The monument, before being a form, is a site.
– Giulio Carlo Argan, art historian, 1980

/uncovering the monumentality, artistic freedom and beauty of WWII Memorials/


Former Yugoslav WWII memorials, called also ‘spomeniks’, are closely connected to the landscape in which they are located, so the space and the memory with the accumulated years became one. But what happens if we remove the natural context that enabled authors the freedom to create? How does our perception of their content and form change?


The new image, the new object stays in space, but this new space is transformed. Architecture becomes something independent and moves to the world of ideas; location and material realization become of secondary importance. But the monument-object which is now nothing more than sheer idea still radiates the stunning beauty of stillness, static, silence and timelessness.