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Vul. Chukarina, 1b – residential building

ID: 2361

The 15-storied residential building situated on Chukarina street 1b is a part of a post-socialist urban planning formation, the mass housing district of Sykhiv in Lviv. The building is constructed under an individual project applied repeatedly. A number of 15-storied buildings were constructed at Sykhiv on the basis of this project with some modifications. Their construction was started in the mid-1980s. These distinct buildings are situated on the main visual axes of the district and mark out its important functional junctions. Their stylistic features allow us to attribute them to Modernism. The individual project was developed by the Lviv engineering project workshop number 1; the chief architect of the project was Oleksandr Baziuk.

History

Initially, a system of pedestrian boulevards was envisaged in the complex project of the south-eastern residential district. These boulevards had to provide connection between separate residential groups as they passed schools and preschool establishments, commercial and general service institutions. As a rule, public institutions accentuated by 15-storied residential buildings had to be located at the intersections of the boulevards and main streets. The building on Chukarina street 1b is one of these buildings. The following buildings at Sykhiv were built on the basis of the same project with some modifications: Dovzhenka street 16; Drahana street 4; Zubrivska street 27 and 34; Kos-Anatolskoho street 18; Polubotka street 2; Tryliovskoho street 16 and 18; Chervonoi Kalyny boulevard 16, 40, 49, 61, 76, and 93; Chukarina street 1b and 6. Their combination with 9-storied buildings allowed to create silhouette compositions (Трегубова, 1989, 232).

In the period of industrial typology residential buildings were constructed under typical projects of prefabricated elements, chiefly of large reinforced concrete panels. Using brick as a building material was considered economically disadvantageous. The then norms did not envisage the possibility of developing the architectural and typological variety of residential buildings, as well as the possibility of integrating non-residential functions in them (Иноземцева, “Строительство и архитектура”, 1986, №12, 12-15). A permission to construct a brick 15-storied building with the possibility of arranging built-in public service functions on the ground floor level could only be received by way of an urban planning substantiation. Such a substantiation had to highlight the need to create an architectural accent in a monotonous environment, to provide the ability to easily orientate oneself and to increase the architectural value of residential buildings (an interview with Petro Krupa, 2012). The individual project of a 15-storied, 72-apartment residential building was created on the basis of a number of documents which included: an architectural planning task for designing the microdistrict number 15 in 1980; a letter from the Architectural Planning Administration of Lviv (1986); a letter from the planning committee (1987); a permit for the construction of residential buildings with an increased number of stories issued by the State Committee for Construction under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR – an extract from the protocol no. 8 dated 14 May 1986 (technical archives, Mistoproekt State Institute of Urban Planning, object no. 1850).

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Architecture

The 15-storied residential buildings of the mass housing district of Sykhiv in Lviv play the part of emphasized insertions among the typical 9-storied housing. The buildings are situated in the main compositional junctions, near public centers. They are the recognizable elements of the local panorama and help people with orientation in the neighbourhood. The building situated on Chukarina street 1b is one of a number of Sykhiv’s accentuated residential buildings constructed under an individual project applied repeatedly. Their construction was started in the mid-1980s. The buildings differed among themselves in the presence or absence of built-in public service functions on the ground floor level. No additional public function was envisaged for the building situated on Chukarina street 1b, and it has remained one of the three building of this typology with no public function added. This can be explained by the fact that it is located at some distance from the active commercial zone of Chervonoi Kalyny boulevard, the residential district’s main axis. Apart from that, the Shuvar retail market is situated close to the building providing both commercial and service functions to a sufficient degree. In other buildings, constructed under similar projects, the residential function was supplemented with manufactured goods shops and groceries, domestic services, cafés, bank branches, surgeries, pharmacies etc.

The building on Chukarina street 1b is blocked with the 10-storied residential building number 1a; the two buildings were designed as a whole. The 16-storied building consists of a basement, fifteen residential floors and the 16th service one. To form a pyramidal silhouette, the architects reduced the area of floors 14-16. However, the number and layout of the apartments situated on floors 2-13 is invariable (technical archives, Mistoproekt State Institute of Urban Planning, object no. 1850). There are 72 apartments in the building (1-, 2-, 3- and 5-room ones); their total area is 4815 sq. m. while their living area is 2904 sq. m. There are 3 one-room apartments (with living area of 18 sq. m. and total area of 39 sq. m. each) and 13 two-room apartments (with living area of 29 sq. m. and total area of 51 sq. m. each) in the building. The most numerous are three-room apartments: there are 43 of them in the building. These include apartments of three different types; their living area is about 40 sq. m. while total area varies from 55 to 70 sq. m. Also there are 13 five-room apartments there (with living area of 50 sq. m. and total area of 97 sq. m. each). Each floor height is 2.8 m. while its clear height is 2.5 m. Two lifts have been envisaged for the buildings of this type (a passenger one and a freight one). The building area is 542 sq. m. (technical archives, Mistoproekt State Institute of Urban Planning, object no. 1850). According to the construction plan of the building, the load­-bearing walls are inner and outer cross walls (including silhouette stones) on floors 1-7 and outer walls of hollow clay brick decorated with lime-sand stones on floors 8-16. Inner walls on floors 8-16 are made of hollow clay brick. The floors are made of precast reinforced concrete panels; the stairs are made of precast stair flights and landings. Precast reinforced concrete balconies with semicircular ends are a special element of the building (technical archives, Mistoproekt State Institute of Urban Planning, object no. 1850). Some spaces of the building’s façade are decorated in a pneumatic mode with a sprayed plaster base made of polymer-cement slurry. The main vertical axis, which emphasizes the entrance and mirrors the location of the staircase on the façade, is marked with saturated wine red and yellow colours. Vertical stripes, which emphasize the building’s morphology and divide its monolithic volume, are stressed additionally. It was envisaged that the socle would be decorated with beige façade tile. However, the plaster was not renewed, and today the whole building’s façade reflects the lime-sand brickwork. The interior surfaces had to be decorated as follows: the floors in the rooms had to be parqueted, hall floors had to be covered with linoleum, bathroom units were tiled with ceramic tiles, and walls were covered with wet plaster (technical archives, Mistoproekt State Institute of Urban Planning, object no. 1850). Considering the insufficient heat-insulating characteristics of this typological group of buildings, the residents often provide the façades with heat insulation on their own, in a chaotic manner. In spite of the balconies’ configuration, they are glazed by the residents quite actively. Taking into account the change of the ground floor’s function, the transformation of these residential structures and their adaptation to new circumstances can be stated.

Today apartments in the buildings constructed under this individual project applied repeatedly are more in demand than those in the typical 9-storied panel buildings which are most numerous in the residential district of Sykhiv.

Personalities

V. A. Kulykovsky – the chief constructor of the engineering project workshop number 1.
Vasyl Kamenshchyk – the head of the engineering project workshop number 1.
Oleksandr Baziuk – the chief architect of the project.

Sources

  1. Technical Archives of the Mistoproekt State Institute of Urban Planning (ukr. ДП ДІПМ “Містопроект”). Object 1850. Lviv: Hosstroy UkSSR, 1983.
  2. Interview with architect Petro Krupa, one of the authors of Sykhiv district planning and buildings' design (March 2012).
  3. Иноземцева А. С., Архитектура и технология: творческое содружество, “Строительство и архитектура”, 1986, №12, 12-15.
  4. Трегубова Т., Львів. Архітектурно-історичний нарис (Київ: Будівельник, 1989), 232.


Material compiled by Natalia Mysak