The experience of rupture has long shaped the development of urban space. Yet it is in moments of profound dislocation — such as those brought on by the geopolitical upheavals of the twentieth century — that questions of how cities signify, transmit, and transform meaning come most sharply into focus. Nowhere is this more visible than in the contested border zone between Central and Eastern Europe, where overlapping sovereignties, fractured allegiances, and repeated displacements have produced urban forms shaped as much by rupture as by continuity. These conditions have left behind a spatial and symbolic complexity that continues to resist conventional frameworks of urban understanding. Yet the conceptual tools needed to make sense of these disjunctions — whether spatial, historical, or cultural — remain elusive. It is within this unresolved historical field that Ukraine now finds itself re-inscribed. The Russian invasion of 2022 has reignited the questions left unanswered by the last century — not only about sovereignty and identity, but about the very figuration of place. What is at stake is not merely the defense of territory under external aggression, but the contested symbolic coherence of heritage sites and urban forms — now active terrains of divergent narratives within the country itself: how cities speak, for whom, and through which fractured and competing claims. How can architecture re-establish meaning where continuity no longer holds? How can the city act as a site of interpretation when its own symbolic vocabulary is unstable, partial, and stratified? In this setting, the city of Lviv emerges as a site of intensified legibility. Situated at the crossroads of empires, its urban form is inscribed with distinct spatial grammars: Ruthenian, Polish, Habsburg, Soviet, and post-independence. These fragments coexist in tension, resisting unification, yet composing an urban imaginary structured not by consensus, but by contested figuration. This research approaches Lviv as a palimpsest — a living manuscript layered with traces of successive historical orders. Memory here does not reside in isolated monuments but is diffused across the grain of the city: fractured, partial, and refracted through the multiple logics that compose its form. The city thus becomes both archive and projection — a performative site where memory is enacted, concealed, and reimagined. In this context, the act of reading space becomes inseparable from the act of writing it. Rather than viewing rupture as absence, the research treats it as a generative condition, in which the city reveals its dual nature: both real and symbolic, physical and mental, coherent and broken. Through this lens, the dissertation proposes a conceptual and methodological framework for understanding Lviv not as a static urban narrative, but as an intertextual negotiation — rewritten through layered spatial grammars that structure the memory of the city and shape its contemporary urban identity. As Ukraine enters a phase of accelerated reconstruction, the stakes of representation are critical. The temptation to resolve identity into a singular narrative — to rebuild the image of a unified national ideal — is strong, but reductive. This study advocates instead for a more nuanced approach: one that recognizes the city’s complexity not as a problem to be solved, but as a space for critical figuration. Through this lens, every intervention becomes an interpretive act — one that affirms the unfinished, plural, and stratified character of urban memory. Ultimately, Lviv is presented as a model for rethinking post-traumatic urban environments. As such, Lviv becomes a test case for how architectural thinking can engage with complexity not by resolving it, but by holding it open — proposing a civic language attuned to ambiguity, stratification, and the ethics of interpretation. The role of the architect, then, is not to reconstruct wholeness, but to curate legibility attuned to absence, contradiction, and transformation.
L’esperienza della frattura ha a lungo plasmato lo sviluppo dello spazio urbano. Eppure è nei momenti di profondo spaesamento — come quelli innescati dagli sconvolgimenti geopolitici del ventesimo secolo — che le domande su come le città significhino, trasmettano e trasformino il senso emergono con maggiore urgenza. Nulla lo rende più evidente quanto la zona di confine contesa tra l’Europa centrale e orientale, dove sovranità sovrapposte, alleanze frantumate e ripetuti spostamenti hanno generato forme urbane plasmate tanto dalla frattura quanto dalla continuità. Queste condizioni hanno lasciato una complessità spaziale e simbolica che continua a resistere ai quadri interpretativi convenzionali dell’urbanistica. E tuttavia, gli strumenti concettuali necessari per comprendere tali disgiunzioni — siano esse spaziali, storiche o culturali — rimangono sfuggenti. È in questo campo storico irrisolto che l’Ucraina oggi si ritrova reinscritta. L’invasione russa del 2022 ha riacceso le questioni lasciate in sospeso dal secolo scorso — non solo riguardo alla sovranità e all’identità, ma anche alla stessa figurazione del luogo. In gioco non vi è soltanto la difesa del territorio dall’aggressione esterna, ma anche la coerenza simbolica contesa di siti patrimoniali e forme urbane — ora divenute terreni attivi di narrazioni divergenti all’interno del Paese stesso: come le città parlano, per chi parlano e attraverso quali rivendicazioni fratturate e concorrenti. Come può l’architettura ristabilire un senso là dove la continuità non regge più? Come può la città agire come luogo di interpretazione quando il suo stesso vocabolario simbolico è instabile, parziale e stratificato? In questo scenario, la città di Lviv (Leopoli) emerge come un sito di leggibilità intensificata. Situata all’incrocio degli imperi, la sua forma urbana è inscritta con grammatiche spaziali distinte: rutena, polacca, asburgica, sovietica e post-indipendenza. Questi frammenti coesistono in tensione, resistendo all’unificazione, eppure componendo un immaginario urbano strutturato non dal consenso, ma da figurazioni contese. Questa ricerca considera Lviv come un palinsesto — un manoscritto vivente stratificato da tracce di ordini storici successivi. Qui la memoria non risiede in monumenti isolati, ma si diffonde