Ciubotă, Viorel (szerk.): Patrimoniu multietnic (Satu Mare, 2009)
well. This can be proved by the fact that wood architecture has known an extensive coverage. The old system of assembling the walls with ingenious joints of beams at the corners of the houses, the correspondence between the walls and the roofs, as well as the inwrought decorations of the porch pillars, are all elements that come to raise the overall architecture of houses. The gradual modernization of the Ukrainian villages of the former county of Ugocea, meant the fast assimilation of new elements in construction, change in decoration, techniques and materials. Thus, as a result of this wind of change, only a few traditional houses were preserved. The commune of Matievo has a house built in the first half of the 20th century, comprising a room, an entrance hall and, at the back, a room extended to the level of the porch. In front and on the length of the house there is a porch with pillars made of vaioage (clay and straw made bricks), forming seven niches shaping windows. This village also has a house made of vaioage, built in the traditional way of the 1950’s, having two rooms and an entrance hall, with the porch along the house and pillars made of carved wood. The front side of the house has a trapeze gable with two niches for ventilation (illumination). Olesnik locality has a house built of vaioage, in the 1950’s,“L” shaped, with the front room extended and elevated. It is fit with a porch having pillars made of vaioage and niches shaping windows. There is also another house built at the beginning of the 20th century, consisting of a room, an entrance hall, a food pantry at the back, a porch in front of the entrance hall, extending with a watch tower made of wood. A house was identified in the village of Veliki Komiate, dating from the 1930s, built of wattle and clay with a porch along the house, with two rooms and an entrance hall. The entrance in one of the rooms is made through the front of the house. The houses of the Ukrainian peasants, as well as of the Romanians’ from the county of Ugocea were similar in architecture and used the same materials, which points to the common ethnic stratum of other ethnic groups. The true monuments of architecture were the churches, often built of fir tree or old oaken wood. Sometimes they were built on the spot where the tree was cut down, and everyone in the community would participate at its building. The imagination 126
