In the late November of the last year, NTUU "KPI" held January event: Great physical audience took grand opening presentation of new equipment for video and TV link and distance education. Large interactive screens and powerful computers allow it to conduct lectures and seminars with the participation of teachers and university students from Slovakia, Great Britain, France, Russia and Ukraine, who participated in the project, initiated by the Central European University of Skalice (Slovakia). In the KPI two such audiences were opened, but the largest number of students - even 350 – a great natural audience can take! This is a certain pattern, for more than a hundred years ago, designers and customers are conceived of as the most modern, best equipped, best for lectures, in general most, most, most ... However, everything is in order.
... Probably there is no among our readers such a man who would not know that the designer of buildings of Kiev Polytechnic Institute and designs of planning solutions was a famous St. Petersburg architect, academician of architecture Jerome Kitner. It was his project under the designation "Prestissimo" (ie, "very very fast") that was in April 1898 named as the best among eight of the competition announced by the Committee on the arrangement of the institute.
The work on the implementation of the project started the very next day after the determination of the winner: the St. Petersburg group of architects led by Kitnera was preparing working drawings, estimates and calculations, and in June began to work on the territory allocated for construction.
Soon conflicts established for the technical supervision with the Building Committee began to appear in Kitnera. It all started with a reward, which did not suit the famous architect. In addition, Kitner could always be in Kiev, and his absence again entailed constant clashes with members of the committee. Finally, on the 1st of June, 1900 he refused to further work on the project, and after some time his duties as chief architect were taken over by Alexander Kobelev.
It is clearly, the constructions of institute buildings are not only the work of him. It is a significant imprint that has been left by a young teacher of architectural drawing and architectural design KPI department Vasil Osmak behind the walls of Kiev Polytechnic Institute.
It was Osmak who became the designer of the most famous audience in Kiev Polytechnic Institute – of Great Physical one.
From the beginning of this project the subcommittee in the case of projects of the Institute put forward the Great Physical audience quite high requirements. They were set out in the "Program for Drawing Project commissioned by Polytechnic Institute in Kyiv" and involves not only the construction of amphitheater, but also the construction of laboratories, support facilities and provides natural lighting audience. It had to be very large in size, as physics was taught in all departments of the Institute, and in order to answer another set of criteria. At the request of the head of the Department of Physics Professor George de Metz project was altered several times. As a member of the building committee de Metz has executed independently supervision by the construction.
In size, design and great physical facilities the audience was better than similar audiences of leading higher technical schools in France, Germany, Hungary, Austria and other European countries. It now is probably the most convenient streaming audience in KPI, and in the early twentieth century amazed its contemporaries with area (387.1 sq. m.), height (from the floor to the ceiling above the table lecturer height reaches 13.4 m), the number of seats for students and their position that allows to see well and hear the speaker from anywhere. And light: it was not only lit by large windows from the facade of the body, but also by a glass ceiling above board teacher, and in a dark time of the day – by the electric light: chandelier with 100 bulbs hung from the ceiling, the same amount of light bulbs were placed in hanging on 20 wall sconces, all fueled by the institute's own power. If the lecturer had to use "magic-level light" (as they called a projector) windows with electric drive are closed a large black cloth curtains. Great physical was equipped with a dual board of the same construction as now, water and gas and sewerage pipes which were announced to lecturing table for demonstration experiments, and so on. As the audience was intended not only to give lectures to students-polytechnics, but also for other public events, and it was equipped with a separate main entrance lobby from the front side.
Plastering works in the audience and eight plaster busts of famous physics were executed by sculpture studio of Italian Eujenio Sala - an artist who decorated with his works known to every residence of Kiev house with chimeras of Vladislav Gorodetsky and several other architectural gems of our city. Another eight plaster portraits were done in Berlin in sculpture studio of brothers Michel.
One of the highlights of the decoration, which emphasized the rigor of scientific approaches that are cultivated in the room, was engraved on a plate from its geographical coordinates of the place - the northern latitude of 50 degrees, 27 minutes, 2 seconds; longitude east of Greenwich is 2 degrees, 1 minute, 51 seconds; height above sea level - 179 m.
As it was thought to prepare, the audience quickly became a place popular among Kiev people who were interested in science: it occasionally gave lectures to the public not only professors of KPI, but also scientists from other cities. For example, it is here that in October 1908 a public lecture on ballooning with great success was made by the "father of Russian aviation" Nikolai Zhukovsky. Those lucky enough to be present here recalled that a prominent scientist finished his story about the prospects of aircraft heavier than air and brought the launch of the Paris model airplane rubber engine that flew almost the entire audience.
And three years before it, during the 1905 revolution great physical audience of KPI has hosted the first meeting of the Kiev Council of Workers' Deputies. It was chosen by chance - from the beginning of the turbulent year a student protest rallies there occurred. In fact, the center of revolutionary activity was the institution itself - not at least because of the neighborhood it contained several large Kyiv companies - iron and mechanical plant of Grether and Krivanek, plant and ductile iron Unhermana Neyedly, little farther - mill seeders of Filvert and Dedina and others - workers' struggle which actively supported the students. Therefore, it is 1917 that housed the headquarters of militant workers groups on Shulyavka.
Yet, of course, great physical primarily served as the training for engineers. Before the formation of KPI Faculty of Humanities direction lectures on physics were listened to in almost all specialties.
