Name Volodymyr Zabolotny Role Architect | Died August 3, 1962 | |
 | ||
Structures Verkhovna Rada building | ||
Volodymyr Zabolotny (Ukrainian: Володимир Гнатович Заболотний, 1898—1962) was a distinguished architect of the Ukrainian SSR and the Soviet Union, founder of the Academy of Architecture of Ukraine and designer of the Verkhovna Rada building, Government Palace (Kharkiv).
Biography
Zabolotny was born on August 13, 1898 in family of craftsman in a village of Karan (later renamed into Trubailivka) of Poltava Governorate, which today is part of the city of Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky. He finished the local high school during the Russian Civil War in 1919. In 1921-27 Zabolotny studied and successfully finished the National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture as an architect-artist, which then went through number of transformation and was known as Kiev Arts Institute and was a descendant of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts (1917). By that time Ukraine was completely incorporated in the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian SSR (since 1922). In the institute his instructor was the notable Russian architect Pavel Alyoshin. Zabolotny also was a member of the Association of Revolutionary Artists of Ukraine that was created in 1925 and the Association of Modern Architects. During his student years he participated in competitions for design at the Palace of Culture in Rostov on Don (1925) and Kiev Film Studios (1926).
After finishing Kiev Arts Institute, Zabolotny worked as an instructor at the institute as well as in the Kiev Engineer Construction Institute (today the Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture). In 1929-33 he worked on the project design of the Kiev Passenger Railway Station as an assistant to Oleksandr Verbytsky. Among his own first works were Government Palace of the Ukrainian SSR (Kharkiv, 1927) and Residential Massif "Promin" (Kharkiv, 1928). In the beginning of 1930s Zabolotny was a chief architect of DIPROMIST (Ukrainian State Science Research Institute of City Planning). At that time (1930) he created a city project for Kominternivske in Odessa Oblast. Along with it Zabolotny also created a Palace of Culture of the Dnieper Metallurgic Combine in Dniprodzerzhynsk and the Regional Consumer Association building in Vinnytsia.
After the capital had been transferred from Kharkiv to Kiev, Zabolotny participated in the creation of the new Government Center in Kiev (1935). In 1935-36 along with his students from the Kiev Engineer Construction Institute, he built several pavilions in the Pioneer Park in Kiev as well as a puppet theater, a cinema and two multi-story buildings on the Chervonoarmiyska and Tryokhsvyatytelska streets. His finest creation was the Verkhovna Rada building for which he received an honorary diploma from the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Ukraine and a prize of 5,000 rubles.