Development of Sacral Architecture In Wooden Treasures of The Sky (Middle of XIX–XXI Centuries)

Skolivshchyna architecture in the tree became famous not only all over Ukraine, but beyond it. After all, Boiko wooden architecture already occupies a prominent place in the history of world architecture with its originality and plurality of building types. Each of these types has its own special image. The form of the pyramid-stepped tower, from the artistic point of view of the most original and best-developed type of Boychiv churches, evidently arose gradually — as an architectural image in the representation of Boyk’s masters — under the influence of the general form of harmonious Carpathian fires. It is this pyramidal-step structure combining the shape of a living tree with the shape of the tower as an architectural composition. The western top of each church is almost the same height with the altar, and the central one is always higher, the array of plan has sharp expressive forms that are usually well-tapped with the landscape. The described churches are the oldest and most valuable pearls of the Skoliv region, because they are most clearly represented in the architecture of the Boyk Church. These churches are of high value and are recognized as architectural monuments of all- Ukrainian significance. The peculiarity of the forms and the echo of the antiquity of wooden churches has long attracted the attention of admirers of antiquities and researchers. However, the scientific understanding of the traditional temple building of Ukraine and, accordingly, the attempts to systematize the structures begin at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The characteristic feature of the Boykivshchyna churches is an unusually harmonious degree of their three log buildings, of which the central is the highest, and the other two lower ones, but symmetrically equal to them. Sometimes the bath over the presbytery is a poverty from the forehead, over the maid. In all types of wooden churches the unifying modular element was a central fence, the top of which was always made at least one tier higher than the lateral ones. Among the three-tiered temples, the most common were the types with a rectangular or octagonal nave, a granite altar and the same or rectangular napkin. In the churches of the christening types, the central framing was mostly square, equal to the width of the side raams. The high proportions of structures differed by region: in Podillia and Naddniprianshchyna the height of the building equaled its length; In Chernihiv, Boykivshchyna and Slobozhanshchyna the altitude was greater than the length; in Galicia and Volhynia the height was less than the length. The most advanced types of wooden churches had a height of walls equal to the height of the upper.