lungo la trama della città: fratturata, parziale e rifratta attraverso le molteplici logiche che ne compongono la forma. La città diventa così al contempo archivio e proiezione — un luogo performativo in cui la memoria viene messa in atto, celata e reimmaginata. In questo contesto, l’atto di leggere lo spazio diventa inseparabile dall’atto di scriverlo. Piuttosto che considerare la frattura come un’assenza, la ricerca la interpreta come una condizione generativa, nella quale la città rivela la propria duplice natura: reale e simbolica, fisica e mentale, coerente e frammentata. Attraverso questa lente, la tesi propone un quadro concettuale e metodologico per comprendere Lviv non come una narrazione urbana statica, ma come una negoziazione intertestuale — riscritta attraverso grammatiche spaziali stratificate che strutturano la memoria della città e ne plasmano l’identità urbana contemporanea. Mentre l’Ucraina entra in una fase di ricostruzione accelerata, la posta in gioco della rappresentazione diventa cruciale. La tentazione di risolvere l’identità in una narrazione univoca — ricostruendo l’immagine di un ideale nazionale unificato — è forte, ma riduttiva. Questo studio propone invece un approccio più sfumato: un approccio che riconosce la complessità della città non come un problema da risolvere, ma come uno spazio di figurazione critica. In questa prospettiva, ogni intervento diventa un atto interpretativo — che afferma il carattere incompiuto, plurale e stratificato della memoria urbana. In definitiva, Lviv viene presentata come un modello per ripensare gli ambienti urbani post-traumatici. In quanto tale, Lviv diventa un caso di studio per comprendere come il pensiero architettonico possa confrontarsi con la complessità non risolvendola, ma mantenendola aperta — proponendo un linguaggio civico sensibile all’ambiguità, alla stratificazione e all’etica dell’interpretazione. Il ruolo dell’architetto, dunque, non è ricostruire una totalità, ma curare una leggibilità attenta all’assenza, alla contraddizione e alla trasformazione.
Urban identity and cultural memory in flux: the palimpsest of Lviv
Batkova, Yuliia
2024/2025
Abstract
The experience of rupture has long shaped the development of urban space. Yet it is in moments of profound dislocation — such as those brought on by the geopolitical upheavals of the twentieth century — that questions of how cities signify, transmit, and transform meaning come most sharply into focus. Nowhere is this more visible than in the contested border zone between Central and Eastern Europe, where overlapping sovereignties, fractured allegiances, and repeated displacements have produced urban forms shaped as much by rupture as by continuity. These conditions have left behind a spatial and symbolic complexity that continues to resist conventional frameworks of urban understanding. Yet the conceptual tools needed to make sense of these disjunctions — whether spatial, historical, or cultural — remain elusive. It is within this unresolved historical field that Ukraine now finds itself re-inscribed. The Russian invasion of 2022 has reignited the questions left unanswered by the last century — not only about sovereignty and identity, but about the very figuration of place. What is at stake is not merely the defense of territory under external aggression, but the contested symbolic coherence of heritage sites and urban forms — now active terrains of divergent narratives within the country itself: how cities speak, for whom, and through which fractured and competing claims. How can architecture re-establish meaning where continuity no longer holds? How can the city act as a site of interpretation when its own symbolic vocabulary is unstable, partial, and stratified? In this setting, the city of Lviv emerges as a site of intensified legibility. Situated at the crossroads of empires, its urban form is inscribed with distinct spatial grammars: Ruthenian, Polish, Habsburg, Soviet, and post-independence. These fragments coexist in tension, resisting unification, yet composing an urban imaginary structured not by consensus, but by contested figuration. This research approaches Lviv as a palimpsest — a living manuscript layered with traces of successive historical orders. Memory here does not reside in isolated monuments but is diffused across the grain of the city: fractured, partial, and refracted through the multiple logics that compose its form. The city thus becomes both archive and projection — a performative site where memory is enacted, concealed, and reimagined. In this context, the act of reading space becomes inseparable from the act of writing it. Rather than viewing rupture as absence, the research treats it as a generative condition, in which the city reveals its dual nature: both real and symbolic, physical and mental, coherent and broken. Through this lens, the dissertation proposes a conceptual and methodological framework for understanding Lviv not as a static urban narrative, but as an intertextual negotiation — rewritten through layered spatial grammars that structure the memory of the city and shape its contemporary urban identity. As Ukraine enters a phase of accelerated reconstruction, the stakes of representation are critical. The temptation to resolve identity into a singular narrative — to rebuild the image of a unified national ideal — is strong, but reductive. This study advocates instead for a more nuanced approach: one that recognizes the city’s complexity not as a problem to be solved, but as a space for critical figuration. Through this lens, every intervention becomes an interpretive act — one that affirms the unfinished, plural, and stratified character of urban memory. Ultimately, Lviv is presented as a model for rethinking post-traumatic urban environments. As such, Lviv becomes a test case for how architectural thinking can engage with complexity not by resolving it, but by holding it open — proposing a civic language attuned to ambiguity, stratification, and the ethics of interpretation. The role of the architect, then, is not to reconstruct wholeness, but to curate legibility attuned to absence, contradiction, and transformation.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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https://hdl.handle.net/10589/241317