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Zagreb City Slaughterhouse – Construction, Style and Corruption Scandals of the Largest Public Investment in Inter-War Zagreb

The Zagreb city slaughterhouse is considered one of the key preserved industrial complexes of early 20th century in Croatia. It was constructed between 1929 and 1932 at the eastern edge of Zagreb according to the design of Berlin-based architect Walter Frese. The huge slaughterhouse complex, situated at the then eastern border of the city on the spacious plot of around 105 000 square meters, consists of 24 buildings among which as the most interesting stand out the central slaughterhouse building and the 30-meter high water tower. The slaughterhouse represents a rare example of a work of a foreign architect in Zagreb at the peak of an era of protectionism and nationalism, in a period when the majority of projects was assigned to local architects. Buildings of the slaughterhouse complex are designed in a stylistic combination of Expressionism and International Style. Expressionist elements on the façades are due to the fact that the author of the architectural design Walter Frese worked in Berlin, the main centre of Expressionist architecture in the 1920s. Peter Behrens, one of the most important German architects of the period collaborated with him on this Zagreb project. The paper will address issues of style of the slaughterhouse complex, as well as discuss the corruption scandals which emerged around the largest building investment of the Zagreb city government in the interwar period. The slaughterhouse has been out of use for a decade now, and the destiny of this large complex is questionable, despite being part of protected industrial heritage.

Zagreb City Slaughterhouse; Expressionism in Architecture; Modernism in Architecture; Corruption Scandals; Walter Frese; Peter Behrens

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