Residential building, Kharkov

The demolition of a building in a nearby street provided old bricks, which form a substrate material for the project and set an example for material reuse as a standard for new construction, or 'cultural retrofitting'. According to Drozdov & Partners, 'In this way the new building passes on historical "flesh" and cultural code.' Not only does the building immerse itself in the historical urban context through materials, it also blends almost seamlessly with the contemporaneous neighbourhood fabric with its compositional structure – a stealth building of sorts, quite possibly able to remain undetected and overlooked by the general population, if not closely scrutinized.

Dubbed 'Heirloom', the building happens to be a small project: its mixed-use programme consists of a mere seven apartments, plus an office and a few shops. Despite the fact that such small-scale residential projects tend to be unpopular with developers, the idea here is to minimize the number of users, hopefully enabling better familiarity among them, which may in turn develop into sustainable relationships. It is a promising ideal, since this particular building already evidences a similar continuity with its peers.