After the Russian invasion that few believed would actually happen erupted just outside its eastern border, Poland scrambled to organize relief for the more than 2 million Ukrainians who have sought refuge in the country. The border town of Chełm—population 60,000—was seeing thousands of people coming in every day.
With the initial reception point at a town sports center quickly becoming overcrowded, the city’s mayor secured space formerly occupied by the supermarket Tesco, vacant after the British company shut down its Polish operation.
Trammer called around to see which Polish city would work with them to implement the system. Jerzy Łątka, a onetime student of Ban and an architect who works with paper structures, secured free materials from cardboard manufacturer Corex. Chełm had the perfect space, and the city worked with a team of architects and volunteers to set up the partitions in the giant, nearly 40,000-square-foot hall of the former supermarket, dividing it up to provide a more intimate environment for refugees exhausted from war and a long, precarious journey. The center opened on March 12, with 319 cardboard-and-cloth cubicles.
A little over a week into the center’s operations, Natasha and Sasha, 36-year-old twins from the cities of Kharkiv and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, set up camp in one of the cubicles. When I met with them, they apologized for the mess inside, as one would with a home. There was no mess, only towels hanging from the middle beam, and backpacks lined up on cots.
They came to Poland with Sasha’s three kids, ages 3, 7, and 10. “We’ve only been here eight hours but the kids finally calmed down,” Natasha said. “Before that, they were afraid of even a knock on the door, scared as if it was an explosion.” They had spent weeks in a basement, sheltering from the fighting. “There were tears of joy when we came here,” she said.
Lyudmila, 72, came with her 12-year-old granddaughter Viktoria, who was lying on a cot inside one of the cubicles playing a game on her phone. They’re from Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, respectively, both in eastern Ukraine. Viktoria hasn’t been able to eat anything, Lyudmila said. But she finally calmed down a bit. “At least here she sleeps,” she said.
The partitions are made of eight long substantial cardboard tubes (around 7 feet long), with large holes drilled into them. Smaller tubes serve as connectors, secured with strips of duct tape. A piece of fabric is thrown over the top beam, secured with safety pins, and that’s it. Setting up one cubicle can take as little as 90 seconds.
The Polish team made a detailed video tutorial with best practices to make the process smoother for any future users, and has sent the system to be set up in Lviv in western Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing from more dangerous areas of the country. Some partitions have also been set up at a train station in Wrocław, Poland.
The bulk of the first response to the massive refugee crisis Poland is experiencing came from everyday people, who dedicated their time and various skills—including design—to the effort. Volunteers from all over the country and abroad helped set up the partitions in Chełm (including even Ban, himself).
The partition system is a work in progress. Initially, the fabric for the cubicle walls was just whatever the team could get, making for a colorful labyrinth. But the fire department demanded that the cloth be fire-retardant, so the originals were swapped out—and the fabric walls from the center of the hall were removed to provide a clearly visible evacuation route. Still, there are about 100 two- and four-person fully curtained cubicles in the space, which still bears a faint food-like scent of a supermarket.
The setup in “Tesco,” which became shorthand for the reception hall, is a unique one. While there are no tented refugee encampments in Poland, and Poles have taken in tens of thousands of Ukrainians into their homes, many of the refugees spend their first nights in the country sleeping on the floors of train stations, babies and pets in tow. Poland is dotted with shelters set up in empty shopping malls, expo halls, and gyms. Many are massive, cavernous spaces with hundreds of cots lined up side by side. People have been staying in some of these warehouse-like conditions for weeks.
The team behind the Chełm reception center hopes to give more of them some small pockets of privacy and is in talks with other cities to expand the partition project.