Citizens participation

• Save Mercury!

In April 2010, a public initiative was launched to save the sculpture of Mercury which crowns the façade of a centrally located neo-Renaissance style building that used to house the former Railways Administration.

The sculpture was in a very poor condition because, it was on the roof of the building exposed to the weather and had not been cared for over many years. As a result, the stone had badly deteriorated and many parts of the sculpture had fallen away.

The restoration was carried out in three stages:  investigations of the sculpture and its state of repair; the development a restoration concept: and the restoration work itself.

During the first two stages, the initiative carried out various fundraising campaigns, and raised over 20,000 UAH from, for example, benefit concerts, donations in cafes and supermarkets, and street actions. Several private companies also donated to the initiative, in particular, the company that provided the scaffolding for the restoration free of charge.

The project became involved in the planning and implementation stages. It provided thefurther financing and provided technical advice throughout the process.

Dr. Oleg Rybtschynsky and his assistant Liubov Bulgakova from the Department of Restoration at the National Technical University of Lviv, were responsible for sculptural aspects. They worked in cooperation with other local experts and the project’s specialist consultant, Dirk Brüggemann, a stonemason, sculptor and stone restorer who supervised the work.

More information about the “Save Mercury” initiative can be found on the initiative’s website (in Ukrainian and Russian only)

• The rehabilitation of courtyards

Lviv’s historical inner city has a high building density, and courtyards are often the only places residents have to escape from the busy streets and relax. Courtyards are important, semi-public places that have high amenity potentials, but unfortunately most of them in the historical districts of the city are currently in extremely bad states of repair.

In 2012, the project together with Lviv’s Halycka District Administration supported residents’ initiatives  and carried out pilot measures to improve three courtyards in the historical old town.

A very important component of the process was the active involvement of the residents, who were to contribute financially and with their own work input. In addition they were involved in the preliminary design stages, so that their ideas could be incorporated and their requirements met.

• Staircase at Rynok 5

The complete restoration of the staircase in the building at No.5 Market Square was one of the larger pilot measures carried out by the project. The historical oak staircase connects the building’s ground floor entrance hall with the three upper floors and an attic. Each flight is continuous with no half landings and most of the upper four flights consist of winders.

The staircase was in an alarmingly bad condition with steps on the point of collapsing. This had been mainly caused by condensation and leaks from the large skylight over the stairwell, which had been letting in rainwater for years. Constant dampness, fungal growth and rot had severely damaged or destroyed the wood and parts of the handrails and their decorative iron balusters were missing. The corner joints that supported the whole structure had weakened and the staircase was no longer safe to use. 

Carrying out the restoration work on-site was not feasible because of the staircase’s complicated construction and its lamentable condition. Therefore, the entire staircase had to be dismantled and restored in a workshop, which is an unusual and elaborate process.

The restoration cost 250,000 UAH (25,000 Euros), 60% of which was met by the project, and 40% by the City of Lviv

A video documentation of the restoration process can be seen here.

• Support for Owners Associations

One of the basic problems in Lviv is the situation with regards to the ownership of property. After the political change in Ukraine in 1991, individual apartments in residential buildings in Lviv were privatized, but common parts, such as facades, roofs, attics, staircases, entrance halls, cellars etc, remained in the ownership of the city. This resulted (and still results) not only in uncoordinated individualization, for example of windows, but also, due to a lack of public funds, the bare minimum of building maintenance, which has in many cases led to dilapidation.

A solution is for the owners to form an Owners Association or Condominium, which takes over the responsibility for the upkeep of the building as a whole. A number of historical buildings in Lviv are already fully co-owned under this arrangement. A condominium haspractical advantages, but it also engenders individual and communal respect for the building, and thereby a sense for the value of the historical city around it.   

The project is therefore working together with the City Institute (an independent division of the city administration) and the NGO “Samopomich” (“Self-Help”) to popularize condominiums and encourage the formation of more of them in the historical quarters of Lviv.

Further information can be found on the City Institute website and on that of Samopomich.