Lecture by Architect Janko Rožič: Nova Gorica, Gorizia, Solkan

We invite you to a lecture by architect Janko Rožič from Odprti krog on Monday, 23 June 2025 at 20:00 at the City Municipality of Nova Gorica hall.

Space in Slovenian is not something defined by a border, fence, or wall—the word itself speaks of freedom. A spatial insight reveals that even multilayered, complex things can remain simple and become free again.

Architect, urbanist, and essayist Janko Rožič will present unique perspectives and insights on the architecture and nature of Nova Gorica, Gorizia, and Solkan with its surroundings. It is no coincidence that the oldest traces of prehistoric, late Roman, and medieval settlements are found in this exceptional area—where the Soča River, Gregorčič’s "clear daughter of the mountains," repeatedly meets the fertile plain.

Many still search somewhere here today for the legendary Noreia, the Mediterranean center of the famous Noricum. Solkan and Gorizia were first mentioned in the documents of Otto III in 1001, alongside Škofja Loka among the few settlements recorded in history already during the Ottonian Renaissance.

From the Roman limes to the Iron Curtain, from antiquity to modern times, this area has been marked especially by borders. At the Soča Front during World War I, one of the bloodiest wounds in the world was opened—a wound that did not fully heal after World War II, as Europe here, like in Berlin, was divided into East and West.

Today, as the world again trembles at Europe’s borders, it is crucial that we calm ourselves and attune to space and its freedom at the crossroads of ancient and modern civilization. For a real spatial insight shows that a border, like in nature, is not a division but a connection.

The horizon of hills and mountains, the seashore, the riverbank, the skin of the body, the membrane of a cell—all natural borders contain a wealth of differences and simultaneously connect. Only real, not virtual, space is a safe space that can free us; only contact with the whole truly heals.

Let us also turn our gaze to architecture: let us examine how Plečnik’s student Edvard Ravnikar attuned Nova Gorica, and see how the old masters from Miren calmed and attuned the spatial view. At a time when we again realize how precious the value of peace is, we return to the foundations—to the balance between humans and space.

Through the latest spatial knowledge, we will rediscover the oldest wisdom of placement. Our ancestors, together with the old masters, attuned space with nature—they did not advertise it, but attuned it. That is why their work still stands: centuries-old traces through which almost every step in space is free, directed, and attuned—like a thought that reveals meaning.