Architektura cerkiewna na Ukrainie 1991–2022

Abstract

Orthodox Church Architecture in Ukraine 1991–2022 After the fall of the USSR, there was a real explosion of religious construction in Ukraine. The review article presents fourteen out of nearly a thousand churches built in Ukraine in the thirty years from regaining independence until the Russian aggression (1991–2022). The selection criterion is the category of representativeness, both in terms of quality, formal, regional and denominational aspects (Uniate and Orthodox temples of the Ukrainian Church and the Church of the Moscow Patriarchate). Despite all their diversity, they have in common a certain canonicity in their approach to architectural matter. It is essentially based on the Byzantine model of a cross-dome temple, adopted in Kievan Rus. The selected examples reflect wide spectrum of forms between traditionalism and modernism, ukrainism and rusophilism, regionalism and universalism. Behind each choice there is a specific historical and cultural, but also political, message. Contemporary Ukrainian Orthodox churches are a new incarnation, even a manifestation, of architecture parlante.