Future of the past

Heritage, Oblivion, and Recovery in Wartime Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has given an unexpected opportunity to revalue its own heritage. In a country that, due to centuries of cultural erasure from external forces and repeated wars, has often chosen the path of oblivion toward its own heritage, there is now a growing awareness of the importance of what remains – the things that are unique to our culture and history. In the realities of war, it also appears more feasible to refurbish and give new meaning to existing buildings than to construct new ones. Women have emerged as a driving force behind these transformations, taking on more responsibility and more space for heritage and recovery projects, as many men are on the front lines.
This paper presents interviews with five women, mostly architects, who are engaged in heritage preservation or recovery projects at various scales:

Prof. Dr. Svitlana Smolenska 
Historian and Professor of Architecture from Kharkiv, a member of ICOMOS Ukraine. Alongside her historical research about modernism, she is actively involved in advocating for Kharkiv’s iconic constructivist Derzhprom building (1920s), a constructivist landmark, to receive UNESCO World Heritage status.

Anna Iakovlieva 
Architect and leader of a volunteer initiative to rescue a wooden villa by Eduard Bradtman (1900s) from ruin, with future restoration potential, in Pushcha-Vodytsia; coordinating weekly documentation, cleaning, and protection efforts with a predominantly female volunteer team.

Ievgeniia Gubkina 
Ukrainian architect, architectural and urban historian, and curator, who focuses on 20th-century architecture and urban planning in Ukraine. She is the co-founder of the NGO Urban Forms Center, author of several books on Soviet-Ukrainian architecture, she teaches at The Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London.

Daria Korba 
Architect and head of the NGO “Renovation Map”. Since 2019, the Renovation Map team has been working to preserve architectural heritage.

Kateryna Polishchuk 
Co‑founder and Acting Director of the Gurtum Charitable Foundation; a finance specialist with over ten years of experience in marketing, volunteering since 2022 and overseeing heritage‑preservation projects at the foundation.
Through five interviews, the paper offers a mixture of theoretical reflection and practical experience and how processes of memory and oblivion shape architectural strategies for heritage recovery in wartime Ukraine, revealing design as a tool for resilience and cultural continuity.

At the corner of Volodymyrska and Bohdana Khmelnytskoho Streets stands a monumental mosaic panel, “Ukrainian Song”, that covers the entire height of the blind wall of the historic building at Khmelnytskoho Street 26, the former “Ermitage” Hotel from 1905. Two young men play musical instruments while a young woman dances, a whole scene captured in coloured smalta glass. 

The panel was created in 1967 by the Ukrainian artist Stepan Kyrychenko, one of the last remaining mosaics by this author, scattered around the city.
Though I passed this corner hundreds of times, I never truly noticed the piece –not due to its quality, but because of my ignorance of its value, a socially conditioned inattention, and a decades-long neglect of everyday heritage. Years go by, and the artwork, along with the name of its creator, slowly falls into oblivion, despite several attempts by citizens and activists to save it.
While the neglect of such works is often attributed to their status as Soviet “dissonant heritage”¹ or an “unwanted past”², this explanation is not enough. This tension between historical value and contemporary indifference raises the question of how architectural objects fall into oblivion, and what active or passive forms of forgetting shape their fate.
In Kyiv, as in many post‑socialist cities, oblivion is not simply the natural fading of memory, but a set of cultural, political, and institutional practices that determine which buildings survive and which quietly disappear.

To understand this selective erasure, it is important to place the phenomenon within the broader discourse on the post-socialist environment. As Mihaylov and Ilchenko³ observe in their analysis of “post-utopian spaces”, the architectural and artistic legacy of the Soviet era undergoes a continuous re-evaluation. In Ukraine, this process is even more sharpened by decommunization policies. Modernist heritage is frequently pushed into oblivion not only due to an explicit ideological hostility toward the totalitarian past, but because its original collective and utopian framework no longer exists.
Heritage buildings often end up in private hands, where their owners see them not as cultural assets, but as obstacles to maximizing profit from their plots. Their value is supported mostly within activist and academic circles.

