The race to digitally preserve Ukraine’s buildings and monuments

Outside the Dominican Church in Lviv’s historical centre, Yuriy Prepodobnyi carefully positions a laser scanner on a tripod, lining up its sightlines with the external walls. Some 1,000 kilometres east, in the centre of Kharkiv, Serhii Prokopenko painstakingly photographs the half-concealed monument of Taras Shevchenko, a Ukrainian poet (see video, below). He inches around the sandbags that protect it in order to capture every angle.

These efforts will lead to the creation of highly accurate, three-dimensional digital copies of buildings and monuments. Such records are produced by taking measurements of an object’s surface from multiple points—either by using lasers or by combining together hundreds of photographs in a technique called photogrammetry. The points, which have X, Y and Z co-ordinates, are then digitally engineered into a “point cloud”: a precise outline of the object in question, formed by millions of dots marking each point’s place in space.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine almost four months ago, more than 450 cultural sites have been damaged or destroyed, according to a monitoring body associated with the Smithsonian and the Virginia Museum of Natural History (see chart). The areas around Kharkiv and Mariupol have been most afflicted. In response, photogrammetry and 3d-scanning professionals such as Messrs Prepodobnyi and Prokopenko have turned their tools towards the war effort. They are racing to make digital copies of culturally significant buildings and monuments, but also of the marks of war: burnt-out cars, damaged buildings and sandbagged statues.

“We must 3d scan as much cultural heritage as we can,” says Iana Boitsova, cofounder of Pixelated Realities, a non-profit organisation working with 3d artists and photographers such as Mr Prokopenko in Kharkiv and Odessa. “In Ukraine a lot of buildings do not have enough archival information about their architecture. Many were produced in Russian times, so a lot of the information is in Russian archives,” she says. “Before the war, this was accessible through public libraries and institutions, but now they are completely inaccessible.” That means that these digital efforts are the only means of producing a record of their layout and design.

In Odessa, the prized port on the Black Sea founded by Catherine the Great in 1794, many of the architectural jewels were built in the 19th century (see main picture). Their blueprints were signed off in St Petersburg by Russia’s imperial rulers. During the ongoing restoration of Vorontsov Palace, which began in 2018, original drawings of its interiors were found in the archives of the Hermitage, and conservators had to request permission to access them.

Similarly, last year, when Pixelated Realities created a prototype reconstruction of the nearby city of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, home to one of the largest fortresses in eastern Europe, Ms Boitsova had to use maps of the area held in the Russian State Library. The local museum only had a small photocopy. Early scans of these sites have proved fortuitous: parts of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi and the Vorontsov Palace have been damaged by Russian attacks.

The problem is not limited to buildings erected under the Russian empire. Much of Kharkiv, for example, was rebuilt under Soviet rule, and many of the city’s blueprints are in Moscow. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but “for sure we can say this is the case for thousands of buildings in Kharkiv,” Ms Boitsova affirms, “and in places like Kherson and Mykolaiv as well”.

As soldiers defend Ukraine’s independence on the frontlines, the digital scans are creative professionals’ own acts of resistance, a means of seizing their unique cultural heritage from Russia’s grasp. But it is not just about preservation. The recording of wartime scenes is being done with future exhibitions or films in mind. “War documentation matters in 3d because our youth are already consuming other types of content: video games, virtual reality, immersive shows,” Ms Boitsova explains. In years to come, she says, exhibitions about the war “should have experiences that will be appropriate for the future—interactive holograms, architectural projects, VR”. Three-dimensional reconstructions, whether of a devastated home or the rusting shell of a burnt-out car, have the potential to be more emotive than traditional war photography, she adds.

Producing these digital copies, however, is expensive, costing between €1,000 and €5,000 ($1,000 to $5,200) per site, Mr Prepodobnyi says. Most cultural funding in Ukraine has been redirected to the army, so organisations such as Pixelated Realities are dependent on the support of international bodies. The projects completed by Skeiron, Mr Prepodobnyi’s firm, have been funded by Polonika, a national cultural institute in Poland. Skeiron is also in talks with the Aliph Foundation, an international fund dedicated to the protection and rehabilitation of cultural heritage in conflict zones.

Mr Prepodobnyi is inspired, he says, by a late architectural historian, Andrew Tallon, whose 3d scan of the Notre Dame cathedral in 2015 has been invaluable during the reconstruction of its spire and roof, which were destroyed by a fire in 2019. “Anything could happen, a bomb could come tomorrow,” Mr Prepodobnyi says. “It’s our way of protecting our city, in the way we know how.” ■