Regional Co-operation for Cultural Heritage Development
რეგიონალური თანამშრომლობა კულტურული მემკვიდრეობის განვითარებისათვის
Տարածաշրջանային համագործակցություն հանուն մշակութային ժառանգության զարգացման
Національна політика щодо культурної спадщини
Mədəni irsin inkişaf Etdimilməsi üçün regional əməkdaşlıq
Рэгіянальнае супрацоўніцтва ў мэтах развіцця культурнай спадчыны
 
E- Journal №2
Architectural Heritage
Some Problems of the Legal Framework of the Restoration and Reconstruction of Kyiv’s Architectural Landmarks

Yuriy Losytsky
architect


While it preserves a material reflection of times past, an architectural environment inevitably has an impact on the future, passing down our ancestors’ aesthetic preferences, way of thinking, temperament, cultural values and traditions to the coming generations on a subconscious level. The struggle of competing ideologies not only drives history but also gives rise to attempts to rewrite it and even alter its print in the material environment. Any arbitrary distortion of material history, and that of built environment in particular, can only be classified as barbarous mutilation of a living being, and bitter memories of such criminal acts last a long time, maybe forever.

This short article touches upon some topical issues of conserving, restoring and recovering the footprints of history in Kyiv’s architectural environment.

Its eventful past has left Kyiv an architectural heritage which, apart from historic buildings of greater or lesser value and degree of preservation, contains painful memories about the wanton destruction of many remarkable buildings which had been the pride of the national heritage for a long time. The disfigurement or loss of historic buildings depletes an urban environment of its character and historic spirit, substituting the current fruits of the primary accumulation of capital for the imprint of the sophisticated and highly artistic culture of the early 20th century.

Unlike many other cities, Kyiv’s architectural heritage is very uneven as far as its chronology is concerned, reflecting a long history of alternating periods of prosperity and decay. The problems with the legal framework of conserving and reconstructing Kyiv’s historical heritage stem from the current status of society’s development, its economic situation, mentality, and cultural level. These factors ultimately determine the relationship between the utilitarian qualities of the city as a “machine for living” and its image as a masterpiece of architecture and town planning.

Kyiv’s architectural heritage can be divided into three large groups of buildings:

1. The most cherished and the least numerous are churches dating to the 11th-13th centuries. Refurbished in the baroque style at a later date, they still bear evidence to the glorious era of Kyiv Rus and Kyiv’s role as the “mother of Rus Cities.” Almost an equal place in the public consciousness belongs to the churches and monasteries built in the so called Hetmanate era (the period of Ukraine’s relative autonomy as part of Muscovy, later the Russian Empire, in the 17th-18th centuries). All of them (that is, those which have survived the total destruction of “religious cult structures” in the 1930s) are listed as historic heritage sites of national significance and protected by the law against any unprofessional intrusion. For example, any restoration work at these sites requires a special license and a number of approvals from the heritage protection authorities.

These architectural landmarks are all public property. Most of them are state-run museums or churches that have been provided by the state to religious communities for use only, and in some cases they are both. As a rule, they have been restored with government money and are maintained in a more or less satisfactory condition, although the funding is irregular.

For centuries, these buildings have remained intact as their surroundings changed from the wooden mansions which were typical of Kyiv before the mid-19th century to the densely built-up neighbourhoods of stone and brick houses three to six stories high that formed the city’s core beginning from the late 19th century. They have been, are and will be a kind of reference points for urban planning, embodying, as they do, the ancient age and depth of the historic roots of Kyiv and the country at large. These very few surviving landmarks will also remind us about the years of terror, famine and repressions for a long time.

2. The second group of Kyiv’s buildings of historic and architectural interest is comprised of numerous residential and industrial buildings of the latter half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Their historic value came to the public eye not long ago and, perhaps, it is not fully yet understood. Most of these buildings have only recently been entered on the heritage register or its “waiting list” – the so called newly discovered heritage sites. Under the law, this group, too, is protected against arbitrary rebuilding. However, what looks like reliable legal protection, in fact presents a serious problem.

The reason is that the current legislation applies the same health, fire safety and other state construction standards to historic and newly erected buildings. The building code is in conflict with heritage laws: some of its requirements are expressly prohibited by the national law on restoration, and, vice versa, a number of current restoration guidelines may hinder the commissioning of a building erected in full compliance with the effective building code.

For example, a residential building with wooden floors which have rotted over 150 years may only be restored using incombustible (and therefore heavier) materials. As a result, the floors must be replaced and the foundations strengthened. In another example, if a downtown residential building is to be converted to a public one (an office centre or a hotel), additional escape routes must be arranged, which is impossible to do without changing the historic aspect of the building.

