Radoslav Zuk

Biography

Born in Labacziw, Ukraine, in 1931, Radoslav Zuk studied music in Austria before moving to Canada to pursue a Bachelor of Architecture at McGill University. Zuk graduated from McGill in 1956. While at the school, he won a number of prizes, including the Lieutenant Governor's Bronze Medal, the Dunlop Travelling Scholarship, and the Pilkington Travelling Scholarship, which he used to travel in Europe.

From 1956 until 1959, Zuk worked with the Montreal firm of Rother Bland Trudeau, alongside the Director of the McGill School of Architecture John Bland, on such projects as Ottawa City Hall. He also worked briefly in London, contributing to the design of the United States Embassy in London. Subsequently, Zuk left Canada to pursue a Master’s degree in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he completed in 1960. Following graduation he was quickly hired by the University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture, where he taught as Assistant Professor from 1960 to 1964.

Zuk registered with the Manitoba Association of Architects in January 1961 and in his brief time here created a number of works for the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Winnipeg, which display his unique and notable fusion of modernist design and elements of traditional Ukrainian architecture. Amongst these examples are St. Joseph's Ukrainian Catholic Church (250 Jefferson Avenue) of 1964, which presents a lower section of delicate interplay between thin, glowing, sometimes colourful strip windows and almost Brutalist masonry slabs, topped by five impressive, towering, light domed turrets. (Notably, St. Joseph’s contains the holy relics of Bishop and Martyr Blessed Vasyl Vsevolod Velychkovsky in its shrine chapel.) Zuk completed St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church (400 Day Street) the following year, here opting for a generally more modernist design of, once again, slightly Brutalist character. Here brick dominates, whether framing the thin, tall stained-glass sections or rising to create rising, curved expressive central tower.

Following his departure from Winnipeg, Zuk returned to McGill University to teach, where he was the recipient of the Faculty of Engineering Ida and Samuel Fromson Award for Outstanding Teaching. During this period he further established himself as a leader in religious design. In 1986 Zuk won a Governor General's Medal for Architecture for St. Stephen's Byzantine Ukrainian Catholic Church in Calgary and earned, in 2011, the State Prize of Ukraine for Architecture for the Church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, Lviv, Ukraine. He has taught at the University of Toronto and at the McGill University School of Architecture, where he holds the title of Professor Emeritus. Zuk is an Honorary Professor of the Kyiv Technical University of Building and Architecture and a Professor of the Ukrainian Free University in Munich.