Philadelphia architect designs church for Kolomyia (11/30/97)

Philadelphia architect designs church for Kolomyia

by Yarema Kelebay

MONTREAL - Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk of the Kolomyia-Chernivtsi Eparchy, has announced plans for the construction of a new Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Our Lord in the city of Kolomyia.

The cathedral was designed by Philadelphia architect Zenon Mazurkevich.

Mr. Mazurkevich's design is an avant-garde structure made predominantly of steel, glass and acrylic. It is designed to accommodate over 1,000 worshippers.

In preparation for his project Mr. Mazurkevich traveled across Ukraine, visiting Kyiv, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv. He observed a proliferation of church construction, yet he noted that "architecturally it was a wasteland."

According to Mr. Mazurkevich, "The present design trend in Ukraine is to plagiarize the structural forms of the past and to superimpose them on conventional floor plans. The tendency is to borrow and reiterate shapes used in previous periods. Most of these new churches lack imagination and inspiration. They come from nostalgia and memory, rather than intuition and creativity. Much of it is ersatz architecture which does not speak to the hopes and needs of our times."

I asked Mr. Mazurkevich what he thought those hopes and needs were. He responded:

"Ukraine is rapidly changing from oppressive and stilted reality of Soviet collectivist totalitarianism and its police state architecture whose hallmark was centralization, hierarchy and monumentality. Architecture was practiced in collectives, groups, committees and cabals. No architect worked individually. Freedom of expression, diversity of opinion, freedom of religion and non-conformity were considered dangerous, intolerable and beyond the pale. Design was state controlled and the result was a Soviet social realism which fostered fear and dehumanization. It was ugly architecture which produced absolutely boring buildings of monumental anonymity.

"Architecture is part of a larger spiritual and cultural environment and any attempt to separate it from this ecology results in mediocrity and mundaneness. The new Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Our Lord in Kolomyia is an effort to express something new, spiritual and transcendental ... in a time of profound changes on the threshold of a new era.

"The cathedral's design is intentionally not universalist, cosmopolitan or internationalist. It is intended to be particular, local and specific. It wants to express the spirituality and identity of a unique culture.

"It is antithetical to anything in the Soviet, international, cosmopolitan or structural-functionalist style. It is an expression of our unique Christian Ukrainian cultural identity and of our recently emancipated tradition."

Prof. Kelebay is with the department of educational studies at McGill University in Montreal.

Mazurkevich presents his project

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