The applicable legislation does not in any way distinguish between the urban planning/construction standards for historic and newly built-up areas. This is why the vast majority of the historic city centre neighbourhoods, built up in the late 19th-early 20th centuries in compliance with the standards of the time, now exist in violation of current fire safety, health and urban planning norms. As long as these buildings are in use, there are few problems, but as soon as they need to be renovated, the conflict of the state building code and restoration rules and regulations causes a standstill.

In this situation, it is impossible to simply restore a building to its original look using original structural elements. As a result, many remarkable buildings in the very centre of Kyiv have stood in ruins for decades. After their natural death, they will be struck off the heritage list and the problem for the potential developer will also cease to exist.

A partial way out of this stalemate is suggested by the recently adopted procedure of determining the so called “protection object,” under which conservation restrictions are confined to a certain part of the building – for example, its front façade. The fact that this is not a mandatory rule, however, makes it necessary to have each such case approved by the heritage authorities – something that cannot be regarded as a positive development.

3. The third group consists of an even greater number of the same kind of 19th-20th century public, residential or industrial buildings which support the historic aspect of the environment but have not yet been entered on the heritage list for one reason or another (for example, the lack of a building passport). Buildings in this category are not under any protection. Unfortunately, the notion of “background buildings” as an intermediate class between those of special architectural or historic interest and ordinary houses and which need only have their exterior and scale preserved, has recently disappeared from the Ukrainian legislation. By and large, these are old apartment houses, some of them quite imposing, which still dominate the urban core and have a great aesthetic potential. During the rebuilding of this kind of structures, there is nothing to limit the customer’s wishes, and so preserving their historic appearance is often a problem and the city’s historic built-up environment continues to degrade.

Just like an artist’s palette limited to black and white, the division of historic buildings into “monuments” and “non-monuments” without intermediate gradations does not create the legislative leverage needed to preserve the traditional appearance of a historic built-up environment.

Enforcing the regimes in so-called “protected areas” and “restricted construction areas” (each of these two categories is divided into subcategories 1-3) is an enormous problem. Any works in these areas require consent from the heritage authorities. If the height and style restrictions set for a restricted construction or protected area need to be bypassed, a separate “historical and urban-planning validation” is developed for that particular site and approved by the appropriate authority. Gross violations of the protection regime are then set in stone, reflecting the lawlessness of the era of primary accumulation of capital in architectural forms.

4. The feasibility and practicability of reconstruction remains the most controversial issue of the city’s architectural heritage.

In essence, the sites of lost architectural monuments are monuments, too, evoking as they do memories not only of the destruction of a building but also of the bloody struggle of a new cult against its predecessor, the police terror, the demolition of churches, the repressions, the government-engineered famines, and the millions of lives lost in the war.

The overwhelming majority of the structures which disappeared during the 1930s would have belonged to the most valuable cultural monuments of national significance.

To cite an example, 202 monuments dating to the times of Ancient Rus have been preserved or discovered in the course of excavations all over the entire territory of that powerful medieval state – an area now within the borders of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Poland[1]. Another 45 are known to us from written sources but have not been found. This means that in the 250 years from its conversion to Christianity in 989 to the Tatar invasion in 1240 there were only some 250 stone structures built in all of Ancient Rus. Of these, only 16 remain above ground level in Ukraine (five of them in Kyiv). Even if we add some structures dating from later times, for example those listed by Titus (Tyt) Hewryk[2] in his catalogue with a map by Liudmyla Protsenko, we will have only a few additional structures in Kyiv.

Of these outstanding monuments, not only more than a half has been lost, some of the most outstanding landmarks in Ukraine – precisely those which embodied the Ukrainian identity – were destroyed in the 1930s. Their violent loss has been carved in the memory of several generations.

A list of the twelve largest structures demolished in Kyiv gives a clear idea of the scale of the destruction:

  1. The Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves dating to the 11th century (destroyed in 1941, reconstructed in 2001).
  2. The Cathedral of the Theophany with a bell tower, 17th century (destroyed in the 1930s).
  3. St. Nicholas’ Military Cathedral with a bell tower, 17th century (destroyed in the 1930s).
  4. St. Michael’s Cathedral with a bell tower, 12th century (destroyed in 1937, reconstructed in 1999)
  5. Sts. Peter and Paul’s Church of the early 17th century with a bell tower of the 18th century (destroyed in the 1930s).
  6. The Church of the Theotokos of Pyrohoshcha dating to the 12th century (destroyed in the 1930s, reconstructed in 1998).
  7. Three Holy Hierarchs’ (St. Basil’s) Church dating to the 12th century (destroyed in the 1930s).
  8. The bell tower of St. Cyril’s Monastery of the 18th century (destroyed in the 1930s)
  9. The Church of the Resurrection of Christ (destroyed in the 1930s).
  10. The Church of St. Nicholas the Kind dating to 1820s (destroyed in the 1930s).
  11. The Church of Sts. Constantine and Helena of the 19th century with a bell tower dating to the 18th century (destroyed in the 1930s).
  12. All Saints’ Church in the Shchekavytsia Cemetery (destroyed in the 1930s)

