Reviving Arcadia : Community, Identity and the Challenges of Affordable Housing

What began as a personal frustration with housing grew into a deeper exploration of history, dignity, inclusion, and how design quietly shapes our everyday lives. As cities expand, housing is increasingly treated as a commodity rather than a right. As I delved deeper into this topic, I realised that issues such as profit-driven developments, speculative housing markets, and the lack of affordable housing are globally relevant. Many cities worldwide face similar problems, differing only in scale. This is particularly evident in vulnerable regions such as Ukraine, which I explored further through my participation in the Building Back Better 2025 workshop focused on Odesa. Arcadia's district in Odesa embodies many of the issues I’ve been concerned about from the start: rapid development, loss of community, and the erasure of public space by global capitalism. The ongoing war in Ukraine has only intensified these challenges, making social inequalities more visible. In this context, rebuilding is not just about physical structures, but also about rethinking how we live together. Guided by the urban and architectural strategies outlined by Ukrainian architect Oleg Drozdov’s research and combining it with my own personal housing experiences, I aimed to imagine a better, more community-oriented future in Arcadia. The design is an ongoing conversation about creating spaces that are inclusive, adaptable, and rooted in real human needs. The site itself, an abandoned sanatorium in Arcadia, once served as a place of healing. Its reuse as a space for community and resilience offers a hopeful perspective on what rebuilding can mean today.