Early 20th century engineers created quite a few prominent structures in Mykolaiv. Trusses of the Admiralty’s slipway and the Shukhov Water Tower are only some of those that have survived. Thanks to innovations that were used during their construction, the steel structures have managed to survive troubled times during the two world wars, industrialization period and de-industrialization that hit the city at the beginning of the 21st century. Patriotic and history-loving Mykolaiv citizens brought the authorities’ attention to the fact that these engineering works are unique and need to be saved, rather than demolished.
Sightseeing tours have come to the Shukhov Tower for years, but it was in 2012 that they became numerous and regular. The Mykolaivvodokanal utility which owns the tower cleaned up the area, replacing the fence, while a group of professors who study Vladimir Shukhov’s engineering heritage joined his grandson Vladimir Shukhov Jr. in planting a row of trees near the tower recently.
Engineering researchers from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Russia who popularize the brilliant designer’s heritage call on the locals to create a beautiful recreation area near the structure.
“Saving the tower is not only a matter of prestige, it also makes good economic sense for the city,” Professor Rainer Barthel from Munich University of Technology says. Tourists, young researchers, and students majoring in architecture and engineering will then come to Mykolaiv to become acquainted with this magnificent work of human genius.
“There is no need to repair everything, you can leave the tank, which has not been used for 55 years, as it is,” his fellow Municher Dr. Schuller adds. “It is necessary for awareness to rise, so that the people would want to save the tower. We planted a tree row today, but the best promotion would be to tell the story of the tower to the public here.” Experts from Europe and Russia agree that informing the public is the most important task.
Unlike Munichers, average Mykolaiv citizen is not that much interested in the tower’s fate. The German approach calls for small steps to help the structure live on. It needs some minimal repairs to allow people stand at its foot safely. Corrosion can be stopped at a little cost. There is no need to spend money on cameras, it would be far better to clear up the foundations and install a good drainage! And, of course, the tower’s metal face needs painting over.
Professor Ottmar Pertschi from Stuttgart University of Technology wrote a book in 1990 about Shukhov’s contribution to design in collaboration with the Moscow-based researcher Murat Gappoev and Rainer Graefe from Innsbruck. They first came to Mykolaiv on May 28 and saw the tower. The trio were the first to reveal the Russian engineer to the West, and their faces shone with joy and gratitude to Ukrainian citizens who preserved this rarity.
In Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, the community focused its efforts on an abandoned structure on the banks of the Oka River which turned to be the Shukhov Transmission Tower. They saved it from demolition. “It is really hard to save a decommissioned structure. You need a grassroots movement to put your tower in commission again! With small but numerous donations, you will be able to make it a popular and well-loved sight which you will then proudly show to visiting friends,” president of the Shukhov Tower Foundation Vladimir Shukhov Jr. says. “In general, Mykolaiv, rich in monuments of industrial architecture as it is, can become a city museum of the industrial age,” the great engineer’s descendant remarks. “You just need to create an electronic map of its engineering and architectural heritage and promote it on Internet. With your wonderful climate and friendly people, visitors will come in droves, provided you do believe your luck!”
The Austrian professor Barthel suggested that the tower should not be repurposed as a restaurant, as a similar hyperboloid had been in Bukhara, since such reconstruction would be expensive, and the resulting establishment would still lack space. “However, nothing prevents you from producing souvenirs as the Parisians do capitalizing on their Eiffel Tower’s fame,” Professor Graefe said.
The roundtable on preservation of the Shukhov Tower, hosted by the Local History Museum at the Old Navy Barracks was not only full of ideas and compliments, but showed an example, too, of how concerned citizens of five countries may jointly seek a way to preserve a piece of globally relevant heritage. It is important that all the participants gave their advice based on rich experience and expanded the city and utility’s decision-making officials’ worldview. Quite accidentally, the event has shown the benefits of European integration, too, far better than any grand diplomatic events would.
Design motifs and technical solutions first proposed over a hundred years ago by Shukhov are now used by modernist architects around the world, especially in the construction of multi-storey structures. Shukhov was also the designer of the first river oil tanker, and even designs of Russian and Ukrainian space launch vehicles are using Shukhov’s solutions, too. The openwork tower with a water tank has miraculously survived to stand on Mykolaiv’s highest hill, bearing good witness to the mankind’s intellect and labor which conquer even deserts.
