Our main tool is a mobile application (available for iOS and Android), which works on the basis of augmented reality technology. It is enough to point the smartphone camera at the object that interests you, whether it is a textured historical facade or a detail of the natural landscape. A special "moving brush" allows you to capture a specific pixel on the screen with one touch, after which the program instantly identifies a special color code and selects appropriate paint options from various professional series. You can also easily experiment with color by loading photos already saved in your gallery into the interface.
The Sadolin Visualizer mobile application tries on the color on the wall with the help of augmented reality technology. Image: Sadolin
A city on a human scale
Rivne is not so easy to "read" at first glance. There is no pomp of a capital or the industrial scale of an industrial giant. However, the city was lucky in another way - it has preserved the same friendly distance between the building, nature and man. Architects of the FreeSpace studio Vladislav and Angelica Denisenkи describe this feature as follows: "Rivne is unique on a human scale. It is a city that can be walked through on foot. Low-rise buildings prevail here, there are few high-rise dominants, a lot of greenery and open sky, which creates a feeling of comfort and space. At the same time, Rivne is interesting for its combination of different historical layers. The historical center, Soviet modernist architecture and new residential complexes coexist nearby."
Vladislav and Anzhelika Denisenky, architects of the FreeSpace studio
Of course, this "human scale" is not accidental. It is dictated by the very geography of the city, its natural ridge. Doctor of Architecture Olga Mykhailyshyn emphasizes that it was water and greenery that became the architects who determined the planning logic: “Rivne has a unique system of landscaping and landscape, which actually divides the city in half. We also have the right and left banks of the Ustya River, although we do not name them as clearly as in Kyiv. The river is located in a lowland, and this area was previously swampy. Interestingly, in the 20s, the central part of Rivne was located on a triangular island washed by the branches of the Ustya. In the late 20s, during the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, these territories were meliorated. Thanks to this, the city received a magnificent park area along the riverbed. This is how a unique water-green belt was formed - a system of parks strung along the planning axis of the river, which stretches from north to south. In the early 90s, this landscaping project even received a state award in the field of architecture."
Olga Mykhailyshyn, Doctor of Architecture, Head of the Department of Architecture and Environmental Design of the National University of Water Management and Environmental Management (Rivne)
"It is unique on a human scale. It is a city that can be walked. Low-rise buildings prevail here, there are few high-rise dominants, and there is a lot of greenery." й "open sky, which creates a feeling of comfort and space", — Vladyslav і Angelika Denisenko
At the same time, Rivne has not been lucky in terms of preserving its holistic architectural environment. According to Olga Mykhailyshyn, people who see the city for the first time often wonder why it belongs to the category of historically inhabited places at all. “Rivne really has a unique face, but its history in material, architectural expression needs to be searched very carefully,” the architect notes. There is a tragic explanation for this: during World War II, a significant part of the old city disappeared — it was significantly damaged by bombing both at the beginning and at the end of the war.
Model of the historical center of Rivne. Source: archive of the Rivne Regional Museum of Local Lore
This “elusiveness” of Rivne architecture was already noticeable to the writer Ulas Samchuk in 1941. In his memoirs “On a White Horse,” he wrote that Rivne was not distinguished by “pretentious architecture,” calling the then-existing buildings “casional” and devoid of harmony. However, he unmistakably identified the city’s main feature—its location on the great road between East and West: “Its position is privileged: in the middle of the main road Lviv-Kyiv—a line that also creates its only main and true street, crossing the city from west to east, which under the tsar, it seems, was called Main, under the Poland of the Third of May, under the Soviets of Lenin, and now under Goering. […] Now this city has been marked by another piece of unusual history: its entire center along the main street, from the Ustya River in the west to the suburb of Grabnyk in the east, was destroyed by a German air raid…”
Molodi Park (Lebedynka) is a popular recreation spot among the residents of Rivne. Once upon a time, there were impassable swamps and floodplains of the Ustya River. Photo: rivne.fish
What the war did not destroy was finally destroyed by the change of political regime. The wasteland that formed in the city center became an ideal canvas for a new ideology. Olga Mykhailyshyn explains why, instead of restoration, the city embarked on the path of radical renewal: “After the liberation of the city in 1944, no one planned to restore the old buildings, and there is a clear historical and political explanation for this. Until 1939, Rivne was part of the Volyn Voivodeship of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and after the war, the authorities were faced with the task of rebuilding the newly annexed regional centers in a Soviet context. Rivne began to be transformed into an exemplary socialist city, transmitting the architectural trends that prevailed in Soviet Ukraine. The ideology demanded not the reconstruction of historical heritage, but the construction of a “new world”. The construction of our central street today clearly testifies to this period.”
