To House Refugees, Lviv Wants to Make Beautiful Buildings That Last

To stand in the cobblestone square that is this city’s historic marketplace is to be surrounded by the influences captured in brick, stone and plaster of cultures intersecting and of empires rising and falling.

The layout of the streets and squares in Lviv’s city center is much as it would have been in medieval times, helping it to earn a designation as a Unesco world heritage site. It is through the city’s architecture, though, that Eastern Europe rubs shoulders with Italian and German heritage, giving Lviv its distinctive visual identity.

Amid war with Russia, the city’s challenge is to integrate tens of thousands of residents displaced from fighting in eastern Ukraine without sacrificing Lviv’s aesthetics or derailing its efforts to become a sustainable European city.

The displaced have been housed in schools and sports arenas turned into shelters, first in open rooms and then separated by wooden partitions. Read more

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