Hajduk Split’s Poljud Stadium Creator Dies

The man who designed Split’s famous Poljud stadium has passed away in Croatia on yesterday. Renowned Croatian architect Boris Magaš passed away after a long illness aged 83.

Magaš was born in Karlovac in 1930 and was the winner of the highest professional awards, author of masterpieces such as hotel complexes Haludovo and Solaris, St. Nicholas’s Church in Rijeka, the Mihaljevac kindergarten in Zagreb, the Museum of Liberation of Sarajevo, the Faculty of Letters in Rijeka and the home of Hajduk Split football club – Poljud Stadium.

“In Split, I tried to make a stadium with a translucent roof which integrates the environment in its entirety, and does not impose on the Marjan mountain, the coast, or its surrounding environment. Poljud is, in essence, a reinterpretation of two Greek theatres facing each other. It was the first stadium in the world conceived and understood in such a way. Following the completion of the project, institutions of the former communist state sold the concept, without my knowledge, to allied countries,” Magaš said in an interview before his death with Željko Žutelija.

Poljud stadium, which holds 35,000 people, was built for the 1979 Mediterranean Games.

Boris Magaš