Investing in the Future: CLUST and Freedom Holding Corp. Create Smart Shelters at Ukrainian Universities

Ukrainian students face a double threat: physical danger and academic loss. Cancelled classes today often mean stalled careers tomorrow: gaps in skills and research portfolios, lower employability, and widened inequality. Smart shelters that combine coworking functionality with civil-defense protection directly address these risks. They create conditions for learning that aren’t only safe but also comfortable, helping bring students back into the classroom. This is how the CLUST SPACE project defends both safety and future talent.

CLUST SPACE: Safe and Human-centered Smart Shelters for Students

The architecture of smart shelters, which meets the standards of the State Emergency Service, emphasizes flexibility, zoning, and ergonomics: modular layouts can be easily transitioned from lectures to group work in minutes. Even the ceilings work — noise-insulating panels hung beneath them cut ambient hum. The most popular nook proves the point: a one- or two-person room — a quiet pod for calls and deep focus. With backup power, reliable internet, ventilation, and water, the space stays operational during blackouts and air-raid alerts — keeping students safe without sacrificing learning quality or comfort. Inclusivity is built in from the start: dedicated areas for students with limited mobility ensure the space works for everyone.

In calm periods, the shelters operate as modern campus spaces for classes, exams, coworking, and student events. During alerts, they shift into protected shelter mode with continuous access. In this way, developed with the support of the venture builder CLUST and initiated by the company’s founder, Ruslan Tymofieiev, CLUST SPACE converts university basements into fully autonomous education hubs.

The Impact and Results of CLUST SPACE

In its first year, CLUST SPACE KYIV recorded over 72,000 visits, reflecting steady use for classes, exams, coworking, and student events — as well as open access during air-raid alerts. Independent energy, water, and ventilation systems keep the site operational through blackouts, ensuring lessons and essential campus activities continue when the grid fails. Over the past year, the space has also welcomed a wide range of guests, including ambassadors from different countries, cabinet ministers, writers, and scientists.

In July 2025, the project got the Red Dot Design Award, which signals more than aesthetic merit. An international jury recognized the design’s social impact and technical rigor, establishing CLUST SPACE as a global marker of Ukrainian resilience and bolstering confidence in scaling the model across campuses. With its modular design, CLUST SPACE is more than a study hall. It supports both learning and recreation and also hosts major events — from chess tournaments to a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky and representatives of the Junior Academy of Sciences.

Freedom Holding Corp. as a Strategic Partner in the Charitable Project

Freedom Holding Corp., an investment bank, is the main donor of the CLUST SPACE shelters in Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and Oles Honchar Dnipro National University. Its anchor funding de-risks construction and accelerates delivery, converting certified basements into fully equipped spaces so universities can return to in-person instruction as quickly as possible.

Freedom Holding Corp. is meticulous about partnerships because it focuses on projects with real, measurable impact. The company, led by CEO Timur Turlov, partnered with CLUST SPACE because it supports projects of strategic importance to Ukraine and its society—and pursues a clear mission: bringing Ukrainian students back from abroad. Freedom Holding Corp. measures impact using utilization rates, counts of academic events, preserved instruction hours, and emergency uptime. Seeing the positive results of the work, it also plans to extend the cooperation by supporting CLUST SPACE’s third smart shelter at Odesa Mechnikov National University.