Today, Kyiv’s architectural heritage is a very sad sight. Some of the most important churches, especially those dating from the time of Hetman Mazepa, have been destroyed, the sites of many of them built up, and the city-forming frame which they once formed has been partly lost.

Unlike the Western European countries, Poland, or Russia, where efforts to rebuild lost architectural monuments were started immediately after World War II, the rebuilding of the structures demolished in Ukraine under Stalin did not begin until after the proclamation of Ukraine’s independence in 1991. Even in the last decades of Communist rule, the rebuilding of historic monuments was bitterly opposed by the authorities.[3]

At the core of the practicability and appropriateness issue is the attitude to replicas in architecture and their role in the cultural heritage of a nation. Undervalued though it is, the role of copies in art and culture has always been enormous. It is thanks to copies that many masterpieces of art are known to us today, and it is no exaggeration to say that humanity has preserved a great cultural wealth in this manner[4].

Unfortunately, under the current Ukrainian legislation a reconstructed building is not regarded as an architectural monument in any sense. As a result, the correctness of reconstruction and the degree of faithfulness to the original are not protected by the law or supervised by any technical inspection authority. The design of a reconstruction project is on the same footing as that of new construction and does not require the architect to have a restorer’s license or qualifications certificate. Under these conditions, an architectural replica has no protection against arbitrary renovation or other changes to its exterior and interior.

Admittedly, a certain turn to a more positive attitude toward reconstruction is gradually taking place in the minds of not only laymen but also practitioners. For example, a large exhibition dedicated to architectural monuments reconstructed from scratch all over the world, Geschichte der Rekonstruktion - Konstruktion der Geschichte (History of Reconstruction – Reconstruction of History), was held in the museum of the Technical University of Munich in the summer of 2010. Kyiv’s reconstructed churches participated in that event and received critical acclaim. It should also be noted that the magnificent Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia, built in the 1560s and completely destroyed in 1990s, was reconstructed in 2004 and entered on the UNESCO World Heritage List, becoming the first non-authentic structure to be given protected status by UNESCO[5].

Summing up, the major drawbacks of Ukraine’s heritage protection legislation may be listed as follows:

First, the absence of special standards for the restoration and reconstruction of historic buildings in the State Building Code.

Second, the lack of an interim category “background buildings,” which would protect the historic exteriors of many buildings and at the same time make it possible to renovate and rebuild them inside.

Third, the lack of expert supervision over the accuracy and professionalism of the reconstruction of non-surviving buildings.

And fourth, the lack of the requirement that all parties must observe restrictions established for restricted construction and protected areas, and the on-going practice of violating existing protection regimes wherever possible.

 



[1] P.A. Rappoport. Russkaya arkhitektura Х-ХІІІ vv. Katalog pamyatnikov (Russian Architecture of the 10th-13th Centuries. A Catalog of Monuments). Arkheologiya SSSR (Archeology in the USSR), issue Е1-47. Leningrad, Nauka Publishers, 1982. P. 132.

[2] Tyt Hewryk. Vtracheni pamiatky Kyieva (Kyiv’s Lost Landmarks) New York – Kyiv, 1991.

[3] Of the many monuments destroyed in Kyiv in the 1930s, the first to be reconstructed was the Fountain of Samson (1982). However, the cross was missing from the hand of the statue of St. Andrew the First-Called on top of the rotunda.

[4] Losytsky, Yu.H. Do pytannia arkhitekturnykh kopiy u vidtvorenni natsionalnoho arkhitekturnoho spadku // Pratsi NDI pamiatkookhoronnykh doslidzhen’ (Regarding Architectural Replicas in the Reconstrcution of National Architectural Heritage. The Works of the Research Institute of Heritage Protection Studies – Кyiv, ArtEk, 2005. – Issue 1. P. 69-79.

[5] «Geschichte der Rekonstruktion - Konstruktion der Geschichte» Prestel Verlag, Munchen Berlin London New York, 2010. P. 328.

The Cathedral of the Theophany
St. Nicholas’ Military Cathedral
Historic houses of Kiev
St. Michael’s Cathedral
Church of the Nativity. restored 2004
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