Lviv. Architecture of Modernism
When it comes to preserving architecture, the focus is often on the facades and entrance halls that fall under general city laws regarding heritage. Flat interiors often are not protected since they are private spaces, and their preservation relies on the goodwill of their owners.
The modernist apartment blocks of the 1920s and 1930s must have looked incredible to city dwellers of that time, with their beautiful wavy shapes, shiny facades, porthole windows, and fancy walls concealing the latest innovations in household appliances.
Our research and documentation project on interwar modernist architecture, “Lviv. Modernist Architecture,” is beginning a collaboration with the ZMIN Foundation.
During the modernist era and following the First World War, Europe faced a housing shortage, making the slogan “Fast housing accessible for all” an appealing solution.
This initiative sets out to document the heritage of interwar modernist architecture in Lviv, Ukraine, which is threatened not just by the war but by neglect. It combines research and teaching activities, supported by international partners, and financed by ETH (Zurich, Switzerland).
The Church of St Vincent de Paul (The Congregation of the Mission) was designed in 1937 by Lviv architect Tadeusz Teodorowicz-Todorowski. It was supposed to be erected between present-day Stus and Swentsitsky streets.
The intersection of Tiutiunnykiv St. and Arkhypenka St. is home to School №28. Since its construction in 1934, the building has served as an educational institution. In the ’30s, this was a private all-girls prep school, Ursuline Sisters High School; this gave rise to the building’s occasional misnomer ‘convent.’ During the Soviet period, the high school was turned into a school. Presently, it is Lviv City Hall Secondary School №28.
«Dodging through dirty, dusty streets, first by tram, then by bus, we leave the stale city air for the piney expanse of Holosko» – this is how an advertising report about the Holosko sanatorium in the newspaper «Gazeta Lwowska» from 1942 apparently begins.
Among Lviv variety of Secession and Baroque-Renaissance buildings, functionalist houses simply built, gray or yellowish in colour of plaster, regular in shape and without excessive decoration strike the eye of few people.
An unusual interwar residential colony called Profesorska is located on a hill, as if on an island, surrounded by the old Lychakiv-Pidzamche railway line.
This three-story villa is located in a side lane of Halytskoi Armii Street, 3a (formerly Hlinky Street), within a villa district.
The complex of buildings of the Lviv Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital ( Ochmatdyt) is located at the address of Lysenka Street, 31.
In the 1920s and 1930s educational and entertainment clubs were increasingly established for workers of various institutions. For the modern organization of society, it was important not only to control private life through the new rules of living space, but also the public pastime of «a new man».