2024 Royal Academy Dorfman Prize winner: Livyj Bereh, Ukraine

Image courtesy of Livyj Bereh, an architecture studio who won the 2024 Royal Academy Dorfman Prize

(Image credit: Image courtesy of Livyj Bereh)

published 1 November 2024

For 2024 Royal Academy Dorfman Prize winner Livyj Bereh, it is significant to receive 'the understanding of the importance of our work and the recognition of us as a volunteering group'. The architecture collective's co-founder Kseniia Kalmus attended the winner’s announcement ceremony at London's Royal Academy of Arts last night (31 October) – an event that highlighted the Ukrainian studio's work and important efforts in rebuilding homes during the ongoing war in its country.

2024 Royal Academy Dorfman Prize winner: Livyj Bereh

Based in Kyiv and initially working on the left bank of the Dnipro River (which inspired the name of the organisation – Лівийберег/Leftbank), Livyj Bereh has so far restored the roofs of some 380 houses, across different regions in Ukraine, including Černihiv, Kyiv and Charkiv.

Beyond its critical, site-specific and hands-on support and architectural work within Ukraine, the studio also spearheads exhibition projects and events that help raise awareness around the war.

Tom Emerson OBE RA and Stephanie Macdonald OBE RA, of 6a architects and chairs of the 2024 RA architecture prizes jury, said: 'Livyj Bereh’s repair of roofs destroyed by the war in Ukraine provides homes, schools and hospitals, delivering an essential and urgent response to the survival of communities. Their use of modest black corrugated metal roofs produces an architectural act of collective care and resistance across the country, as powerful as any civic monument and documented with the unflinching eye of the greatest war art.'

Previous winners of the Royal Academy Dorfman Prize include Mexico-based Taller Gabriela Carrillo (2023), Wallmakers from India (2022), Beijing-based BCKJ Architects (2020), Boonserm Premthada from Bangkok (2019), and Iranian architect Alireza Taghaboni (2018).

royalacademy.org.uk

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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).