The Shevchenkivskyi District Court in Kyiv has prohibited demolition of the Soviet modernist building “Kvity Ukrainy” (“Flowers of Ukraine”) in Kyiv, citing that the real estate developer violated copyright laws, the law firm Axon Partners announced on July 15.
After local activists figured out that the historic building was being prepared to be reconstructed into an eight-floor, modern glass-walled office building, they organized a protest on July 12 to try to stop the demolition. Their actions prompted the police to investigate the development.
The building’s owner – two investors from the international investment fund Rockwill Group – were supposed to agree on the plan for reconstruction with Mykola Levchuk, the architect who designed the building in the early 1980s and who has the author’s rights for the building, before starting operations, but they never did.
Levchuk does not supported the reconstruction of the building, since the developer planned to change the façade drastically and demolish the atrium completely.
According to the lawyers, the Shevchenkivskyi District Court also sequestered the building. The Ministry of Culture ordered to ban the construction.
“As far as we know, this is the first case in the history of Ukrainian urban planning, when the court used such injunction in a case of violation of non-property copyright rights of the architect,” Axon Partner wrote on Facebook.
The law firm now plans to file a lawsuit to protect the rights of the architect and save the building as it is. Furthermore, it will ask for the financial compensation for the partial destruction of the building.
This case is just the latest building in a series of historical architectural sites in the capital that have no state protection and are often sacrificed in favor of big developers. At least 14 of these buildings have been knocked down since 2018.
