A residential building on Stryiska Street in Lviv, Ukraine was targeted by a Russian Kalibr missile last week, costing the lives of 10 people and 45 injured. The July 6 attack destroyed two floors, destroying around 60 apartments in the historic building.
The building complex on Stryiska Street is representative of early architectural functionalism, designed in 1925 by Lviv architect Mikhal Ryba and built in 1930. Intended as cheap and affordable housing during the interwar period, the complex has a unique oval shape with Art Deco design elements. , such as metal door partitions adorned with flowers, curved handrails, arched windows and wooden doors.
Myroslava Liakhovych, a researcher in interwar Lviv architecture and a researcher at the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, said Hyperallergic that the architectural ensemble is a rare example of social housing in the city.
“It was built in the period of transition from Art Deco and neoclassical forms to functionalism that began in the 1920s,” Liakhovych said. “The first residents of the building were professors of higher educational institutions, including the Lviv Polytechnic, as well as poor intellectuals.”
The building was not completely destroyed, but the restoration process can be difficult. According to Liakhovych, the attack resulted in the irrevocable loss of authentic architectural elements such as stucco, carpentry elements and decorations. Replacing them with exact replicas seems impossible.
“It is a major concern how this building will be restored given the lack of funds and the shortage of specialists,” Liakhovych said. “The number of renovators specializing in the modernist era of the 1920s and 1930s in Lviv is very rare.”
Following the attack, UNESCO issued a statement condemning the shelling of the buffer zone of the World Heritage site of “Lviv – the entire historic center”, calling it a “violation of the World Heritage Convention and of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property”. property in the event of armed conflict”. Founded in 1254, the historic city center of Lviv is list as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with its distinct parts of medieval urban topography, the earliest of which dates back to the 5th century and has been preserved virtually intact, as well as many Baroque and later buildings.
In response to UNESCO’s statement, Mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovyi reprimand the organization for having hesitated “to name the terrorist country” responsible for the attack. “Furthermore, Russia is [still] member of the organization’s executive committee,” Sadovyi added. Ukraine’s Culture and Information Policy Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko joined the critics, saying Ukraine expects “more than just deep concern” from UNESCO.
Liakhovych, lamenting UNESCO’s lack of decisive action to hold Russia accountable, calls the response “typical” for international organizations. Yet the question is whether his answer will have an impact on the future process of restoring damaged heritage.
“Could UNESCO subsidize the repair? Otherwise, there is no constructive information in this statement as a whole,” she commented.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, 623 cultural heritage sites and objects were destroyed or damaged by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on May 15, 2023.