The mosaic on Volodymyrska Street is not an exception but a symptom of a broader condition: weakened heritage institutions, the lack of historical knowledge in society, difficult and politically charged heritage, and an urban culture accustomed to overlooking whatever does not fit dominant narratives of progress, national identity, or the commercialization of the city. Following the regime changes of the 1990s, such public projects, large-scale industrial territories, public urban spaces, and mass housing underwent a profound decline in the first instance. Hirt⁴ frames this transition as a radical rupture defined by state incapacity to maintain these spaces, leading to total privatization and commercialization modeled after Western capitalist development. Rather than viewing the post-socialist transition as a complete spatial break, Zarecor⁵ introduces the framework of the “socialist scaffold” to demonstrate how the physical and systemic frameworks of the socialist city endure as foundational structures that shape modern neoliberal urban development. Thus, the crisis of the socialist scaffold unfolds on two distinct levels: the physical and functional erosion of public space and the ideological transformation of its foundational framework through commercial adaptation. Where municipal regulations and protections remain weak, market speculation violently disrupts urban continuity, allowing speculative plot values to dismantle shared spatial memory quietly. And, as Gamboni⁶ notes, a lack of public interest often leads directly to destruction.
In recent years, the destruction caused by the current war has reversed some of these dynamics. It has sparked numerous initiatives aimed at preserving,

re‑evaluating, and reintegrating layers of the past that had long remained undervalued.
For this paper, five expert interviews were selected to serve as both empirical evidence and a form of collaborative knowledge production. The experts from different fields within architectural practice, academia, and heritage offer insights into endangered historic sites across various scales in the realities of war; all are directly engaged with the preservation of the threatened locations. The interview questions are deliberately non-uniform and tailored to each participant, reflecting the choice to document conditions in medias res, thereby allowing each expert to highlight the specific complications affecting their work. The selection of interviewees from the field of heritage preservation is a deliberate choice by the authors to foreground the structural crisis of architectural conservation from the frontline of civic resistance. 

Historian and Professor of Architecture from Kharkiv, a member of ICOMOS Ukraine. Alongside her historical research about modernism, she is actively involved in advocating for Kharkiv’s iconic constructivist Derzhprom⁷ building (1920s), a constructivist landmark, to receive UNESCO World Heritage status.
Written interview conducted on April 19, 2026. 
This interview examines the large-scale, state-owned modernist complex, illustrating the process of international heritage recognition according the protocol of UNESCO in the realities of the ongoing war.

Q: How has the war influenced public and institutional attitudes toward modernist heritage in Ukraine?  
At the moment, it is difficult to judge this. People’s thoughts are occupied by war and survival in difficult, extreme conditions. However, there is a popular saying: “We do not value what we have; when we lose it, we mourn”. We were rich in both the heritage of avant‑garde modernism of the 1920s-early 1930s – often distorted by numerous later reconstructions – and in entire residential districts of typical development from the 1960s-1980s, the period of postwar Modernism, which appeared to most people as monotonous and devoid of any advantages. I do not doubt that after the end of the war, the destruction of modernist heritage will lead to a reassessment of values in public consciousness. I am encouraged by the fact that a young generation of Ukrainian architects, as well as Ukrainian students – including those who found themselves studying at foreign universities – are choosing the study, recovery, and restoration of modernist objects in Ukraine as topics for academic research or diploma projects. Last year, two students from European architecture schools – one from Berlin and one from Milan – contacted me for a consultation specifically on this topic. The restoration of Ukraine’s modernist heritage is becoming prestigious at the European level. 

