What is it about shoebox dioramas that make them so magical? And so therapeutic? Maybe it’s the way in which they force you, the maker, to slow down your racing thoughts; and focus for a little while on a specific moment from a particular place using simple tactile materials like glue sticks, colored paper, glitter, and scissors? Could it also be the medium’s ability to invite others into your most intimate memories?
In London, shoebox dioramas were recently on display at EH Smith Design Centre created by Ukrainian children, teenagers, and young adults displaced by Russia’s full-scale invasion. The installation was called Reimagine Your Neighbor and part of the London Festival of Architecture and Refugee Week UK which took place in June.
The program was led by The Giant Dolls’ House Project, an art therapy workshop founded by architect Catja De Haas nine years ago. De Haas first took an interest in miniature houses when she was completing her PhD. Since 2014, De Haas has conducted workshops for children in Dubai, North Carolina, Goa, Jordan, Bournemouth, and now London. “The project is about creating empathy and understanding for people whose voices often aren’t heard,” De Haas told AN.
Reimagine Your Neighbor featured some dioramas that were made by Ukrainian young people in London, while others came from Kharkiv, Ukraine. Mariia Rusanova, a Ukrainian architect and educator, held workshops at OM Beketov National University Kharkiv that invited adolescents to participate. “All of the dioramas went in completely different directions,” Rusanova said.
The Giant Dolls’ House Project
One maquette on view at EH Smith Design Centre this past June, for instance, was made by someone who spent days underground in Kharkiv’s metro. Rusanova shared that many other children chose to focus on domestic spaces.
“One girl recreated a moment when she was having ice cream with her mother in her kitchen, when suddenly a military airplane flew over their heads, which is an awful and loud experience. So they had to crouch on the ground,” Rusanova continued. “The girl specifically remembered dropping her ice cream, and watching it melt on the floor. Another girl made a model split between two spaces: Her house, and the basement of her house. On good days, she lived in her house, and could look out the window. When Kharkiv was being bombed, she had to stay in the bomb shelter in the basement for hours, a cold and damp place heated by a radiator.”
For Jenia Gubkina, an architect and educator from Kharkiv now based in London, the exercise is both therapeutic and architecturally compelling from a pedagogical perspective. She remembers watching as her teenage daughter, Kira, made her own diorama. “It’s an extremely interesting methodology, especially as a tool for working through trauma,” Jenia shared. “Ruined houses look like doll houses.”
The trauma that Jenia speaks of derives from the constant uprooting she and her family have endured since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022. She was living in Kharkiv when it started, and moved to Lviv with her teenage daughter, Kira, for safety. Eventually, the two moved again from western Ukraine to London. “I remember being on the Polish-Ukrainian border, and thinking to myself: I have two choices between two different types of trauma,” Jenia shared. “I can experience the trauma of living in a war zone, if I stay, or I can have the trauma of immigrating.”
Working Through Trauma
In response to this peripatetic experience, Jenia’s daughter Kira represented her three different homes in Kharkiv, Lviv, and London. “Watching Kira construct memories of home nearly brought me to tears,” Jenia said. “She focused on really specific things, like the window in our living room in Kharkiv, and graffiti she observed by a Ukrainian artist, Gamlet, that says Час чує нас which in English means ‘time hears us’.”
“Час чує нас, or ‘time hears us,’ is a kind of reflection of Kharkiv peoples’ feelings that the world doesn’t hear us,” Gubkina shared. “The world doesn’t hear our voices, our pain, but time hears.”
Jenia, Mariia, and Catja also noticed how the diorama workshops cultivate awareness and empathy between Ukrainian youths and children elsewhere. “One of the students chose to place a Palestinian flag in their shoebox,” Jenia said. “Because of these wars, she felt as though Palestinian children were her neighbors, too.”
For Rusanova watching the adolescents go through this exercise was healing. “In war, your neighbors are constantly changing,” Rusanova said. “Many of the people who participated in this workshop had lost neighbors, or had met new ones when they moved. The dioramas are interesting ways of connecting people with their new neighbors, and sharing moments.”
