Peace Village, the humanitarian project clad with Isopan panels, wins ANPE award

MEAN – European Movement for Nonviolent Action is a specific peace and humanitarian aid project in Ukraine, initiated in Italy by the network "For a New Welfare" together with 35 other organizations. The movement intervened twenty kilometers from Kyiv with the construction of the first "Peace Village", a complex of three 100 sqm heated shelters, to provide a communal space of dignity and hope for the populations and with the ultimate goal of providing a replicable climate refuge in war zones and borders for the Ukrainian population resisting the Russian siege.

The Peace Village was designed by architect Mario Cucinella in a shape reminiscent of the peace symbol and was realized thanks to the contribution of Italian companies and universities. Among these was Manni Group, which strongly believed in the project and supported it with a financial donation and the free supply of Isopan panels for the wall and façade coverings of the shelters. In this operation, the technological design of the envelope was proposed by the VELUXlab research group.

During the 6th National Conference on Rigid Polyurethane Foam, doctoral candidates Grazia Marrone and Shuqi Li from the VELUXlab research group (ABC Department) at Politecnico di Milano presented the project "Incremental Systems with Polyurethane Sandwich Panels," which received the first prize for the best applied research projects carried out by students or young researchers.

The project showcases the Peace Village case study, which, in emergency contexts like that in Ukraine, addresses the need to provide quick and energy-efficient solutions while at the same time imagining proposals that consider scenarios of recovery and reconstruction of affected areas. The technologies used for the construction of the buildings are an important element of the project: cold-formed steel for the load-bearing structure and polyurethane sandwich panels for thermal insulation. These two technologies, integrating, create a sustainable system that optimizes material use, ensures broad architectural flexibility, technological-performance implementability, and dismantlability.

Thanks to these characteristics, the buildings of the Peace Village have already been repositioned from their initial location and now serve a new purpose as spaces dedicated to the education of children and adolescents in the Perhemoy Park of Brovary.

Given the success of the Peace Village experience, the winners donated the prize, amounting to 2000 euros, to the MEAN Project to continue supporting humanitarian aid in Ukraine.