Q: What difficulties arise in the protection of modernist architecture in a society where the historical memory of this period is contested?  
Today, any mention of the Soviet past has become politically and culturally unpopular. Everything “Soviet” is often perceived and presented in an entirely negative light. The issue of preserving modernist architectural heritage remains highly controversial, especially in the context of the current state policy of decommunization. Representatives of the authorities and some of my colleagues are afraid to speak out in defense of the architectural heritage of this period. 
But was architectural avant‑garde in Ukraine purely a “Soviet” phenomenon, or an imported Western idea? In fact, interwar modernist buildings around the world – industrial structures and complexes, residential districts, public buildings – are material evidence of the advent of the industrial era in the history of civilization. This has long been recognized and acknowledged in the West. As early as 2005, ICOMOS established a scientific committee – ISC20C – dedicated to the study, protection, and promotion of twentieth‑century architectural and urban heritage. I have been an expert on this committee for over a decade. Even earlier, in 1988, DOCOMOMO International was founded, focusing on the documentation and preservation of twentieth‑century modernist architecture. Today, DOCOMOMO has national working groups in many countries. I was fortunate to work closely for two years with its president, Uta Pottgiesser, and personally witness the strong global interest in preserving modernist heritage and the wide geographical scope of its distribution. I took an active part in the publication of two DOCOMOMO Journals, No. 67⁸ and No. 70⁹, entirely dedicated to modernism in Ukrainian architecture and urbanism. This represents international recognition of our achievements.  
In several countries, modernist objects have already been recognized as national heritage or included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of humanity’s shared cultural legacy: six modernist workers’ settlements in Berlin, the White City in Tel Aviv, the Van Nelle Factory complex in Rotterdam, and 17 architectural works by Le Corbusier located in Argentina, Belgium, Germany, India, France, Switzerland, and Japan.  
We should be proud that Ukraine, already at the stage of modernist development in the 1920s-1930s, was among its leaders, formed part of it, and made its own contribution to the development of the European modern movement. However, the prejudice against modernism that exists in our society, especially within state structures, has historical roots. The fate of the Soviet architectural avant‑garde was tragic: in the early 1930s, it was officially banned, declared “bourgeois”, and subjected to real repression. The facades of unfinished buildings were overgrown with classical details, and already approved constructivist projects were altered or simply destroyed before they could be realized. 
Many objects were destroyed during the Second World War.

Postwar reconstruction of the 1950s in the spirit of neoclassicism further distorted the original appearance of many buildings. Later, during the period of “Khrushchev utilitarianism”, renovations, repairs, and functional expansions led to significant replanning and changes to exteriors and interiors. After Ukraine gained independence, society should have reassessed the remaining modernist heritage. Yet decades of dismissive attitudes toward Soviet avant‑garde architecture continue to shape the mentality of both the public and authorities today. 

Q: What architectural and historical aspects of the Derzhprom building make it a strong candidate for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List? What challenges does this process face, and at what stage is it now? 
At the beginning of last summer, I organized an international round table held in Kharkiv on June 11. Twelve experts participated – leading international specialists and Ukrainian colleagues. The Derzhprom building (fig. 1) was included in Ukraine’s Tentative List for UNESCO World Heritage in 2017. However, inclusion in the Tentative List is only a symbolic gesture indicating intention. 
Inclusion in the main list requires the preparation and submission of substantial justification demonstrating a serious commitment by both local and national authorities to preserve the heritage object. Due to shelling, the Derzhprom building was damaged in autumn 2024. It was important to understand whether this damage could affect its potential nomination. At the round table, we discussed crucial issues such as the preservation of authenticity after wartime damage, the possibility of nomination under the emergency procedure, and the technical and substantive requirements for the nomination dossier. As became clear during discussions with international colleagues, neither recent war‑related damage nor earlier losses – such as missing original windows, plaster, or interior elements – constitute an obstacle. What matters is that these changes are thoroughly documented and that the building’s significance is convincingly demonstrated, both in terms of its remaining physical structure and its broader historical and cultural value. 
International experts emphasized that Derzhprom meets UNESCO criterion (iv) as an outstanding example of early modernist architecture and criterion (vi) due to its strong ideological and historical associations, linked to Kharkiv’s unique role as a center of early Soviet modernism in Ukraine. Information about this discussion is available on the DOCOMOMO International website¹⁰. Currently, Kharkiv colleagues are working on a restoration project for the damaged section of Derzhprom and on the nomination dossier. This is a long and labor‑intensive process, and it is difficult to predict when it will be completed. Nevertheless, Derzhprom will become the first modernist object from Ukraine to be recognized as world cultural heritage. 

Q: How can academic research influence contemporary preservation policy during wartime reconstruction? 
Academic research is a search for indisputable evidence. The more evidence there is, the more justified the demands of the professional community and the public toward authorities regarding heritage preservation. 

