In collaboration with O.M. Beketov National University or Urban Economy and through the work of Ruin Academy, biourbansists Marco Casagrande (architect) and Menno Cramer (neuroscientist) are addressing a biologically-attuned, socially-grounded model of post-crisis urban regeneration. They blend biourbanism, and constructivist biology into a method for healing cities from within. Both Marco and Menno have been active in the International Society for Biourbansim since early 2010. They were invited to speak at the Venice Biennale Architettura 2025 with the theme. Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.
Since 2022, Kharkiv has lived in the shadow of war. Buildings wounded. Streets fractured. Yet beneath the rubble, something quiet grows: a form of intelligence rooted in place, practice, and presence.
This is not architecture. It is acupuncture.
In Kharkiv, architecture is not a symbol. It is a scar. A memory. A mediator.
Casagrande calls it “urban acupuncture”: small, precise, nature-based interventions that stimulate local resilience. Cramer adds the layer of cognition, spaces that don’t just shelter, but soothe. Together, they build cognitive sanctuaries: not structures of control, but spaces of care.
This is architecture that listens.
The ruin becomes a method. The wound becomes wisdom. From underground schools and repurposed courtyards to makeshift communal kitchens and seed-saving stations, each gesture works with what remains. Design here is not decorative. It is diagnostic. A form of listening. Architecture is not lazy, it’s functional, supportive, and critical to survival.
In a time where reconstruction efforts often rush toward erasure, Kharkiv offers a different path: one that embraces decay as an ecological force and memory as a design material. It sees the city not as a failed machine, but as a living organism undergoing repair. Urban acupuncture means asking different questions: What does this corner remember? What grows through the cracks? What rhythms survive when the grid fails?
Biourbanism, in this context, becomes both a science and a solidarity. It moves beyond aesthetics into ethics. It shifts the role of the architect from planner to caretaker.
This is not about rebuilding as it was. It is about regenerating.
BioUrban Acupuncture reminds us that architecture’s most powerful act may be to hold space, for grief, for growth, for return. Each small intervention becomes a pulse, a signal, a breath. Not to dominate the city, but to feel it back to life.
Case Studies and Inspirations
The work in Kharkiv echoes and expands upon a broader set of acupuncture-style interventions globally led by Marco and Menno:
- 60 Minute Man (Venice): Urban metabolism and environmental waste as design material.
- Land Escape (Finland): Rituals of remembrance through architectural performance.
- Ruin Academy (Taipei & Kharkiv): Ruin as living method and architectural learning lab.
- Zaatari Refugee Camp (Jordan): Skin-to-skin architecture and care-based space in crisis.
- Cognitive Sanctuaries: Spaces deeply rooted in the understanding of human cognition in order to improve decision making.
- Treasure Hill (Taipei): Rumor-driven urbanism and ecological settlement.
- Paracity (Taipei): Modular, self-organizing architecture grown from informal systems.
- Sugar Factory Jungle (South Taiwan): River urbanism and rewilding of industrial ruins.
- Bug Dome (China): Insect architecture and embodied, decentralized material intelligence.
- Lamminranta (Finland): Code and care-based intergenerational design.
- Warm Nest (Belgium): Architecture as cognitive and emotional medicine in cancer recovery care.
Each of these offers not just precedent, but pattern, a collective intuition about what makes a city feel.
Architecture, here, is not designed to impress. It is designed to recover.