The Homeland Memorial by Nenad Fabijanić is not just a commemorative object, but an ambitious intervention in Zagreb’s urban landscape. Positioned strategically from the southern edge of the Main Railway Station to Vukovar Avenue, the project restructures a previously peripheral and industrial landscape into a newly legible civic domain. In doing so, it asserts the site as an extension of the city’s Major Axis—a planning gesture rich with symbolic and infrastructural implications.
Homeland Memorial in Zagreb Technical Information
- Architects1-5: Nenad Fabijanić
- Location: Zagreb, Croatia
- Project Years: 2016 – 2020
- Photographs: © Damir Fabijanić, © Miro Martinić, © Slaven Branislav Babić
“Memento vivere” – think of life.
– Nenad Fabijanić
Homeland Memorial in Zagreb Photographs
Composition, Program, and Spatial Hierarchy
Rather than isolating remembrance to a detached park or monument site, Fabijanić reinserts the memory of collective sacrifice into the fabric of everyday urban life. The memorial operates simultaneously as a square and a threshold, offering a continuous and overseeable public space that reorients the city toward civic reflection and connection. This integration marks a deliberate effort to socialise the memorial, making it not a site for occasional ritual but an embedded part of urban routine.
The project unfolds as a linear composition, structured along a north-south axis into three principal elements: the Wall of Light, the Altar-Mensa, and the Portal-Pavilion. Each component is calibrated to perform a specific function within the site’s ceremonial and spatial sequence. The Wall of Light anchors the memorial both visually and conceptually, while the Altar-Mensa serves as a focal point for ritualized gestures. The Portal-Pavilion, with its monumental form, frames the experience and connects spatially to the broader urban continuum.
This spatial choreography is not limited to solemn protocols. The memorial’s layout and open-ended platforms allow for diverse forms of public gathering, from official ceremonies to informal meetings and even spontaneous occupation. The inclusion of a hovering platform linking the altar and portal introduces both a tectonic tension and a symbolic elevation, reinforcing the sense of progression and transformation across the site.
The composition invites movement, halting, and contemplation in equal measure. It is spatially legible but experientially layered, balancing monumentality with a nuanced articulation of human scale and a sense of procession.
Materiality and Symbolism
Central to the memorial’s meaning is its handling of material and elemental metaphors. The Wall of Light, inspired by the original “Wall of Sorrow,” transforms the red and black bricks of mourning into transparent glass bricks—a gesture of both homage and transcendence. The glass medium, paired with a reflecting water surface, introduces a delicate interplay of light, movement, and temporality.
This confluence of glass and water is neither decorative nor incidental. Light, filtered through transparency and reflected in water, connects the past to the present and future, embedding an evolving sense of clarity and reflection within the material fabric. The sky, mirrored on the water’s surface, becomes a living participant in the memorial’s message—ever-changing, ungraspable, and yet intimately tied to the earthly structure.
At the southern end, a 43-ton, twisted stone mass, from which an eternal flame emerges, lends the memorial its symbolic weight. The stone’s rotation and upward thrust suggest a dynamic emergence from the earth—a counterpoint to the hovering platform and a physical metaphor for resilience. The bronze spring housing the flame is not merely ornamental; it encapsulates energy, memory, and the life-affirming call to “memento vivere” (think of life).
Homeland Memorial in Zagreb Broader Significance
Fabijanić’s architectural language often weaves between civic gravitas and refined detail, and the Homeland Memorial is no exception. The Portal-Pavilion evokes the typology of the triumphal arch or historical city gate, yet it avoids pastiche. Its form is simplified, its symbolism reoriented toward future connection rather than past conquest. It acts as a transitional figure—between metropolitan Trnje and the historical Lower Town—making it as much an infrastructural device as a symbolic threshold.
This project stands firmly within a tradition of integrating monumental architecture with urbanistic intent, yet it does so with a contemporary ethos. There is no grandiloquence here—only clarity, precision, and a quiet insistence on civic dignity. Fabijanić’s broader practice, spanning architecture, stage design, and exhibition scenography, is evident in the site’s spatial dramaturgy. Each component plays a role in a carefully composed narrative, anchored in history but oriented toward continuity.
In this sense, the Homeland Memorial contributes to a critical discourse on how architecture engages memory in the public realm. Rather than dictating a singular interpretation, the memorial provides a framework for collective resonance. Through its scale, material articulation, and urban positioning, it opens space for reflection that is both personal and shared—a testament not only to loss, but to the enduring civic project of remembering together.
Homeland Memorial in Zagreb Plans
Homeland Memorial in Zagreb Image Gallery
About Nenad Fabijanić
Nenad Fabijanić is a renowned Croatian architect and professor born in Zagreb in 1951. A graduate of the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb, he has built a diverse career spanning architecture, urban design, exhibition scenography, and stage design. Known for his precise and symbolically rich civic projects, Fabijanić has received numerous national and international awards, including the Piranesi Award and the Vladimir Nazor Prize. He served as Head of the Graduation Commission at the Zagreb Faculty of Architecture and is a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Credits and Additional Notes
Project Cooperation: Željko Pavlović
Civil Engineering: Berislav Medić
Glass Design: Jan Frydrych, Jeronim Tišljar
Main Materials: Glass bricks, water surfaces, stone, bronze, yew trees, lawns
Key Features: Wall of Light, Altar-Mensa, Portal-Pavilion, Eternal Flame, Hovering Platform, Civic Square