Q: From a practical perspective, what are the main difficulties in obtaining UNESCO recognition, and do you have critical remarks about the current procedure?  
Most people in Ukraine perceive UNESCO World Heritage recognition as an award, a prestigious gift, like a medal finally granted for past achievements. Many believe that a rain of international funding from UNESCO will immediately fall upon the monument. Inclusion in the main list means enormous responsibility assumed by local authorities, the state, national NGOs, and the professional community under the scrutiny of the entire world. This responsibility is not temporary – it has extended for decades. This is precisely why Ukrainian officials are often reluctant to nominate sites internationally. They understand that all future actions at the site and within its buffer zone – often large areas in city centers – will be closely monitored by UNESCO experts, professionals, and local activists. 
I believe it is right that the procedure is long and complex. All responsibilities must be discussed in advance, support and usage of programs thoroughly developed, and convincing arguments for the site’s uniqueness presented. There are cases where sites lost their World Heritage status – not because they lost value, but because authorities or communities managed them irresponsibly.

Architect and leader of a volunteer initiative to rescue a wooden villa by Eduard Bradtman (1900s)¹¹ in Pushcha-Vodytsia; coordinating weekly documentation, cleaning, and protection efforts with a predominantly female volunteer team.
Interview conducted on March 29, 2026.  
This case shifts the focus to smaller, vernacular wooden architecture, demonstrating how fragmented ownership, physical deterioration and missing archival records can be overcome through volunteering and collective care.

Q: How did the volunteer initiative to save the “Bradtman dacha” begin, and what personally motivated you to take on this responsibility during the war? 
In fact, “the Bradtman dacha” is the name of the initiative, not of the building itself. The dacha (fig. 2) belonged to the Novikov family, but the name stuck because most of the historic dachas in Pushcha‑Vodytsia were designed by the architect Eduard Bradtman.
I first came there simply as a guest – activists had gathered after a fire which happened after the occupation of the Kyiv region, when almost all residents had gone, and the building was left without care.
At first, other activists wanted to return the dacha to municipal ownership through the courts, but at that time, there was no legal precedent for this. Later, we finally found the owner and gained access to the site. For about half a year, we were just clearing the aftermath of the fire, removing rubbish, collecting carved elements – no one had any experience, and neither did I.

Q: Could you tell us about Pushcha‑Vodytsia and architect Eduard Bradtman? 
Pushcha‑Vodytsia is a unique place. Until 1900, nothing had been built there at all – it was a continuous forest reserve. Then, within one year, 120 dachas were constructed. It was a very carefully planned and regulated ensemble: there was a kind of “design code”, only a few woodcarvers worked in the whole of Kyiv, and only the most prominent architects were allowed to design there – Horodecki, Bradtman, Nikolaiev.
Unlike Sviatoshyn¹², where construction was casual,  Pushcha‑Vodytsia was conceived as a single ensemble. The land plots could only be leased, and nothing could be altered without approval from the city. It is the only dacha settlement (fig. 3) from that period to have preserved its original structure: the same streets, the same spatial composition, and even some wooden pavilions that cannot be found anywhere else in Kyiv. Bradtman was one of the leading architects of Kyiv at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.  He was one of those who introduced Art Nouveau in Kyiv. His fate was very tragic: after the Soviet regime came to power, his life literally disappeared from the archives, which was typical for many representatives of so‑called “bourgeois” professions.

Q: Which architectural or structural elements of the dacha are, in your view, the most valuable, and how do you decide what to save first? 
The most valuable elements are the carvings: balusters, decorative façade details (fig. 4), all those repeating motifs that form the visual identity of Pushcha‑Vodytsia. It is a unique school of woodcarving that existed only in Kyiv.
We try to save everything possible. We have no legal right to dismantle anything before official restoration or emergency works begin. Even critically damaged elements are reinforced, supported, and stabilized. 
When restoration begins, structural elements will be assessed according to whether they can still carry loads. If not, they will be replaced with new ones of the same material and form. Even burned carvings we plan to preserve - replacing only the damaged fragments. 

Ukrainian architect, architectural and urban historian, and curator who focuses on 20th-century architecture and urban planning in Ukraine. She is the co-founder of the NGO Urban Forms Center, author of several books on Soviet-Ukrainian architecture, and teaches at The Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London.  
Interview conducted on April 17, 2026. 
The interview explores the economic factors behind architectural oblivion, particularly land privatization and speculative development, highlighting the role of civic initiatives as form of heritage protection.

