A Window on the Circular Economy: Building Material Reuse and the Reconstruction of Ukraine (2023–2025)
Postdoctoral research project conducted within Urban Bricolage: Mining, Designing and Constructing with Reused Building Materials, a PRIMA research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and led by Madlen Kobi, hosted at the University of Fribourg
The research examined emerging transnational networks for salvaging and transporting reusable building components to support Ukraine's reconstruction. At its core was an ethnographic study of the BRDA Foundation's activities, which salvaged second-hand windows in Poland and transported them to Ukraine to support grassroots reconstruction efforts following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. By following the processes of collecting, measuring, storing, transporting and reusing these components, the project investigated how building materials move between the categories of waste, commodity, humanitarian aid and construction resource.
Through participant observation, interviews, and material research in Poland and Ukraine, the project explored the social, logistical, and economic dimensions of reuse, asking how wartime scarcity, humanitarian solidarity, and transnational material flows might challenge established models of circular construction based primarily on recycling.
The project produced academic publications, conference contributions, and a podcast series on building-material reuse, the circular economy, and reconstruction.
Selected outputs
Madlen Kobi and Adam Przywara, hosts, Squaring the Circle: A Podcast on Building Material Reuse and Circular Construction (podcast), August 14, 2024, URL: Spotify / Switch Tube.
Przywara, Adam. 2025. “Wartime Circularity: Adapting Buildings, Salvaging Materials, and Designing Supply Chains for Ukraine.” Urban Research & Practice, October, 1–18. doi:10.1080/17535069.2025.2571101.
Kobi, Madlen, Adam Przywara, and Elena Sischarenco. 2026. “Urban Circularity in Practice: Knowledge, Relationships, and Governance of Building Material Reuse.” Urban Research & Practice 19 (1): 1–12. doi:10.1080/17535069.2026.2615980.