Hoping for new Ukrainian baroque

Ivan Tkachenko, a Kyiv-born Houston-based architect of some of America’s newest temples, vice-president of Ray & Hollington Architects Inc., is convinced that latter-day “Ukrainian baroque” is on the rise. Last year he christened his firstborn in a Houston parish. He himself was clandestinely baptized 40 years ago at a Greek Catholic church in Galicia. Ivan’s grandfather, a high-ranking Soviet official, dealt with building communist-era industrial giants, while his father Yurko Tkachenko, a Ukrainian film director of the 1960s rebellious generation, cast a talented Hryhorii Hladii in Stolen Happiness after Ivan Franko and filmed Nikolai Gogol’s Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. It is also through director Tkachenko’s eyes that we saw the most celebrated victories of Dynamo Kyiv in the 1970s. It is his camera that a policeman’s truncheon smashed when people were paying their last respects to the Orthodox Patriarch on Kyiv’s St. Sophia Square in 1995. Tkachenko’s latest script at the turn of a new millennium was about the Vyshhorod Mother of God icon. Born and raised in a Russified Zaporizhia, he managed to grow into a Ukrainian and a Christian. Now the film director’s son, a Texan architect, dreams of designing – to honor the memory of his father – a temple for Ukrainian parishioners.

Ivan, you could see the St. Sophia belfry and Kyiv Caves Monastery domes from your childhood windows. Did you deliberately take up designing temples or was it all by chance?

“Many things happen subconsciously. It is quite probable that my desire to paint and then build emerged under the influence of St. Sophia’s golden domes… Beauty makes us improve ourselves all the time.”

What shaped you as creator of modern sacral architecture? One can say you are following in the footsteps of your filmmaking father and house-building grandfather.

“I knew my grandfather very little, but father always wanted my brother and me to study and be the best in whatever we do. I took to painting in my childhood but, for some reason, I finally chose architecture. At first I studied in Kyiv, then in Prague, and then in Houston, Texas. Architecture means continuous learning. Now that I live and work in Houston I can see the impact this profession has on people – in the course of time, this impact also transforms architecture itself.”

What about the creative process: are you inspired by the art and history of the people for whom you conceive a temple? Have you ever abandoned a project due to your religious convictions?

“Unfortunately, it is always the other way round: I have a lot of ideas but lack money. To build a modern church means to implement the ideas of a community, and this involves the expert opinion of dozens of professionals, such as planners, engineers, financiers, and builders. The architect is just a part, albeit an important one, of this process. It takes years to plan and build a temple – and people, requirements and likings may change over this period. The best reward for me as an architect is to see human dreams materialized first on paper and then in glass, metal and concrete. A temple is human dreams that have come true.”

Is the demand for sacral structures on the wane in the US?

“Almost all our customers are Christians. In spite of their relatively short history, Americans never forget their roots, and religion always was and still is part of the latter. A church in America is, as a rule, combined with a cultural center, a kindergarten, a school, and even sport facilities. A present-day American church is a living body, an integral part of American society.”

How many temples did you design in the US and which of them was the most unexpected?

“I work in a studio that has designed dozens of religious structures over the past 20 years or so. My personal contribution varies from project to project: sometimes it takes me a year or more to execute a commission, but sometimes I can simultaneously carry out several projects at different stages. In all my 12 years in office, I had an opportunity to work for various faiths: from Buddhists to Baptists. What still surprises me is their tolerance and mutual respect. I think the most unexpected project was the religious center attached to a Chinese Baptist church in Houston, which I completed eight years ago. As a Ukrainian of a different faith, I was stunned with the open and well-wishing attitude that the Chinese community took to me. Working on the project, I met a lot of interesting people. I still maintain friendly relations with many of them.”

What has struck you lately in modern temple construction?

“I would single out the multifunctional nature of modern temples. The premises used this afternoon as a children’s campsite may turn into a prayer place in the evening and host a European musical orchestra tomorrow. Americans are pragmatic people, so every project holds a place for extension in the future. A church will begin to decline once it stops growing.”

Kyiv plans to rebuild the Church of the Tithes. Would it be interesting for you to make a project of this “reincarnation?”

“It is very disputable whether or not to rebuild a 10th-century temple today. I think this should depend on the importance of a given structure in today’s context. For example, the Assumption Church of the Kyiv Caves Monastery, an integral part of the monastery’s ensemble, was rebuilt exactly like the original temple only thanks to detailed drawings and measurements that had survived. And what will the replica of an ancient temple on Volodymyrska Street look like? I share all the ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments. You’d better consider me one of those who want to see the Tithes Church’s remnants in their present condition. I think it will be more important for us and for generations to come to have the foundation of today’s Church of the Tithes rather than its 21st-century fictional superstructure.”

There is a Greek Catholic Patriarchal Cathedral now being built on Kyiv’s Left Bank. You can read criticisms even in the Internet that the cathedral looks too modernist against the architectural backdrop of Kyivan temples. Can a modern-day phenomenon, something like Ukrainian baroque, emerge if new temples continue to be built to traditional patterns?

“I am sure it can and will emerge. Ukrainian baroque did not materialize suddenly out of nothing: it is evolution of the building art, which was preceded by many trials. Likewise, the present-day configuration of a Ukrainian temple will, in the course of time, give way to the forms that one cannot foresee today.”