Žalgiris Arena sports and recreation facility. Category: public building
Design: 2007
Construction: 2008–2012
Address: Karaliaus Mindaugo pr. 50, Kaunas
Architects: Eugenijus Miliūnas, Algimantas Bublys, Aurimas Ramanauskas, Dalia Paulauskienė, Rasa Bingelytė-Baltrušaitienė, Vytautas Miliūnas, Gaustas Eigirdas

Eugenijus Miliūnas (born 1952), an architect and lecturer, is known for his distinctive creative philosophy and world-view. Of importance to the architect is a project’s semantic and metaphysical meaning, which he manages to translate skilfully into form and space. Miliūnas’s personality has inspired whole generations, and his work has left a remarkable imprint on Lithuanian architecture.

Miliūnas’s practice, established in 1992, designed the Žalgiris Arena in the very centre of Kaunas on an island in the Nemunas River. It is the largest and most modern building of its type in the Baltic States. Its functionality allows for a broad range of sporting and cultural events. The interior and the exterior of the arena reveal bold spatial and material solutions, carried out with the collaboration of sculptors. The scale of the building is divided up by nine breaks in the plane of the façade, and for this reason the arena assumes the form of an irregular polygon. According to the architects, this building ‘seeks to establish a relationship with the context, with history; it does not attempt to be openly dominant, yet does not pander to the surroundings, nor does it conceal its deficiencies and advantages.’ In their project the architects sought to expand the urban space in a sensitive way, to open up panoramas, and allow people to create for themselves a sense of and a character for the place. The building led to a great deal of public discussion and initiated a dialogue about the natural and commercial context of the river.

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