Ukrainian architectural style. Andriy Puchkov

Andriy Puchkov’s monograph is the first in architectural studies to study such a phenomenon as the Ukrainian architectural style. According to the author, this style consists of four visual manifestations (style modes): forms of rural architecture (a hut, a wooden church), Ukrainian brick baroque of the 17th–18th centuries (an Orthodox church), Ukrainian architectural modernism (the turn of the 19th–20th centuries), and Ukrainian architectural neo-baroque (1910s–present).

The author managed to find that the main and most numerous conglomerate of architectural forms – Ukrainian baroque, mainly sacral – having undergone European influence and becoming independent, enriched European culture with new forms, and therefore with techniques of artistic play.

It is proven that Ukrainian architectural modernism, using archaic forms of rural architecture, first actively shaped the urban fabric (Poltava provincial zemstvo of Vasyl Krychevsky), later “returned” to the village with the forms of zemstvo schools, and grew into the urban fabric with the Myrhorod resort buildings of Opanas Slastion.

It is shown that Ukrainian architectural neo-baroque, feeding on the brick forms of the 17th–18th centuries, creatively reworking them, throughout the Soviet 20th century preserved the main features of the Baroque style mode (the development of Khreshchatyk), which, together with other modes and modulations of style, constitutes a model of the uniqueness of specifically Ukrainian architectural forms in the architectural family of Eastern Europe.