From Soviet Grey to National Gold: Architectural Heritage Reclaimed

In the ruins of war and the midst of an ongoing national awakening, Ukraine is rediscovering the colours, lines, and meanings of her built environment. The greyness of Soviet utilitarian architecture — once imposed across cities from Kharkiv to Uzhhorod — is being re-evaluated, repainted, and in many cases replaced by an architectural revival that seeks to reclaim a specifically Ukrainian identity. This movement goes far beyond aesthetics: it is a cultural and political act of reclamation.

The Architecture of Occupation

Under Soviet rule, Ukraine’s architectural heritage was deliberately subdued. Centuries of European, Byzantine, Ottoman, and regional influence were smothered by a concrete uniformity that equated modernism with obedience. Churches were turned into storehouses, palaces into party offices, and whole neighbourhoods of pre-revolutionary buildings were demolished to make way for Khrushchyovkas — hastily built, low-cost apartment blocks designed to erase social and cultural differences.

What remained — such as the pastel baroque of Lviv, the constructivism of Kharkiv, and the grand boulevards of Odesa — was either neglected or absorbed into a Soviet narrative that claimed these cities as Russian, not Ukrainian. Stalinist imperialism embedded itself in monumental architecture: statues of Lenin, triumphal arches, brutalist government buildings, and heroic murals of Red Army martyrs.

Decolonising the Urban Landscape

Since independence in 1991, and with increasing clarity since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, Ukraine has begun to actively de-Sovietise her architectural heritage. This has involved more than the removal of Lenin statues and Soviet street names. It includes debates over what to preserve, what to demolish, and how to restore buildings that have been neglected or damaged — especially during the war that began in 2022.

Municipal authorities across the country have undertaken projects to restore pre-Soviet buildings, from Odesa’s French and Italian-inspired façades to Cossack baroque churches in the Dnipro region. Lviv has led the way, leveraging her Austro-Hungarian architectural legacy and UNESCO World Heritage status to develop a distinct Ukrainian-European visual identity. Kyiv, too, is reclaiming her modernist masterpieces — such as the Flying Saucer Institute of Scientific Research — not as symbols of Soviet glory, but of Ukrainian creative potential suppressed under occupation.

Building Forward from the Rubble

Russia’s war of aggression has only accelerated this process. With hundreds of cultural sites damaged or destroyed, Ukrainians have begun documenting and protecting architectural assets with extraordinary dedication. Organisations such as the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative, Save Ukrainian Modernism, and Ukraine War Archive have catalogued endangered buildings, recorded destruction in real time, and proposed future restoration plans.

International partnerships — with Polish, German and Italian restoration experts — are helping rebuild bombed libraries, damaged opera houses, and fractured town halls. The goal is not merely to restore the buildings to what they were, but to reinterpret them as Ukrainian. In the town of Trostianets, the historic manor house of the 18th-century Golitsyn estate is being reconstructed with public input, Ukrainian symbolism, and new local materials — a process that balances memory with rebirth.

The Language of Architecture

In wartime Ukraine, architecture has become a silent language of resistance. Blue-and-yellow murals painted on apartment buildings in Kherson. Folk motifs reintroduced in the redesign of village houses in liberated Chernihiv. Rooftop mosaics restored in Kyiv as acts of daily dignity.

Architects and city planners are reasserting a Ukrainian architectural vocabulary that draws from pre-Soviet traditions, European influences, and the functional demands of war. Modularity, passive energy design, community spaces and camouflage are now part of the postwar planning lexicon. Cities like Irpin and Borodianka are being rebuilt not just with concrete and steel, but with conscience.

A Golden Future

Ukraine’s architectural future is being forged under the fire of Russian bombs and the resolve of her people. What was once grey and imposed is being replaced with colour, agency and memory. As Ukraine defends her sovereignty with tanks and drones, she is also building a national aesthetic that honours the past, confronts the occupation and dreams forward.

In the postwar years to come, the buildings that rise from rubble will not simply be shelters or offices. They will be monuments to a people who never stopped remembering — and never stopped imagining. Thus is a new Ukraine born.