A 1960s rural house in Derev’yana, a village near Kyiv, now wears a mural that looks like a Suprematist canvas. Its facade mural, inspired by Ukrainian modernism and Suprematism, makes this ukrainian midcentury house stand out in the village. The building, called Hata Yarova, is the first of three neighbouring Soviet-era homes that artist Oksana Levchenya is converting into guesthouses.
Rebuilding a ukrainian midcentury house from other people’s leftovers
Levchenya works with what already exists. The house is an ordinary, anonymous ukrainian midcentury house of the Soviet countryside, and she is giving it a narrative through salvage and improvisation. She calls her method “intuitive additive architecture,” an approach in which the final form develops through a series of small interventions rather than a fixed plan.
For another take on Soviet domestic life, see Elena Serafimova’s photographic ode to the dacha, a nostalgic look at the same era.
Replacing the roof of this ukrainian midcentury house created room for an attic level with guest bedrooms. The original porch came down, and its timber planks became the staircase. In its place, she built an extension for the kitchen and bathroom.
Oversized arched windows came from the renovation of a private midcentury house. Her team cut them down to suit the house’s scale and set them into a new composition. An old timber platform from the former Kosmos factory was refashioned into outdoor decking.
The bathroom takes reuse further. Unglazed tiles from the 1960s and 1970s sit alongside rare hand-painted pieces from Kharkiv and contemporary Spanish ceramics. The interiors also draw on vintage finds and objects from friends, including a stove that once belonged to a restaurant.
Why the project changed after 2022
The idea first took shape during the pandemic. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 gave it a different purpose. Levchenya spoke to me by video call from Kyiv, with her background dimmed by a power cut.
“Continuing to build during the war is, in a way, an act of defiance against the death and destruction that Russia has brought to us,” she said.
She works with a small crew led by a builder approaching his seventies. Renting the houses mainly covers costs and keeps the team employed. She sees the guesthouses as places of rest for people who stayed in Ukraine. “We are all working enough for three people now, and all of us need rest and comfort,” she said.
A childhood spent in other people’s homes
Her own childhood shaped the project. After her parents divorced, she lived with her grandmother and later her aunt while her mother trained and worked as a surgeon. At nine, she moved in with her mother in a small apartment in a Khrushchyovka, the low-cost concrete block built for Soviet-era doctors and other workers.
“Throughout my early childhood, I was always staying in other people’s homes, dreaming of a place of my own,” she said. “The Hata Yarova project was born from a desire to create a space in which time is somehow suspended, a place that does not belong to any particular period.”
Inheritance, loss and a chest from the 1930s
An antique wooden chest from the 1930s, bought at a fair, anchors the interiors. It dates from the period of Soviet collectivisation, when privately owned farms were merged into state-run collective farms. Levchenya says the chest is a direct link to her family’s history.
“My family has lost its inheritance and material possessions several times: first in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917, and again during the upheavals of the 1930s,” she said. “Today history has cruelly repeated itself. The elders of my family, my mother, her sister and her brother, have once again lost their homes in Krasnopillia, a rural settlement in Sumy Oblast.”
Those losses changed how her family values possessions. Knowledge, skills and abilities last longer than objects, she says. The chest stands for that idea: only what can be carried, and what has become part of a person, survives upheaval. It is also a practical object. “It is an authentic domestic object, originally used to store textiles and rugs, and therefore carries a direct connection to the material culture of the home,” she said.
Textiles as a path to freedom
Levchenya describes textiles as a “matriarchal medium” that links women across generations. As a child, her favourite toy-making material was gauze from her mother’s medical supplies. Later, research into traditional Ukrainian craft brought her back to fibre. She also grew frustrated with painting, which “began to feel too confined and controlled.” She explains, “I wanted to have more freedom to experiment and make mistakes.”
Her current work blends local folk traditions with Ukrainian modernism and contemporary imagery. “I find a particular magic in combining opposing textures and creating structures that contain a certain paradox within themselves,” she said. She gives an example: Pac-Man combined with traditional Ukrainian ornament.
Her work fills the ukrainian midcentury house. A white totem made from offcuts from a knitwear factory stands inside, along with rugs from OLK Manufactory, the Kyiv company she founded (olk-manufactory.com). The company makes hand-woven kilims on vertical looms using hemp warps and wool from Carpathian sheep or yarn spun from nettles. Each piece is made in a limited run of 1 to 15, and no machines are used in production. Her work has been shown at Revelations at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2019 and at Homo Faber in Venice in 2022.
Salvage ethics run through contemporary design too, as in Transforming discarded denim and paper into furniture, a sustainable take on the same idea.
What comes next
Hata Yarova and the two ukrainian midcentury houses still in progress are built around a single idea: putting aesthetic worlds together that look almost incompatible. Levchenya and her team are working out a broader philosophy to hold the growing community together.
She hopes the project will expand. “I would love to make the project larger in scale, and perhaps eventually international,” she said. “But the immediate plan is to survive and to win the war.”
Source: wallpaper.com
Frequently asked questions
What is the Hata Yarova project in Derev’yana?
Hata Yarova is a 1960s rural house in Derev’yana, a village near Kyiv, and it is the first of three neighbouring Soviet-era homes that artist Oksana Levchenya is converting into guesthouses. Its facade mural, inspired by Ukrainian modernism and Suprematism, makes it stand out in the village.
What does Oksana Levchenya mean by intuitive additive architecture?
Levchenya uses the term “intuitive additive architecture” to describe an approach in which the final form develops through a series of small interventions rather than a fixed plan. She applies this method to work with materials and structures that already exist on the site.
Where did the salvaged materials in the house come from?
The oversized arched windows came from the renovation of a private midcentury house and were cut down to suit the new house’s scale. An old timber platform from the former Kosmos factory was refashioned into outdoor decking, and the original porch’s timber planks became the staircase.
Why did the Hata Yarova project take on a new meaning after 2022?
The idea first took shape during the pandemic, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 gave it a different purpose. Levchenya describes continuing to build during the war as an act of defiance, and she sees the guesthouses as places of rest for people who stayed in Ukraine.
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