Lepoglava Memorial2016

design: BIRO
project team: saša košuta, mario kralj, dora lončarić
client: City of Lepoglava
location: Lepoglava
status: architectural competition, 2nd award
project year: 2016

The Park devoted to Twelve Fallen Homeland War Veterans with a memorial is conceived as a memorial park: the park and the memorial represent an integrated whole and form spaces that are diverse in character. Rather than being merely the background element to the memorial, the park as such becomes, through the articulation of space, a memorial in itself, with emotional and symbolic significance. Via urbanist, architectural and landscape design expression, a new public area is created, becoming a place of gathering and reverence.

The memorial wall made of raw concrete divides the park into two parts: a space of reverence and remembrance at the lower level, and a space devoted to the celebration of life on the higher level, featuring twelve planted trees. The two spaces shaped this way are contradictory in character: the lowered space of reverence is an introverted tranquil space shielded from the environment, while the space on the higher level is extroverted, offering an open view of the city skyline. The memorial is devised to create different spatial experiences through movement. Via a wide ramp that gradually narrows towards the bottom, visitors slowly descend to the memorial, reaching a corner - behind the corner, a new view of the extension of the walkway opens: the main part of the memorial wall is here, with twelve slits in the wall featuring the names of the twelve fallen Homeland War veterans. Visitors then gradually climb up a second ramp to the upper level with the twelve trees.