gap between the two, and enable processes that make reuse easier, more accessible, and desirable for large construction industry players. Reused materials also need to be re-certified and assessed before they are installed in a new building – the barriers are logistical, financial but also legal. The team behind Poetics of Necessity joke that the catalogue with DIY instructions should come with a disclaimer: “Don’t do this at home in the EU.” But Vladimirov points out that the aesthetic and spirit of reuse is already present in Ukraine, evident in spontaneous alterations and enclosed balconies. “The nature of Ukraine is experimental: you are always doing something from scratch,” he says.
“‘Aesthetics’ is a more capacious term than a mere opinion that something is pretty or not.”
Every time I visit my father’s house in the countryside in western Poland, I spot a new outbuilding or shed. When I ask him what it’s for, he says, “I don’t know, I had some breeze blocks leftover so we put it up.” Dad takes salvage to another level, in which the frugality is perhaps contradicted by the endlessly proliferating structures, sprawling around the house and across the land, between the edge of the forest and the pond. But the instinctual drive to reuse tells him to continue this strange circular economy, where old becomes new and building parts morph into different arrangements. There is an element of uncertainty combined with long-term planning that one has to embrace when salvaging and reusing building materials – a faith that they will once again prove useful, in an unspecified, future application.
During a talk about PVC and material reuse at London’s Bartlett School of Architecture in June 2023, the team behind Poetics of Necessity reveals the many unknowns that surround their projects. “We have no idea,” Sikorski replies when questioned about the lifespan of the DIY installed windows in Ukraine. “It’s an answer to an urgency. We’re more full of doubt than certainty.”
“You always have to use everything that’s on hand, stuff that’s already there,” Jaworowska adds. “We will have to compromise one way or another – material reuse is one such compromise.” When quizzed about the carbon footprint of their projects, meanwhile, Vladimirov gives an answer reminding the audience of the acute nature of the war in his home country: “Everything goes. We are in a situation where no rules apply.”
“One thousand windows is a couple of trucks,” Sikorksi adds. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s nothing,” Jaworowska quips in response, “but it’s also something.”[1]
The way that the Brda Foundation has taken on building networks, mobilising volunteers and donors, and providing urgent aid while developing a long-term vision for distribution of second-hand materials, provides clear evidence: it really is something. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has provided a context for activism and architecture to work together, with the grassroots, dynamic nature of activism giving a much- needed push to the slow-moving construction industry. When released from its own silo and deployed in interdisciplinary collaborations, architecture has the potential to be part of meaningful social change – whether it’s in liberated territories or the salvage yard. Brda’s multipronged approach shows how design can work fast and slow to help alleviate both the immediate and upcoming crises we face
[1] As of August 2023, Brda had shipped 1,217 windows to Ukraine. One truck fits up to 300 windows.
Words Marianna Janowicz
This article was originally published in Disegno #36. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.