An Architect’s Dream of Rebuilding a Battered City in Ukraine

Architect Norman Foster (left) alongside Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov (right).

Max Rozenfeld has spent much of the war imagining how the destruction of Kharkiv presents opportunities for reinventing its future.

Max, who had never imagined he’d hear the words “Kharkiv” and “Foster” in the same sentence, was asked to join Foster’s working group. He was one of only two architects selected who were still physically in Kharkiv—the only people in a position to “show” Kharkiv to Foster.

At weekly Zoom meetings, the group discussed Kharkiv’s landscape, history, and character, the extent of the damage that Russian attacks had done to the city, the city’s economy, ecology, and transportation infrastructure, and how all of those things should be restored or improved in a postwar future. 

Max and his colleagues proposed a concept to Foster, an invented identity for Kharkiv: the frontier city. 

For the Foster’s plan and Max’s dream to become reality, the war would have to end. There is no telling when that might happen.