Oleksandr Lushpynskyi

He was born on July 11, 1878, in the village of Butsniv in the Ternopil region to a blacksmith's family. He studied at the Ternopil Gymnasium[source? and from 1898 to 1904 at the Department of Architecture at the Imperial Royal Polytechnic School in Lviv (now Lviv Polytechnic National University). Among his teachers was, in particular, Ivan Levynskyi. Between 1904 and 1919, he worked at Levynskyi's firm. He was the author or co-author of many of the buildings constructed by the firm. In many cases, the degree of participation in a particular project is problematic to establish. He took an active part in the search for a Ukrainian style in architecture, similar to other national styles that were emerging in Europe at the time. He used the ideas of Otto Wagner in his architecture. The style of Lushpynsky's buildings with elements of folk styles is often characterized as "Hutsul Secession." Many buildings are made in the spirit of Byzantine-Romanesque stylizations. He studied folk wooden construction, sketched samples of Hutsul and Boyko buildings (now kept in the National Museum of Lviv).