Mother and Child Center "Unbreakable Mothers" in Lviv

The text is provided by the authors of the project

Sulyk Architects architectural bureau developed a concept of temporary housing for internally displaced persons who were forced to leave or lost their homes due to Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. Families with children and pregnant women will receive accommodation in the first place.

Housing is located next to the revitalized forest park area on Nad Dzherel Street. Two mirrored wooden houses were built on the site, united by a common space of the yard. Below the terrain, the space between the buildings turns into a renewed park with children's and sports grounds, walking paths and a lake.

The peculiarity of the project, in addition to the speed of implementation, is its architectural solution, which rethinks the appearance of a typical temporary dwelling. Departing from common container structures, the developers sought to show how temporary housing can be part of urban architecture. The possibility of changing the purpose over time, which involves the use of buildings for the needs of the city community after providing permanent housing to the current residents, is also considered important.

The two houses have the same planning structure. They consist of 17 separate modules each, combined into one common two-story volume with an area of ​​650 square meters. Each building has 13 rooms for 26 to 52 people. In addition, there is a common kitchen-dining room space with two separate working kitchen areas and an open volume of the dining room up to the height of the attic.

There are blocks of bathrooms and showers on each floor. On the second floor, a spacious room for relaxation, group classes and remote work is arranged in a protruding glazed volume. At the end of the building, the dining room space turns into a large green loggia with access to the outside.

Architectural solution

The task before the studio required clean and concise architectural solutions that can be implemented quickly and on a budget. The outer volume of the houses is lined with light gray wavy metal sheets. Opening on a fairly open area, the light color of the facade is softly perceived against the background of the sky and contrastingly emphasizes the greenery around.

The entrance to the house is distinguished by a single-sloped triangular projection with continuous glazing at the end. Elongated buildings have end facades facing the park area. Here, the warm wood decoration is evident from the light and cold volume. The loggias located at the ends of the house are finished with rhythmic wooden columns and lined with translucent polycarbonate. 

Opaque material is chosen for a feeling of greater comfort and security inside the loggia, because the psychological feeling of safety and privacy is extremely important for people who have been forced to leave their homes. Actually, the silhouette of the building in the form of a traditional gable roof is also subconsciously perceived as a basic idea of ​​a home, especially for children who will live here. In order to preserve the delicacy of the facade, the joints of the metal sheets to the windows and ends of the house are made with thin edges and a slight protrusion beyond the plane of the facade. 

The window openings of the first and second floors are connected by vertical strips along the height of the building. Thus, the elongated volume of the building is divided by the rhythm of vertical stripes. In the plane of the gables, the vertical rhythm continues with wooden columns, which are externally covered with polycarbonate sheets.

The orientation of the metal sheets and wooden elements on the facade is subordinate to the vertical direction, in contrast to the elongated horizontal volume of the building, which balances the visual perception of both buildings. The structure of the buildings is a wooden frame insulated with basalt and mineral wool. The houses rest on the metal frame of the grid. Their service life: up to 50 years.

Organizer: Lviv city council

Financing: Red Cross Society of Ukraine

The Zamovnik: LKP "Rembud"

Performer: LLC "Chornomorsk Construction Group"

Architect: Sulyk Architects

Project architect: Taras Sulyk

Landscape: Department of Architecture and Urbanism of the LMR