From Narva to Odesa.
States of Uncertainty

We chose to subtitle this issue of StadtBauwelt—From Narva to Odesa—with the English phrase States of Uncertainty, despite generally avoiding bilingual titles. As a matter of editorial principle, we usually prefer consistency of language. Here, however, the exception felt justified, because only this combination could convey the double meaning we intended.

On one level, States of Uncertainty can be read geopolitically: as a reference to fragile states and a region under growing pressure. In the context of a journey through Eastern Europe along Russia’s border, at a time when Russia continues to wage war against Ukraine, this interpretation is self-evident. Yet the phrase also carries a broader meaning. It evokes uncertainty as a condition—a state of being, a period, a defining constellation. In this sense, it describes not only the realities of the countries visited, but also a new uncertainty that has come to shape Europe, and likely far beyond. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, uncertainty has become a defining political reality.

Guest editor Nadin Heinich travelled this route in several stages: from the Baltic states, where what once felt like an abstract threat has become increasingly tangible, through Poland—the European Union’s largest member state on its eastern flank, whose strategic role has grown considerably—to Ukraine. She visited Odesa on several occasions, most recently in mid-December, when Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and drone and missile strikes around the city escalated dramatically. During those weeks, the war briefly returned to the forefront of international attention after months of fading from the headlines—only to be overshadowed once again by other global crises.

Her aim was to understand how cities and the people living in close proximity to war—or already experiencing it firsthand—navigate this new reality of uncertainty. For that reason, this issue takes the form of a collection of interviews. It brings together conversations with the mayor and the city architect of Narva; the director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; the cultural commissioner of the Odesa City Council, responsible for safeguarding the city’s UNESCO-listed historic centre; the curator of the Odesa Fine Arts Museum, whose collection has largely been evacuated; a military analyst; a member of a mobile air-defence unit; and young architects working in Kyiv.

Most of the photographs featured in this issue were taken by Heinrich Völkel, photographer with the Ostkreuz agency, who accompanied Nadin Heinich to the Baltic states and Odesa. Journalist Igor Ishchuk, based in Odesa, contributed images documenting the city during nighttime power outages as well as a mobile air-defence unit in action. The photographs from Kyiv—including images of the 2014 Maidan protests—were taken by Robin Hinsch, who has worked extensively in Ukraine for many years and recently published many of these photographs in his book Lonely Are All the Bridges. The issue also offers a glimpse of the front line through the work of Johanna-Maria Fritz, also of Ostkreuz, who has repeatedly travelled to contested and partially occupied areas in eastern Ukraine to document the realities of the war.