Snake Island (Ostriv Zmiiny) is situated today 35 km from the Danube’s delta. It is part of Odesa oblast, with the village of Bile and an environmental reserve. But that is not all: the island is full of myths, legends, and dramatic events, and, after deposits of oil and gas were found on the shelf around the island in the 1980s, it became a bone of geopolitical contention between Ukraine and Rumania, which only ended in 2009 by an international court’s ruling. But even this is not all. Here, on a small plot of land, the interests of various states used to come into conflict, which determined, to a large extent, the course of European history. It belonged to a number of countries, and wars used to swirl around it.
Legend has it that the Greek goddess Thetis lifted this island from under the sea for her son Achilles with whose name Homer’s great Iliad begins. It is no accident that antique documents used to call it accordingly – “the Island of Achilles.” A temple was built and statues were put up in honor of the legendary hero and warrior. The cult of Achilles was very popular in the Northern Black Sea Region. Travelers noted that, although the islanders not always spoke good Greek, almost all of them knew the Iliad by heart.
The Odesa-based artist Stepan Riabchenko has been keen on antique myths, history, architecture, contemporary art, and new technologies since his childhood. He called his project of a cultural center for Snake Island as Achilles Cube, expressing a symbolic multiple meaning in the very name of it. The cube, which is the most steadfast architectural form, underlines the impregnability of a structure that can resist any marine or geopolitical storms. And the legendary hero of ancient history closely tied up Ukraine to the great antique oecumene. This culture-related emphasis is perhaps very topical today, for the proclaimed “road to Europe” calls not only for sociopolitical transformations, but also for a thorough analysis of those cultural links, of the still-to-be-studied past which shaped the current European space – we used to be part of it, the we “forgot” about it, and now it is time to get back.
It is a multifunctional structure: it can house an archeological museum, exhibition halls, a movie theater, administrative offices, a tourist center, etc. And an original execution of the facades makes it possible to use the remnants of the ships that were wrecked at different times around the island and are still resting at sea bottom. For the island’s past is in the Byzantine and the Ottoman empires, World War Two, etc. This is all part of Ukraine’s history.
Riabchenko’s project is unusual for Ukrainian architecture, but it is extremely topical and in line with the global artistic trends which are characterized by special interest in figurative expressiveness, visual metaphors, and application of new technologies and materials. An architect by education, he actively practices visual art and is one of Ukraine’s most successful and creative young artists. He was awarded the Pinchuk Art Center Prize and has participated in major art projects in Ukraine and abroad. But architecture remains for him the art that synthesizes diverse ideas and images.
The project of a cultural and tourist center on Snake Island opens up immense prospects for the development of the Odesa region as the main sea gate of Ukraine. Needless to say, culture, tourism, and active humanitarian ties are the best guarantee for peace and mutual understanding. A brilliant, expressive, multifunctional, and modern architectural complex in the Black Sea on the border of Ukraine can become not only a masterpiece of the 21st-century art, but also a genuine contribution to a search for the “contemporary world image,” which worries everybody so much today.
