The Unique Architecture of Vuko Tashkovich in New York

Published on March 24, 2009 |

An associate of mine in the US has brought my attention to Vuko Tashkovich, an architect born in the former Yugoslavia and brought to the United States at the age of 20 by his father, a former Yugoslav Senator with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt and Marshall Tito.

Tashkovich is a Master Builder in an architectural tradition dating back to the Renaissance rather than choosing to conform to the custom that prevailed in the late 1960’s

An outspoken critic of the Post-Modernists who paste inappropriate historical motifs on their buildings (Egyptian pilasters, Roman columns for instance), Tashkovich believes that every age must create its own art.

Setting out to create dynamic tensions, he manipulates the basic form to which most houses are restricted, working with it to break the monotony of rigid solidity and flat planes. The resulting variety of forms and inter-penetration of interior and exterior spaces involve and fascinate the viewer.

These forms are shaped and massed to capture light, Tashkovich’s overriding preoccupation. The concern for and appreciation of light in architecture is a legacy of the Mediterranean. Tashkovich was profoundly influences by his native Macedonia, an area rich of Byzantine, Islamic and Greek architectural forms – monasteries, mosques, minarets and temples – the same forms that influenced Frank Lloyd Wright and LeCorbusier.

This particular property on two acres in Pound Ridge, New York – one of 57 of Tashkovich’s sprawling, dramatic designs, is currently on the market for $1.58 million USD.

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