In times of extraordinary challenges caused by Russian aggression, valuable cultural heritage sites in Ukraine are increasingly falling victim to oblivion and destruction. They, which previously embodied historical greatness, are now suffering damage not only because of the war, but also because of the lack of understanding of the value of this heritage, the apathy of local residents, the indifference of the authorities and the “perestroika” by the new owners. Many of them are disappearing completely, although they have incredible stories that deserve to be heard. Young architect Maksym Hordiychuk has been persistently fighting this challenge for three years, preserving the unique past of these sites and breathing new life into them.

“There are monuments that are completely destroyed, but have stories worth books. However, these stories remain accessible only to a narrow circle of initiates and come to life in limited editions, legends and old, faded photographs,” Maksym notes. He shares his indignation about the state of cultural heritage sites and tells how this problem has become his personal concern and influenced his decision to act. Among the key reasons for this situation, he highlights the low public interest in preserving and familiarizing with heritage sites, insufficient attention from the authorities, the lack of modern and effective tools to involve young people in studying heritage sites, as well as the threat of oblivion of sites that have been completely destroyed.

“My initial motivation was to create a 3D restoration of destroyed monuments in order to draw attention to their current state and leave a virtual legacy for future generations, regardless of the further fate of these sites. I also considered 3D restoration an important step in order to bring the history of the object beyond the community, especially in the case when the physical remains are no longer present,” says the architect. Maksym’s focus is on the ruins of the Tereshchenko family estate in the village of Denishy in the Zhytomyr region. This is one of the palaces of the Tereshchenko family of sugar magnates, designed by the famous architect Pavlo Golkandsky and built in 1913. Now only the northern and western outer walls with a tower remain. The architect says that he chose this particular heritage site because he has warm memories associated with it – even in childhood, the estate was a great location for playing hide-and-seek. "Back then, as children, we didn't realize that this was actually a monument associated with a very interesting history and fascinating stories about human destinies," Maksym notes.

From idea to action

With 3D modeling skills, he takes action – he creates a model of the Tereshchenko family estate on his own based on archival photos and uploads it to the Sketchfab platform. The architect shares his achievements in a Facebook post and receives a lot of feedback – more than 350 people shared it, and the publicity began to grow. The news was picked up by local media, and soon Maxim was invited to appear on the Zhytomyr Wave radio. This inspired the guy, so he initiated the process of adding the remains of the estate to the register of local monuments to prevent its physical destruction and further preservation. One day, Maxim received a call from Suspilne Kultura TV, and later his story became part of the documentary film “The Tereshchenko Legacy.” "In fact, the decision to create a model became a litmus test, as it caused a resonance and later played a significant role in increasing the degree of indignation of the community when the announcement about the sale of the estate appeared. And most importantly, the public began to ask questions and become interested in the legal and historical status of the monument," Maksym notes.

Inspired by the rapid development of events, the architect understands that this method of attracting attention to heritage sites works well, so he decides to create a virtual 3D museum of monuments of the Zhytomyr region. With this idea, Maksym begins to look for funding to implement this idea and ends up in the "Bold Dreams Competition for Ukrainian Communities with Heritage", announced by ARPI. After three stages of the competition, Maksym gets the opportunity to implement his micro-project. This time, the focus is on as many as four heritage sites. In addition to the already known method of preserving heritage sites using 3D models, a new one is added - stands with augmented reality, and the main changemaker becomes local youth.

From ruins to hope

It was possible to implement everything and even more than expected. The main target group of the project – young people – surprised even Maxim with its activity. Instead of one group of students who will work on creating a 3D model, two groups were formed: one from students of the Zhytomyr Civil Engineering College, initiated by Maxim, the other from students of the KNUBA, who learned about the project from social networks and contacted the architect themselves. The first group of students created a model of the St. Nicholas Chapel in Zhytomyr, the second group – a model of the doctors' house in the village of Moshny, Cherkasy region. As part of the project, 3D models of the destroyed palace of Baron de Chaudoire in Zhytomyr, the destroyed palace of the Ilinskys in the village of Romaniv and the ruins of the cells of the Jesuit monastery in Zhytomyr were also created. All models can be viewed on the architect's page - https://sketchfab.com/Maxim..Gordiychuk. The impact of the created models is enhanced by the installed stands with augmented reality, which reproduce the contours of heritage sites and allow visitors to see what the buildings looked like in their heyday. The installation of the stands also caused quite a stir - hundreds of likes, comments and reposts, as well as dozens of articles in local media. The issue of architectural heritage is again “on the lips”. 

The insight of this story is the fact that the authorities, in the wake of the stormy publicity, themselves showed interest in saving and digitizing local heritage. Maksym says that after installing a stand on the site of the destroyed Baron de Chaudoire palace in Zhytomyr, he met with the city's chief architect, Olga Bronshtein. After a few minutes of conversation, everything turned upside down - now the architecture department headed by Olga is interested in similar initiatives and supports Maksym in every way. "Now, together with Ms. Olga's assistant, we are writing a grant for the digitization of Zhytomyr's historical and cultural heritage and are actively involving architecture students in existing initiatives. Could I have thought about such a development of events when I was creating the first model? Of course not. But it is really exciting," says the architect.

“In June of this year, the production team of Akim Galimov’s project approached me regarding the use of the Tereshchenko estate model and filming in season 2 of the Ukrainian historical documentary series “The Golden Age of Palaces of Ukraine” from “1+1”. The most valuable thing is that they obtained higher-quality and rare photo negatives of the estate, digitized them and provided them to me to correct the model. Now the model will be 99% accurate,” the architect shares with us.

Our story proves that changing the world is possible. Maxim is an example of how incredible ideas can justify large-scale expectations. His inspiring work shows that even one person can inspire and make important changes. This shows that initiative always finds its way and support. Therefore, we urge all readers not to limit themselves and to be open to opportunities to change the world, even if you are unknown or no one has supported you so far. Initiative always finds like-minded people, and together you can achieve incredible results.

The article was prepared within the framework of the project of the Agency for Private Initiative Development  "Promoting Youth Civic Participation in Decentralized Communities" with co-financing from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).