Theater Square with the Rivne Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater. Photo: Svitlana Kravchuk
The change in architectural paradigm could not completely erase the historical planning of the city. Olga Mykhailyshyn notes that the main “point of attraction” of Rivne still remains where the city once originated: “For me, this is the building of our Local History Museum (former gymnasium). It was built on the territory of the residence of the princes Lubomirskys — that is where the historical core of the city once existed with the ancient castle of the owners. In fact, we do not see this core, we see only open space. However, this park, known as Lebedynka, has become a real magnet in the city. Although in its current form it is quite modern — it was arranged in the mid-70s of the last century.”
Rivne Regional Museum of Local Lore, located in the building of the former men's gymnasium, which was built at the expense of Prince Frederik Lubomirsky, the owner of Rivne, in 1839. Photo: open sources
Rivne invoice
Behind the landscape openness of the modern center lies a complex network of cultural codes. The historical fate of Rivne has developed in such a way that very few monuments with protected status remain in the city. Those objects that have survived are often inconspicuous: they are not monumental, but they have exceptional value in the local context, because they testify to the ethnic groups that shaped Rivne.
The Holy Assumption Church, one of the oldest religious buildings in Rivne, is a monument of wooden architecture. It has survived to this day in almost intact condition. Photo: open sources
The oldest building in the city, the wooden Church of the Assumption (1756), is a reminder of the presence of the Ukrainian community. It was once the spiritual center of the suburbs. Instead, the Roman Catholic heritage and Polish history, closely connected with the Lubomirski family, are represented by the Church of St. Anthony (now the Hall of Chamber and Organ Music). It was built at the end of the 19th century, but during Soviet times the building was distorted by removing the towers, which deprived it of its original verticality in the city panorama.
St. Anthony's Church is a former Roman Catholic church. Since 1987, it has been the chamber and organ music hall of the Rivne Regional Philharmonic. An architectural monument of local importance. Photo: open sources
Another important, but almost erased page is the Jewish community, which until 1939 was the largest in Rivne. Evidence of this remains Shkilna Street, where the main synagogues once operated. The oldest of them survived, although it changed its function to a sports hall. The church, which, unfortunately, was destroyed during the Soviet years, reminded of the German influence on the development of the city in the 18th–19th centuries. The main stone object of the turn of the century remains the Holy Resurrection Cathedral, which miraculously escaped demolition, having served as a museum of atheism.
The Holy Resurrection Cathedral in Rivne is a prominent 19th-century architectural monument in the city center, built in 1890–1895 on the site of an old church. Photo: Posterrr
Those objects that survive are often inconspicuous: they are not monumental, but they have exceptional value in the local context.
The first real architectural face of the city was the "brick style," notes Olga Mykhailyshyn: "Until 1939, Rivne was a private county town, where wooden buildings prevailed. That is why the transition to stone became decisive for it. The "brick style" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, characteristic of the rationalism of that time, still defines the face of the historical part. This is the color of natural facing bricks and the virtuoso figured masonry of facades. Many brickyards operated in the city, which produced an incredible number of standard sizes of figured bricks. Islands of this building have been preserved on Symona Petliura, 16 Lypnia, and Soborna streets."
Modern view of the music school building on 16 Lipnya Street. Photo: Mykyta Ant / Facebook
A separate and most powerful massif of this style was the military town, continues Ms. Olga: "Built back in imperial times, it is perhaps the largest in western Ukraine. Interestingly, this area has not changed its function for over a century: as in Soviet times, units of the Ukrainian army are now stationed there. These are massive two- and three-story barracks with walls up to a meter thick. They are built so qualitatively and solidly that they practically do not require thermal modernization, although today we have a problem when these unique brick facades are sometimes covered with foam plastic."
Military town in Rivne. Photo: RivneRetroRytm
The most interesting buildings that have survived to this day include the buildings of the Bergschloss brewery, which were generously decorated with brick decor. The first brewery buildings appeared in 1900 in the estate of the Rivne merchant of the second guild Herz-Meyer Movshovich Pysyuk, which was located on the corner of Shosova and Novakovska streets (now Soborna - Kopernika). The enterprise is separated from the roadway by a historical wrought-iron grille with the inscription "Bergschloss" (German: "mountain castle"). Despite minor changes in the lettering after the reconstruction, the fence is an original element of decor that has survived since the founding.
The Rivne Brewery building at 9 Kopernika Street. Photo: LiveJournal
After the war, the city began to rapidly change its scale. The central Soborna Street became a platform for the implementation of the ideas of neoclassicism, but with an interesting professional nuance - the European background of its creator. "Boris Andreev, almost the only professional architect who worked in the city at that time, took part in the formation of this face. He was a man of broad outlook with an excellent European education: he successfully graduated from the Technical University in Prague. Originally from Ostroh, Andreev returned to Rivne during Polish times, and during the Soviet period he became the chief architect of the workshop of the "Oblproekt" institute. It was he who designed objects in the neoclassical style, in particular the house on Soborna Street, 15. This is an individual project from the early 1950s, the architectural face of which, fortunately, has survived to this day, although the building does not have the status of a monument," adds Olga Mykhailyshyn.
