Vic­to­ria Yakusha is an emerg­ing Ukrain­ian design­er who is mak­ing waves on the inter­na­tion­al scene with the launch of a new fur­ni­ture and light­ing col­lec­tion avail­able through FAINA, her show­room in Antwerp, Belgium.

Yakusha’s projects oscil­late between archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­ors and prod­ucts, and a phi­los­o­phy she calls ​“Live Design” – which con­nects her to nature, eth­nic roots and the cul­tur­al her­itage of her native coun­try. ​“Live Design is about con­nec­tion to our roots and our land,” says the archi­tect. ​“I trans­late my design through liv­ing, sus­tain­able mate­ri­als and our eco­log­i­cal approach to every­thing we do. It’s also about respect for our her­itage, tra­di­tions and history.”

In 2014, Yakusha found­ed her design brand, FAINA, right after the Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty in Ukraine, when cit­i­zens faced the ques­tion about who their peo­ple were as a nation. ​“I want­ed to tell the world about our cul­ture, tra­di­tions, and let every­one feel the spir­it of Ukraine – its very soul.” So, she start­ed inte­grat­ing Ukrain­ian sym­bols in her work and sup­port­ing local crafts­peo­ple. Par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing in the design of objects, Yakusha believes that curios­i­ty for ani­mism – native to her ances­tors – is rel­e­vant today: ​“I believe in the souls of our objects, the spir­i­tu­al essence of things,” she says, and eight years after the Rev­o­lu­tion, it’s become the focus of her brand and the new gallery in Antwerp. ​“It’s one of the core ele­ments of what we call Live Design – cre­at­ing some­thing that is alive. Some­thing with a spirit.”

Yakusha first opened the FAINA show­room in Brus­sels in 2019, and planned to move it to a big­ger space in the city cen­ter, but was still search­ing for the right space six months lat­er. One day on a vis­it to Antwerp with her fam­i­ly, Yakusha came to the real­iza­tion that this north­ern Bel­gian city, with a strong fash­ion and design tra­di­tion, should be her loca­tion. ​“Our gallery should be in Antwerp,” she said. ​“On the way home, I found a two-sto­ry space in a 500-year-old build­ing with high ceil­ings in the city cen­ter – the exact one I imag­ined FAINA’s home to be.”

The new gallery on the pic­turesque Keiz­er­straat reveals the essence of its Live Design phi­los­o­phy, where each piece is a wit­ness to his­to­ry and emanates the strong spir­it of Moth­er Earth. Prim­i­tive and arche­typ­al forms, Ukrain­ian tra­di­tion­al craft and sus­tain­able mate­ri­als all shape the min­i­mal­ist, yet spir­it­ed design lan­guage of the brand. ​“All hand­craft­ed items have a soul – their own ener­gy,” Yakusha says. ​“And it hap­pens because some­one puts their emo­tions and their own strength into it. There’s no such thing in mass-pro­duced objects.” She points out that, for a long time, crafts in Ukraine were dying off, and she feels a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­serve the tra­di­tion of mak­ing and pass­ing them on. ​“We work with arti­sans from all over Ukraine and pro­duce all FAINA objects in Ukraine,” she says. ​“I love this syn­er­gy of mod­ern design and his­to­ry – when you know that some­thing was made with the same tech­nique that our ances­tors used long ago.” For exam­ple, her tapes­tries are hand woven on an ancient loom with the tra­di­tion­al Ukrain­ian craft ​‘lizhykarst­vo’ (wool weav­ing) tech­nique, com­mon only to one region in Ukraine. For their glass, they use a tech­nique of free blow­ing – ​‘gut­nyt­st­vo’ in Ukrain­ian – which is more than 1000 years old. ​“An arti­san doesn’t use molds in the process, so the shape is guid­ed by the nature of its mate­r­i­al,” she explains.

Her phi­los­o­phy applies to how she designs inte­ri­ors, too. The Iste­ty­ka Eatery in Kyiv, for exam­ple, is Yakusha’s vision of mod­ern Ukrain­ian design – one that is lacon­ic and pure, but har­ness­es a strong pres­ence. The walls were fin­ished with clay, as Ukraini­ans used to do in tra­di­tion­al homes, and fur­ni­ture and décor are hand­craft­ed by local arti­sans. ​“When I work with a space, I love to mix and jux­ta­pose mate­ri­als, tex­tures and pieces from dif­fer­ent times,” she says. ​“This is what brings a space to life for me. The space is visu­al­ly clean, but very lay­ered and warm.”