Q:  You have written extensively about Soviet modernist and constructivist heritage in Ukraine, long ignored or dismissed as ideologically uncomfortable. In your experience, what causes buildings to fall into oblivion – are these processes always political, or do other mechanisms play a role?  
This is a question I’ve been asked for maybe more than fifteen years, and every time I try to be a bit more critical about the very common explanation that everything happens only for political reasons. 
Everything is political, but I think it’s a simplification to explain the oblivion of Soviet modernist buildings only through ideology or some collective hatred towards the Soviet past. Often, the reasons are more pragmatic and banal. 
What I see as the main mechanism is economics, especially the issue of land ownership. Many modernist buildings – clubs of culture, houses of creativity, public buildings – are located on very attractive land plots. They are often owned by the city or the state, which means they are constantly under the threat of privatization. Developers are not interested in preserving modernist architecture; they are interested in land. And modernist buildings are very inconvenient in this sense: they are large, they are difficult to adapt, and they don’t fit easily into speculative development logic. And they are too young to be protected. 
In practice, the main pressure comes from developers and private capital, not from ideology. This shift in comprehension is important because otherwise, we keep fighting the wrong enemy. We think we are fighting memory politics, while in reality, we are fighting concrete economic interests. 
And this logic becomes even more visible today, when we talk about destruction caused by war, because destruction does not end with missiles. There is also a second wave: demolition “by ourselves”. 

Q: You co-founded Urban Forms Center, an NGO focused on architectural heritage. When institutions were slow or absent, what could a civic organization do that official heritage bodies could not?  
NGOs in Ukraine are not just a supplement to institutions – they are a real political force. To understand Ukraine, you need to understand NGOs and horizontal initiatives. Since the Maidan revolution, this has become very obvious. 
One very important thing is access to funding. For a long time, NGOs in Ukraine could compete for grants on relatively transparent and equal conditions – state funding, international funding, cultural foundations, even for small organizations. 
And finances matter. Heritage work is time-consuming and complex.

You cannot expect people to work for free forever – volunteering is important, but it’s not enough for long-term, institutional work. When NGOs have resources, they can even substitute state institutions or at least push them. 
Now, in wartime, the situation is much harder. Culture is not a priority.

But this also means that NGOs again have to invent other models. In Kharkiv, a group of activists and researchers decided to prepare a UNESCO nomination for the Derzhprom (fig. 5) building completely voluntarily, understanding that there would be no budget. We literally gathered like classmates and divided tasks between us. 
NGOs can act faster, be more flexible, and take responsibility when institutions are silent. Sometimes, the best thing institutions can do is simply not to stop us. 

Q: Destroyed or threatened buildings seem to acquire new symbolic weight, becoming visible at the moment they disappear. Can loss itself be a form of recognition, and what does this imply for how we understand oblivion?  
This is a painful question and not a new one. We had exactly the same discussions after the Second World War, after the Yugoslav wars. How should we remember trauma? Through ruins, through monuments, through new buildings, or through absence? 
Loss can become a form of recognition, but this is a very dangerous mechanism. Very often recognition comes too late - when the building is already razed to the ground. And then we start talking about memory, symbols, and trauma, while physical reality is already erased. 
What is still missing – not only in Ukraine, but globally – is a legal and institutional understanding of what we call difficult or dark heritage.

Heritage is still often understood as something “nice”, something we can be proud of. But how do you deal with trauma? How do you protect buildings that represent pain, violence, or loss?

Architect and head of the NGO “Renovation Map”. Since 2019, the Renovation Map team has been working to preserve architectural heritage. 
Interview conducted on April 03, 2026. 
This case demonstrates how civic initiatives and open-data mapping create alternative mechanisms of heritage recognition when institutional protection is weak.

Q: How did the volunteer initiative Renovation Map begin, and what motivated you personally to take on the responsibility of documenting endangered heritage during the war? 
It all started in Kyiv’s Podil district with a simple question: why are so many beautiful buildings left to decay? Together with my colleagues, we began searching open sources to uncover what lay behind these facades: ownership, legal status, and the fates that awaited them. Finding no single resource for such data in 2019, we decided to build one. We took an opportunity to apply for the Open Data Challenge, successfully winning a grant to develop the digital map, calling it Mapa renovatsii (Renovation map). 

