Monday, 5 October 2026 at 7 pm
The guest at the “Zagreb's Urban Public Spaces - Past and Future” talk will be Tin Sven Franić, an architect and a full professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb.
Zagreb, after the earthquake of 1880, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, it underwent significant urban development during which some of its most recognisable urban public spaces were created – the Zagreb Horseshoe, the city squares, and grand avenues such as Medveščak and Zvonimirova, with the ‘N’ Square as their logical starting point.
In the decades following the Second World War, the city also expanded rapidly, especially to the south, but the development of new, high-quality urban public spaces did not keep pace with that growth. New Zagreb introduced the valuable concept of a green city, but without sufficiently clearly defined spaces for urban life. Neighbourhoods such as Trešnjevka and Peščenica still lack distinctive urban squares today, while Savska, Selska and Radnička have been in a state of transformation for decades and have yet to become the urban avenues they ought to be.
At the same time, the squares and streets that we today experience as the centres of urban life are largely those that were shaped long ago. Today we are redesigning them, expanding pedestrian zones in the very heart of the city, while neglecting secondary urban centres and neighbourhoods.
Why does Zagreb struggle to create new, high-quality urban public spaces and environments? How do contemporary cities emerge in which people want to stay, meet and live? What can we learn from the Zagreb of the past, and what does the future hold?
Through a few concrete examples from Zagreb, we will discuss urban development, planning and the role of public space in the life of the city.
This lecture and discussion will raise questions about how we plan Zagreb, what kind of public spaces we create, and what kind of city we want to leave for future generations.
Prof. art. Tin Sven Franić (1970) is an architect and a full professor at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb, where he has been a lecturer at the Department of Architectural Design for 25 years. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb in 1996. From 2020 to 2024, over two terms, he served as Head of the Department of Architectural Design. Alongside his teaching, he is an active author and designer. He teaches on architectural design courses and has supervised the preparation and defence of over 50 theses. He also regularly participates in international urban planning and architecture workshops as a mentor and guest critic. He has won around twenty awards for his projects in public and invited architectural competitions. For his realised projects, he has received national and professional awards, including the “Vladimir Nazor”, “Viktor Kovačić” and “Zagreb Salon” awards. He is currently working on the project and construction of the FOI Campus in Varaždin.