Ella Katrovasová, a student at Studio of Architecture II at UMPRUM, has been selected for this year’s LINA platform. Her project, Postsoviet Vernacular. Natura, Heritage, and PVC Doors, caught the jury’s attention. Ella’s work focuses on societal systems and ways of transforming them through architecture, theoretical research, and ritual. In this project, she explores self-built homes in selected post-Soviet countries.
An interdisciplinary research project under the supervision of Eva Franch i Gillabert, the work seeks to document, analyze, and develop discourse around the self-built homes of the Post-Soviet transition period in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kazakhstan. As these nations gained independence from the Soviet Union, they found themselves emerging from an aggressive force of modernization, a common side effect of which –a disconnection from one’s culture and natural landscape– was heightened by Russian imperialist assimilation tactics. The following era of deregulation, economic instability, and ongoing extractivist practices invited in the production of these buildings.
Through theoretical essays, interviews, photographs, field notes, discussions with experts, and architectural illustrations, the work analyzes what these homes can teach us about embodied cultural memory and the understudied re-materialization of folk buildings in the landscapes of the Anthropocene, subverting the notion that modernity fundamentally severed humanity from its cultural and ecological roots. As man-made materials have irreversibly infiltrated global ecosystems, we can no longer define the vernacular in opposition to the modern. Vernacular architecture is where the inseparability of cultural and ecological processes becomes materially visible. As the bird builds its nest from electrical wiring, so too does the vernacular architect construct her home from the materials of her increasingly artificial environment.
Collaborations for the project have already been developed with the Lviv Institute for Urban History, Ubani - Tbilisi Cityscape Research Center, and CESCAME in Prague with contributions from T. Gurgenidze, K. Malaia, and A. Miljački. Sources are currently being gathered for foundational theoretical essays with field research as the next step. While originally proposed as a publication, the project has expanded to multiple potential formats including discussion panels and exhibitions.
The European LINA platform is a network connecting leading institutions with young and talented practitioners and theorists working at the intersection of architecture and other disciplines related to spatial culture. Its aim is not only to support emerging talent, but also to steer design and construction processes towards regenerative practices and degrowth principles, in line with the values of the European Green Deal. In 2026, 464 projects applied to the platform, of which 22 were selected. UMPRUM student Ella Katrovasová was the youngest fellow selected this year and the only master’s student. Participating institutions include the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, MAXXI, and the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum.
Ella Katrovasová is an architect, researcher, and journalist based in Prague whose work explores the relationship between the built environment, cultural memory, and ecological transformation. Working across research, critical writing, exhibitions, and public programming, she investigates how the built environment influences and reflects broader political, social, and environmental processes, with a particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe.
Ella has a background in art, with solo exhibitions debuted at the Divo Institute in Beja, Portugal and Recompose Gallery in Prague. She currently studies Architecture at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM) in the Future Architectures Platform Studio. Alongside her studies, she has participated in the Goethe-Institut's Young Journalist Programme, publishes for JÁDU Journal, and works with the Centre for Environmental and Technology Ethics in Prague, where she contributes to conferences and public discussions. Since 2024, she has studied Ukrainian and volunteered with the Repair Together collective, rebuilding homes destroyed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Her practice spans architectural research, journalism, photography, exhibitions, and speculative design. Recent work investigates the architecture of play, folk magic in the Anthropocene, urban rituals, material cultures, and more-than-human ecologies through essays, installations, public interventions, and collaborative research.
