The Rose

The Rose in a Storm, Zlatko Ugljen

Mile Stojić, 2011

If Goethe’s notion that architecture is petrified music is accurate, the deeds of Zlatko Ugljen could be represented with a symphony of light, with the harmony of the Orient and the Mediterranean, of classic inheritance, and of the peculiar character of a green river and joyful seagull’s flight. Following up the path to our ancestors’ ancient huts and lasting stone marble, Ugljen achieved a resolute architecture. In the already cited words of the Slovenian art historian Stane Bernik, these achievements represent an artistic opus not to be found in modern European architecture. Looking through a monograph of Ugljen’s works compiled by Bernik, an architect from Vienna said to me, if the Rose Mosque had been built in Vienna, rivers of architectural pilgrims would pilgrimage to that structure from all over the world.
Whoever, believer or agnostic, stands before the St. Paul Chapel in Sarajevo or inside the White Mosque in Visoko conceives the existence of a greater and brighter life than this one in Cain’s Valley of Tears within which we are compelled to live. One comprehends the existence of a people we are not worthy of, but to whom is donated in this lifetime the greatest gifts. Therefore I wrote that their grief is great – because they were endowing beauty to those to whom it is not to be inherited.