This dissertation is a comprehensive study dedicated to the architectural and artistic legacy of Volodymyr Mykolayovych Pokrovsky (1863–1924) in Poland and Ukraine at the turn of the 20th century. The author studied over eighty buildings, focusing specifically on their spatial, compositional and stylistic features. All functional groups are studied according to the relevant models and mapped on the detailed and general charts, e. g. Warsaw, Poland; Kharkiv, Ukraine. Тhe ecclesiastical buildings (fifty-six) make up the vast majority of Pokrovsky’s projects; non-ecclesiastical buildings consist of thirty objects, including twelve residential. Pokrovsky’s public buildings illustrate a broad functional typology, e. g. cultural, educational, administrative, retail, transport, medical. They are mostly located in Warsaw and Kharkiv and have planning of rectangular, composite and T-, П-, Г-shaped dissymmetrical compositions (extended uniaxial) as well as asymmetrical compositions (uni-, double-, tri- or multiaxial).
Pokrovsky’s churches were either cross-in-square or three-part (extended) with a developed altar, nave or attached bell tower. His three-part churches with extended nave on the «north-south» axis particularly stand out in ecclesiastical architecture at the time, notably in wooden church architecture. He also designed freestanding bell towers though neither triconch, tetraconch, nor rotunda churches. Moreover, the author explores the reconstructed and restored buildings by Volodymyr Pokrovsky.
The functional typology of Pokrovsky’s residential buildings consists of apartment houses (the most common type), mansions and hotels; most of them were built in central part of Kharkiv due to the favourable situation in the housing policy caused by approval of the 1895’s master plan and decentralising construction industry on the whole. Pokrovsky developed uniaxial and multiaxial (more than three) dissymmetrical and uniaxial asymmetrical compositions. In public and residential buildings’ design, he basically employed historical prototypes and/or modernised forms of Classical, Romanesque and Gothic architecture. However, from 1907 until 1918 his prevailing design method was a synthetic approach based on combination of morphological features of historical architectural styles and remodelled forms of Russian and Ukrainian vernacular architecture.
His public and residential buildings in Slobidska Ukraine of 1907–1918 were juxtaposed to British architecture in the era’s context, illustrating compositional and stylistic affinity between Pokrovsky’s public and residential buildings and British architects, e. g. Alfred Waterhouse (1830–1905), William Burges (1827–1881). The author formulated Pokrovsky’s five architectural and artistic design principles, comparing them with Opanas Slastion’s (1855–1933) and Le Corbusier’s (1887–1965) that explanatorily illustrates the shifts in architecture’s paradigm from the Late Modern to the Interwar Period. The author also investigates the current state of Pokrovsky’s preserved buildings, revealing their multifaceted significance, as well as his influence on evolution of Ukraine’s architecture and art. Numerous biographical facts were introduced into the architecture’s historiography, showing Pokrovsky’s varied public activities, pedagogical and practical impact on architecture’s evolution and culture overall whilst defining him as homo universalis of the Late Modern period. The author reveals that Volodymyr Pokrovsky’s oeuvre belongs to the culture of European neo-romanticism.