Q: How do you combine historical research with practical fieldwork, and how does your mapping counter the disappearance or oblivion of architectural memory? 
The main idea is to use the resources for future renovation. The Map provides all the critical information: ownership, preservation status, permits, historical facts, and architectural value, which helps potential investors to see the possibility of restoration or adaptive reuse.
The Map’s practical utility was proven immediately during the mapping of the Shevchenkivskyi district. While researching “Rodina house”, we discovered it was designed by the renowned Kyiv architect Volodymyr Nikolaev and was at risk of demolition. We have stepped beyond research and, collaborating with lawyers and historians, we compile a documentation package for the Department of Cultural Heritage Protection. The building was granted protected status, making securing legal protected status as the second focus of our work. 
The dynamic nature of our work lies in the fact that even after a status has been granted, a developer can challenge it in court, but our team of lawyers actively defends these cases, which serves as a great example for activists in other cities: the Supreme Court’s rulings we have won apply to all of Ukraine and help to protect landmarks in other regions. 
To date, we have prevented the demolition of 10 buildings, secured protected status for seven of them, and won approximately four court cases. 

Q: Has the research experience led you into the field of practical heritage preservation, and how did the full-scale invasion challenge the NGO’s work? 
The project with which we started was the Kyiv Funicular¹³. Since it is a landmark of local significance, we began discussing with the Department of Cultural Heritage Preservation, as well as restorers and engineers, what the best approach is for its protection. There are twelve large stained-glass windows at the upper station (fig. 6) with three big arches-windows at the lower station. The main challenge was that the upper station is built on concrete supports on rugged terrain, that is why standard sandbagging was impossible. To solve this problem, we collaborated with engineers to design specialized protective shields. The wooden billboards were covered with galvanized metal, to protect them against potential fire. To install the shields, we searched for climbers throughout Kyiv to install them mid-air, as they were too heavy to assemble on the ground. 
 One of our ongoing tasks is practical restoration, and our team is systematically moving in this direction. In partnership with the Drohobych Saltworks, we are currently working on partial preservation of the complex.

In collaboration with the local community, we are developing a functional program and revitalization project for two historic buildings of the Saltworks, which are currently abandoned and not part of the main production.
 Another field of our interest is the preservation of the city’s background historical architecture, which does not have any heritage status or the necessary criteria to become one, but plays an important role in the city’s image. Through our work, we explore systemic problems related to it and possible ways of protection.

Q: What was your role in the Kvity Ukrainy initiative¹⁴, and how does this campaign reflect broader challenges in protecting modernist heritage in Ukraine today?  
“Kvity Ukrainy” team reached out to us for help in securing protected status for the building (fig. 7). The owner intended to demolish this valuable example of modernism with a business center. Understanding its architectural significance and the fact that its original architect is living, we began gathering archival data and collaborating directly with the architect. As a result, the building was granted the status of an architectural monument. 
Through the process, we discovered the main core conflict, which is a fundamental lack of understanding regarding the value of modernist architecture among both the owner and certain community members, and the absence of dialogue. The owner ignored the will of the local community.
This led to neighbors' community and activists surrounding the building, blocking construction equipment, and staying on duty overnight to prevent the destruction of a building that holds deep collective memory and architectural value.  Legal proceedings regarding this building have been ongoing for five years now. Recently, we won a court case regarding the building’s status at the Supreme Court level. We are very grateful to our attorney, Lydia Klymkyv, and the law firm Axon Partners, without whom this court victory would not have been possible.

Co‑founder and Acting Director of the Gurtum Charitable Foundation; a finance specialist with over ten years of experience in marketing, volunteering since 2022, and overseeing heritage‑preservation projects at the foundation.
Interview conducted on April 7, 2026.  
The interview focuses on community supervision and emergency conservation as ways of preventing architectural oblivion during wartime.

Q: How did the association of volunteers “Gurtum”  begin, and what is your focus? 
After the de‑occupation of the Kyiv region, we founded an organization to restore critical infrastructure and starting in 2024, they also began working to preserve architectural heritage have focused on architectural heritage, working under an agreement with the Department of Heritage Protection to carry out urgent emergency repairs during wartime.

