Office for Future Turns Ukrainian School Into Homes for 42 Displaced Families

A former school in Stavyshche, Ukraine, will become housing for 42 families displaced by the war. Office for Future, a firm based in Florence and Lausanne, designed the conversion for the Charity Foundation Housing for IDP. The project is titled "Dvir – The Shared Courtyard."

The intervention reuses an approximately 1,900-square-meter building to create 42 apartments plus 200 square meters of shared indoor spaces. It combines the existing structure with new timber elements, an energy retrofit, and the transformation of the former asphalt courtyard into a permeable green space.

The school has served as a local landmark for decades and previously accommodated generations of students. Rather than replacing the structure, the project retains and reorganizes it around a new residential program. It introduces four apartment types ranging from studios to three-bedroom units, alongside fully accessible apartments for people with disabilities. Shared areas, children's play spaces, and meeting rooms sit alongside the private units. Some communal spaces are planned to accommodate cultural activities and events open to local residents.

The architectural intervention involves a series of targeted changes. Strategic demolitions reorganize the interior and improve spatial efficiency. A freestanding timber walkway provides access to the apartments. A new timber roof sits above the existing structure, incorporating approximately 800 square meters of photovoltaic panels. The building envelope is upgraded as part of the project's energy retrofit.

The former schoolyard also changes substantially. Approximately 850 square meters of existing asphalt will be removed through a process of desealing, allowing the courtyard to become a permeable landscaped area. Portions of the original paving remain as pedestrian paths through the garden, creating a network of routes between the building and the shared outdoor space.

The project is conceived as a residential micro-community that connects the new housing with the wider town. The courtyard and shared interior spaces give residents areas to meet. Their planned use for public activities maintains a connection between the former school and the local community. For Office for Future, the building's existing presence and collective memory in Stavyshche form part of the approach to its conversion.

"Dvir – The Shared Courtyard" is the third intervention in Ukraine promoted by the Charity Foundation Housing for IDP. The project brings together adaptive reuse, new timber construction, energy upgrades, and landscape transformation within a single existing structure. Its 42 apartments are intended to house displaced families while retaining the former school's role as a shared place in the town.

The project belongs to a broader field of architecture addressing displacement and affordability. At the 20th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Ukraine's pavilion, "Pool of Questions," is presented by CO-HATY, a volunteer initiative established in 2022 by METALAB and relocated members of Ukrainian Urban Curators, which restores abandoned buildings as housing for internally displaced people. The exhibition asks not only where displaced people can live, but when they can begin to rebuild everyday life.

Elsewhere, the 2026 OBEL Award recognized the Balearic Social Housing Model for its changes to social housing administration between 2019 and 2023, while OMA and Y.A. Studio's 730 Stanyan in San Francisco provides 160 permanently affordable homes for low-income and formerly unhoused households and Transitional Age Youth. As Ukraine's displaced population grows, adaptive reuse projects like the Stavyshche conversion offer a model for delivering housing quickly while preserving buildings that carry communal meaning.