The house at 15 Soborna Street. The facade is decorated with stucco molding with Ukrainian ethnic elements. Photo: OSBB "Soborna-15" / Facebook
Among Andreyev's works, we should also note a three-story residential building in the city center, now Soborna Street, 262. We should also highlight the modern hotel "Ukraine" on Teatralna Square. It was built in 1958 according to a standard plan and at that time was considered one of the best among establishments of this level. The hotel has now undergone a complete reconstruction.
The oldest hotel in the city, built after World War II as the People's House. Photo: Kami. M.
Modern Rivne is primarily a city of light shades. Architects Vladislav and Anzhelika Denisenky see the city's palette through a combination of the artificial and the natural: "For us, Rivne is associated with light gray. This is the color of concrete, stone, plaster, but necessarily with an admixture of greenery, because there are many trees in the city. Historical buildings are mainly plastered facades of light shades. Soviet buildings made of silicate bricks, concrete panels, tiles. For example, the building of the Rivne Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater, which has all the characteristic features of modernist buildings. The landscape is expressed in a large amount of greenery, open sky, water. All this seems to soften the severity of modernist and historical buildings. The architecture of the city is not too contrasting, it integrates into the environment."
The building for the Rivne Theater was erected in 1960 on Theater Square. Photo: open sources
"For us, Rivne is associated with light gray. It is the color of concrete, stone, plaster, but always with an admixture of greenery, because there are many trees in the city.", — Vladyslav і Angelika Denisenko
However, there is another material that has become a real visual code of residential areas of Rivne: the famous "boar" tile. Olga Mykhailyshyn considers its color to be the second defining color for the city: "It was massively used to decorate houses from the mid-50s to the 80s: entire areas of the Linen Mill, Yubileyny, and the Khimikiv microdistrict. This specific pinkish-gray shade is the second defining color of the city. There is so much of it in Rivne that it has become an integral part of our visual code."
Facing tiles of the "boar" type can be found on many residential buildings in Rivne. Photo: olx.ua
A fragile legacy
Today, the fate of Rivne's historical environment depends not only on the strength of materials, but also on the legal protection of each building. As Olga Mykhailyshyn notes, the lack of strategic documents makes the city vulnerable to irreversible changes: "One of the main problems of Rivne is the lack of an approved historical and architectural reference plan. An attempt to develop one about ten years ago, unfortunately, turned out to be a failure. For a historically inhabited place, such a plan is a mandatory element of the general plan, because without it, there are no official land use regimes, there are no approved historical areas and protection zones even for individual monuments. When an object does not have a protected status, the owners can do whatever they want with it."
In 1953, a three-story building with 28 apartments was built, with a deli on the first floor, decorated with a five-meter tower, now it is 262 Soborna St. The author of the project is Boris Andreyev. Photo: Yevgeniya Pankiv
To draw attention to this problem, experts are turning to public activism. The creation of the Institute of Ukrainian Modernism organization with the participation of Olga Mykhailyshyn was an attempt to record what was literally disappearing before our eyes: “In 2020, we managed to implement a project about the interwar Rivne of the 1920s and 30s. We held an exhibition, published an album with projects, and even shot a documentary, recording the most interesting objects of that period. However, reality is inexorable: less than six years have passed, and several of the objects we recorded no longer exist. Most of them did not have the status of monuments, so the owners simply dismantled them to build something new. Many perceive it simply as “old and unnecessary.” This is a complex problem: the attitude of people and the authorities can only be changed through systematic, long, and persistent work. We need to constantly remind ourselves that architectural heritage is a value, not a burden.”
"We need to constantly remind ourselves that architectural heritage is a value, not a burden", — Olga Mykhailyshyn
However, the challenge for modern Rivne is not only to preserve the old, but also to create the new without destroying the integrity of the city. According to architects Vladislav and Anzhelika Denisenko, the city is currently in a state of search for a strategy: "The greatest success is the emergence of new residential complexes with developed infrastructure: well-thought-out yards without vehicles, children's and sports areas, commerce on the first floors. The biggest mistake is chaotic development without a holistic urban strategy. That is, a building can be of high quality, but not fit into the surrounding environment. Another mistake is unfinished objects or buildings that are used for purposes other than their original purpose. Such spaces have great potential, but become black spots on the city map."
Interiors of the Rivne Philharmonic. Photo: Rivne City Council
It is in rethinking these "black spots" and the existing environment that architects see a greater perspective than in simply expanding residential areas. However, for qualitative changes, a dialogue between all parties is necessary. "The dialogue exists, but it needs to be strengthened. The professional community of Rivne is active: architects, designers, urbanists participate in public discussions, competitions, and initiatives. However, a high-quality format for cooperation is still lacking. We need more open competitions and strategic sessions," the architects conclude.
