Lina Bondarenko

Lina Bondarenko was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and raised in San Francisco, CA. She is a graduate student of Architecture and Urbanism Research at MIT. She considers how the geomorphology of landscape historically has influenced human geography and is confronted by modern human urbanization and the exploitative value systems of a post-industrial world.  

Her research platform, Steep Urbanist, produces live Happenings that trace the attempts modern infrastructure and urban planning to tame steep terrain and control the forces of nature, while celebrating anomalies in the spatial phenomena of mountains and valleys through experimental movement practice and dance. She is interested in how art, time-based media, and participatory performance can ignite conversations around the meaning and mythology of the ways humans collaborate with their environment, animating narratives of the deep past to orient the long future. 

Prior to starting studies at MIT, she practiced architecture and urban planning internationally and taught design at a public highschool.