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Ukraine ‒ the second largest state in Europe after European Russia ‒ offers a landscape made up of fertile plains, steppes crossed by rivers and various plateaus, which conceal unique and precious examples of vernacular architecture, such as the timber churches built between the 14th and 18th centuries in the Carpathian mountain region. Small masterpieces where conservation is today endangered not only due to disrepair and the passing of time, but also and especially because of the armed conflict desecrating the nation. Ukraine in fact counts eight UNESCO heritage sites: seven cultural and one natural.
Strikha is a new docu-film on Ukrainian vernacular architecture, and is promoted by the multimedia platform Ukraïner and the movie production company Craft Story. It highlights the difficulty in preserving traditions and the places where they exist. In Ukrainian, the term 'strikha' means 'roof' ‒ something that for over a year now the nation's population has been finding hard to keep intact due to the effects of the armed conflict. The five episodes are available with English subtitles on the Ukraïner YouTube channel and were filmed all over the country, with the exception of the Russian-occupied territories.
The undisputed star of the Strikha series is vernacular architecture, featured at the height of its expression in these isolated places far from our world: traditional artefacts, building types that have not experienced evolution in style or taste, objects and works of great artistic value constructed mainly in rural areas, with the materials and technology available locally and to suit the area's climate. The footage therefore documents a category of architecture unfairly labeled as 'minor', one closely connected with Ukrainian culture and concealed in remote villages, thus sparking a debate on the scope to preserve and keep it alive without changing it.
The five episodes look at over 30 architectural gems, which include mazanka and grajdas, Cossack wooden churches and windmills with structures unique in Europe. Others are a house in the Carpathian countryside, unusual lodges in Bessarabia, Slobozhanshchyna, Podniprovia and Zaporizhzhia, and Ukranian modernism in Poltavshchyna, as well as note-worthy features such as the wood fretwork technique used in Sivershchyna.
The documentary makers directly involved the local inhabitants and the activists engaged on the front lines of conserving this folk heritage, alongside architects and art historians, including Oleg Drozdov, Slava Balbek and Yulian Chaplinskyi. A heartfelt and moving narration ‒ one certainly useful to future generations ‒ in the hope that what has been filmed will remain intact as long as possible and that reconstruction, once the war is over, will preserve the identity of this unique architecture.
>>> Ukraine is taking part in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice with a Pavilion in Sale d'Armi at the Arsenale and an open-air installation at Spazio Esedra in the Giardini
All images courtesy Ukraïner
