Ljubljana is increasingly losing touch with its cultural identity, the essential component of which is also the city’s architecture. It is crucial to keep this component alive, fostering a personal connection between people and their history.

Green Atrium of the City is a sonic exploration of an abandoned space in the middle of the city, where a green landscape is growing. A soundwalk combining art and architecture draws inspiration from a historic building designed by Jože Plečnik, begun in 1925, weaving memories of the past into the present. The Central Stadium in Bežigrad has been closed to the public since 2008. Once a public space, it is now falling into disrepair, its significance increasingly waning. Through sonority and historicization, we want to bring the inhabitants and visitors of Ljubljana closer to the degraded space of the stadium, which has been distorted from different angles by the decay of time. In its silent decay, the stadium is suspended in a timeless void, inviting ideas for its revival. Echoes of falling debris, sticks, branches, and glass scratch the texture of the air, reminding us of a once vibrant place.

The soundwalk acts as a musical intervention, breathing temporary meaning into Plečnik Stadium and reviving its resonant core. It prompts deep reflection on the preservation of cultural heritage and foregrounds the more sensory perception of space. The soundwalk focuses on the complex sound structure and acoustic characteristics of Plečnik Stadium and its environment, which, with its resonant body, acts as an instrument – the stadium not only as a space but as a live sonic entity.

Photo: Matej Tomažin, Cona.

Nika van Berkel graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Ljubljana in 2015. Shortly after, she moved from Slovenia to the Netherlands, where she works and lives. Her work explores the boundaries between architecture, landscape, sound, and art.

Karmen Ponikvar is a Slovene sound artist and researcher in electronic and electroacoustic music. She is currently studying sound at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague, the Netherlands, where she studies sound’s spatiality and texture.

COLOPHON

Conceptual design, field recording and composition: Nika van Berkel, Karmen Ponikvar
Theoretical text: Milos Kosec
Accompanying words in the soundwalk: Zala Velkavrh, Karmen Stariha
Voice interpretation: Nataša Živkovič
Special thanks: Irena Pivka, Brane Zorman
Production: Cona, 2024
Coproduction of premiere event: Museum of Architecture and Design