DESIGNER OF NEW UKRAINE

 

Designer of New Ukraine

Architect Marco Casagrande got involved with the crisis areas of East Europe already at high school. Now he operates in a significant role in Ukraine, with focus on the reconstruction of the cities.

Hanna Freyborg HS
27.7.2025

ARCHITECT Marco Casagrande comes to Karjaa train station dressed in black. Walking, since he lives next to the station with his family.

Casagrande, 54, has designed a house to his family, which sits in the pastoral summer landscape as it would have always been part of it. The house is made of wood: birch and pine.

” I would prefer that everything in Finland would be constructed out of wood. This house I drew on snow, literally walking the floorplan on snow. I don’t even know, how many square meters does it have”, Casagrande laughs.

INTERNATIONALLY awarded and respected Casagrande is specialized in sustainable urban design and has now operated a year and a half as Professor of Architecture in a Kharkiv university (O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy) in East Ukraine and King Danylo University in West Ukraine.

When the university in Kharkiv first time contacted Casagrande, he was asked to start lecturing remotely on biourbanism online.

“I said it would not work. I needed to be present physically.”

TIME to get straight into business. We must talk about the war in Ukraine, especially about Kharkiv, a city with more than a million inhabitants, a city close to Casagrande’s heart.  

“War has given Ukraine a certain gift, it has united the East and West Ukraine together”, Casagrande begins.

That is his only positive comment of the full scale Russin attack.  

Before the war the border city Kharkiv was close to Russia also mentally. After the Russian attack the city is severely damaged, but it has also changed, it is now breathing Ukrainian patriotism.

The distance from the city to the front line is around 40 kilometres. Some of the regional cities and villages are practically on the frontline.

“When a missile hits an apartment building, the site gets cleaned up immediately and everything that can be fixed, will be fixed. The Ukrainians have zero tolerance for war debris on their streets”, Casagrande says.

Casagrande visits Kharkiv every three or four months. He stays a couple of weeks per tour, transportation takes time. Casagrande flies to Warsaw and usually takes a train to Ukraine from there.

In Kharkiv the university has provided him everything needed: local fixers and assistants, accommodation. Depending on the situation he can rely on a safe house in the middle of a forest, a location hidden from the Russians.

“I get all the intelligence and support from the university that I can think of. Nevertheless, I operate in Ukraine independently. Main thing is to keep safe distance regarding the artillery”, Casagrande says.

KHARKIV was before the war one of Ukraine’s most important industrial cities. There is no going back to the Stalinist architecture though, and the Ukrainians do not want that either.

Casagrande’s vision is to develop Kharkiv into ecologically sustainable so called Third Generation City, the very contrast to the Soviet time concrete brutalism.

“As an architect and am Animist, I believe in nature. Architecture is the art of reality, and for me nothing else than nature is real. The ideal is that the city learns to become part of nature.”

Essential part of Casagrande’s work is to redesign vital social infrastructure buildings destroyed in bombings, such as hospitals, underground schools, and rehabilitation centres.

He is using Finnish timber as much as possible and recycling destroyed buildings as much as possible.

REHABILITATION is needed for the wounded and war invalids, but also for the returnee children from Russian captivity.

There are up to 105 000 disabled orphan children in Ukraine.

” They have possibly never received any empathy, and therefore the buildings must be able radiate empathy.”

Casagrande calls this phenomena Skin-to-Skin Architecture, where the buildings have a skin.

” A successful building is like a warm hug” he says.

Before the war, the orphans were kept out of sight in Ukraine. The war has changed the attitude.

” It is sad that we needed a war to give visibility for the orphans in society,” Casagrande says.

Universal design is also incredibly important regarding the tens of thousands of disabled persons because of the war.

The war can still last a long time, which also must be taken into consideration. To minimize material losses the buildings are design to be mobile so that an apartment building or a factory can be relocated, Casagrande tells.

He wishes Finland to focus especially on the rapid development of the underground schools. Finland has the expertise.

” But the construction must start immediately. The need is excessively big.”

CASAGRANDE got interested in the East European crisis areas during his high school in Karjaa.

In December 1989 he was 18-year-old and working in the local newspaper Etelä-Uusimaa, when the revolution broke out in Romania. He was asked if he would like to report on the situation. The task was to follow if the humanitarian aid convoys reached their destinations in Romania.

Casagrande went to the journey, contrary to his parents wishes. In Romania he witnessed with his own eyes the chaos the country had gone into. The main feeling was not fear though, but curiosity. Senses sharpened up. He felt alive.

Marco Casagrande esittelee alasammutun ukrainalaisen hävittäjälentäjän äidin kirjailemaa paitaa, eli vyshyvankaa. Kuva: Outi Pyhäranta / HS

YEAR 1993 Casagrande had finished the high school, the compulsory army (Finnish Defence Forces), and begun his architecture studies, when Bosnia started calling. He had a girlfriend in Croatia and Yugoslavia was breaking up in war.

Casagrande volunteered to Bosnian Croat army (HVO Croatian Defence Council) the same year. He returned to Finland only to get back to war.

He wrote a war memoir Mostarin tien liftarit / Hitchhikers on the Mostar Road (WSOY; 1997) with pen name Luca Moconesi. Helsingin Sanomat reported in 2001 that the war crimes described in the book led to two police investigations, which were both cancelled due to no evidence of crime.

Was the controversial book an auto fictive novel?

” Something like that. It was not a documentary, but not everything that I wrote of could be created only by imagination either.”

According to Casagrande writing worked as therapy.

“War is always traumatizing. Soldier is like a high tuned machine, which after the war becomes a moped. Something is not right with a person if the war does not leave a mark.”