Q: You also support projects without heritage status, but with certain historical and socio-cultural values. Could you tell us more about them? 
Gurtum worked at a school and a library in the Kyiv region after deoccupation, which aren’t listed as architectural heritage sites. They are traditional historic buildings from the early 20th century, constructed of Kyiv brick, wooden structures, and featuring ornamental facades. They were important to preserve, not only as a reminder of our architectural past but also for their local social significance.
We joined the school project after the Hostomel¹⁵ administration approached us as volunteers to dismantle a shell-damaged old school.  Once we arrived on site, we realized it could be restored, so we submitted a request to the local administration.  The damage was extensive: part of the roof, several walls, the porch, and the windows.  Our team repaired the roof truss system, dismantled all damaged building elements, and repaired the damaged walls.  Within a month, the school was restored to a safe condition, and after 1.5 years of volunteer work on restoration and renovation, it welcomed its first students. 
The library in the village of Horenka¹⁶ after the restoration became the village’s main social and cultural hub, which can bring the entire village together, a community of different generations.

Q: Which heritage buildings have you worked on? How do you restore damaged structures and document information about them? 
Our major project is the preservation of the Kyiv Small Opera (Lukyanivskyi People’s House)¹⁷. The building has sustained damage due to 18 nearby shelling incidents; however, due to its dangerous location, only a small amount of funding was allocated from the state budget to replace the original wooden windows with plastic ones. Additional funds for emergency repairs were raised through charity.
Our Team removed and preserved damaged stucco fragments for future restoration. Some filled cracks in the bas-reliefs we recreated ourselves.

We also restored the electrical system on the second floor, varnished the old parquet, and added textiles to the interior. The building remains active, hosting concerts and theatrical performances.
In the Lieberman Residence¹⁸, also known as the Writers’ House and located in Kyiv’s administrative district, we prevent the demolition of the historic windows by municipal services, which often do not realize their value.  For the time being, the original wooden windows were covered with plastic sheeting while we sought funding for their restoration. 
The third project is the conservation of the concrete Vitte Chapel (fig. 8) at the Baikove Cemetery¹⁹, which is associated with the architect Władysław Horodecki²⁰. Gurtum completed the first stage of preservation to slow deterioration. The work included clearing overgrowth, removing roof vegetation, preserving damaged decorative elements, and documenting them. 

The fate of the “Ukrainian Song” mosaic and other cases expose a much broader systemic crisis affecting post-socialist urban spaces. Based on interviews carried out in spring 2026 and bibliographic research, this article serves as form of in-the-moment documentation and assessment of endangered architectural heritage objects.
Long-term conditions such as institutional ineffectiveness, weak legal protection, economic pressure, and speculative development led Ukrainian architectural heritage to the oblivion for decades. The war only brought these processes into sharp focus and introduced a new form of architectural loss: direct military destruction. As the interviews show, the architectural heritage is no longer a stable archive of protected objects or a purely academic or institutional concern. This is rapidly becoming a public matter. 

Where vertical structures are unable to respond effectively, horizontal networks begin to take active roles. The recognition of architectural heritage occurs not only through institutional status but also through collaboration among local communities, scholars, volunteers, professionals, civic organizations, and international actors.
The common question posed to all the interviewees: How has the war changed the understanding of architectural heritage and the responsibilities that come with it? – gave a shared answer: the war has fundamentally shifted how people perceive the built environment. It has revealed its fragility and transformed absence into a presence, but it has also started a race against oblivion. Destroyed or threatened buildings are no longer neutral objects; they become symbols of loss, resistance, and collective memory. At the same time, the war accelerated something unexpected: civic engagement. As all interviewees point out, a new generation of proactive citizens emerged – one that does not wait for institutions to act, but steps in and takes ownership of urban space directly. 
In times of crisis, heritage becomes less about preservation as a goal and more about fixing relationships – between people and buildings, past and present, memory and everyday use. The heritage survives not only through formal protection mechanisms, but often through acts of care by active citizens under conditions of uncertainty. The discussed cases show that even minor, local, or “uncomfortable” architectures can re-enter the urban fabric through attention and reinterpretation. Oblivion, in this context, rather than marking an ending, becomes a starting point and revaluation.

Even if you are disappointed, and even if you don't believe that the change will be immediate.... we still should keep going because the change happens only when we are trying and trying to keep and keep going²¹.

The authors thank the interviewees for their valuable insights about heritage, and the journal editors and reviewers for their sharp and helpful comments.