This audience was for Vasil Osmak first major work in Kiev. Then there were the following significant items for our city as a private women's gymnasium by Duchynska Alexandra in Timofeevskaya Street (now Michael Kotsyubinskogo Street), 7, Library of the University in Saint Vladimir Street, 62 (now it contains a branch of the National Library of Ukraine Vernadsky), housing humanities departments of the University City in Volodymyrska street, 58 (now there is the university library of M.Maksymovych) building campus of the Clinical University of St. Vladimir on Baikovyi Hill, Mansion of the Professor of Medicine University Michael Diterihsa in the Street Timofeevskaya, 3 and others. By the way, the close cooperation with the university is explained due to the fact that since 1908 Vasil Osmak served as its architect.
He worked not only in Kyiv: in 1910 according to his project the buildings of rural hospital were constructed in his native town of Gogoli, Oster County, where he was born in 1870. Then he built a house of a senior district school (school) and the People's House in Oster.
However, most of his life, with the exception of years of study at the St. Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineers of Emperor Nicholas I, from where he graduated in 1895, and a brief period in the construction department of the provincial government Volyn, Zhytomyr, were held in Kiev. Here his father's ancestral nobleman Alexander Osmak transferred in 1872, where until his death he served as assistant inspector for Vladimir Cadet Corps.
So, in 1896 Vasil Osmak returned to Kyiv and began working in the architectural department management of South Western Railway Station, where he participated in the design and construction of objects of Bialowieza branch of the railroad. In 1900, at the invitation of the first director of the KPI Viktor Kyrpychov he embraced a full-time faculty post in a new Institute and, as it was already mentioned above, took the physical design of large audiences.
The First World War greatly reduced the volume of construction works in Kiev. Therefore, in 1917 Vasil Osmak returned to teaching activities: on the invitation of dean of the Faculty of Engineering of KPI he served as the professor of special architecture, and in the fall semester in 1918 was replaced by another teacher of architectural design and drafting of the famous architect Hippolytus Nikolaev. By designing activities, without leaving work at the Institute, he returned only a few years ago: together with architects Schusev and Aleshin he drafted a school. It was built at Shulyavka (then working-class neighborhood in the spirit of the time was called Zhovtnivkoyu), close to the KPI in 1931 and still existing - a specialized school with advanced study of English number 71 in Polyovyi alley, 10. Its building, by the way, was one of the first works of Osmak where he departed from the usual classical forms - it is easily understood popular in those days’ constructivists’ solutions.
Former State Councilor (this class rank, which corresponded to the first rank in the army, he received as the architect of the University of St. Vladimir) Vasil Osmak worked in the new environment and it was not easy. Distrust of the authorities as to the "bourgeois Spec" and cleansing annually held at the institute, creating an unbearable psychological atmosphere. However, he continued to do his work, moreover, has won respect among students, most of whom now came not with privileged strata of society. And it was Osmak who took the initiative to organize in 1926 the Faculty of Engineering department of public works. On its basis Kyiv Engineering Institute (now - Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture) was created in 1930. But it did not secure him from arrest.
He was jailed in 1931 because of faked technical integration against intelligentsia "Industrial Party Case", closer its "Kiev branch." Judicial Commission in triple GPU SSR sentenced him to five years imprisonment. However, he was serving a sentence not in the camp, but in the "sharashka" - that is, an organization which used prison labor experts. Widely known today are plane sharashkas where "sat" and worked such famous aircraft workers as A.Tupolyev, M.Polikarpov, D.Hryhorovych, V.Petlyakov and others. Less is known about sharashka of other prfiles, but they existed, and they went through a lot of professionals, who then began to consider the pride of Soviet science and technology. In one of those "institutions" Vasily Alexandrovich was hidden.
Looking on his huge experience, he was entrusted to lead a group of architects prisoners, among whom were even students. These prisoners have designed and built a number of well-known now to every resident of Kiev objects of club OGPU (now there is located Theatre for Young People), barracks convoy of troops (there is now - Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine). In the spring of 1932 V.Osmak was released from custody, and the rest of his term he was serving probation. However, the employer is not changed - he lived at home and worked in the same sharasha in the former mansion of the Countess Uvarova on Lipky. Therefore, the tasks for the group under his leadership were asked by members of the NKVD. In those years, complex of stadium "Dynamo" was built (since inception in 1924 and till now it is dealing with power structures), several apartment buildings for workers 'bodies' and so on.
In 1933, after the creation of project organizations of Kyiv city council Vasil Osmak headed the 2nd architectural and art workshop. One of his notable works (with architect Vladimir Bespalov) was a monumental Dnieper embankment of the highway, wide parapets, staircases - goes to the river and cast-iron fence. Another significant work was the building complex at the corner of the Dnieper and Podolsky in Ovrutska Street. A recent creative life began to draft the post office and the Commissariat of Communications (with architect Sergei Germanovych). These buildings were built in the years 1938-1941 in the capital, but they are destined to be short-lived - they were destroyed by explosions on the 24th of September, 1941.
Vasily Alexandrovich did not survive German occupation. He died on the 7th of January, 1942. His wife buried him near parents at the Solomyanskyi cemetery, and in early June of that year she was also buried here. Their Tombs did not survive to our time ...
However, tens of facilities built on its projects, including large physical audience that was, and remains one of the business cards of our university remained till now....
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