Header: © BIG / Bjarke Ingels Group
The agricultural landscape of Slavonia is about to gain a massive cultural anchor. In Čepin, a small town in eastern Croatia, the renowned architectural firm BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group has unveiled its design for EVE Music Hall. With construction nearing completion and an opening scheduled for early 2027, this project represents a significant milestone: it is BIG’s very first project in Croatia, and it is on track to be the studio’s first completed dedicated music performance venue.
Spanning 10,000 square metres, the complex is built to be incredibly versatile. It is designed to handle up to 4,000 people indoors for concerts, conferences, and exhibitions, while the surrounding outdoor grounds can accommodate massive crowds of up to 25,000 for festivals and open-air productions.
A theatrical facade of local limestone
From a distance, the structure looks like two distinct volumes rising straight out of the flat farmland and tree lines. The exterior design plays heavily on the idea of performance. The walls are clad in large slabs of local Slavonian limestone, but instead of looking heavy and rigid, the stone is draped toward the ground like massive theatrical curtains.
These stone “curtains” do not just cover the building; they pull up in certain areas to create curved slits and openings. These gaps reveal glimpses of the lively foyer inside to people approaching from across the site. Because the building sits openly in the countryside, it has no traditional “back.” Every side faces the natural surroundings equally, giving the building a constant relationship with the landscape from every angle.
Inside the wooden hull
Visitors approach the venue along landscaped pedestrian paths that lead directly into the central foyer, which is sandwiched between the two main halls. Once inside, the cold stone exterior gives way to an incredibly warm, wooden environment. The central gathering space is covered by a tent-like roof made of curved, suspended mass-timber beams. These large wooden elements span the ceiling and then curve downwards to form built-in seating for visitors. To make the space feel even larger, the two main walls facing the foyer are completely covered in mirrors. These mirrored surfaces reflect the movement of the crowd, the timber ceiling, and the outside landscape, creating a sense of infinite space that guides people toward the different parts of the building.
Independent spaces for sound and scale
The building is divided into two distinct, pragmatic boxes, each tailored for different uses and sound requirements. The larger volume contains the main live music hall, engineered to change setup easily for seated orchestral events, standing rock concerts, or large-scale stage productions. The smaller volume houses the congress hall alongside exhibition spaces and supporting facilities.
Crucially, the two halls are completely structurally and acoustically separated. This design choice ensures that a loud concert can happen in the main venue at the exact same time as a quiet business presentation or exhibition next door, without any sound leaking between them. Upstairs, the project also features a café and rooftop event spaces that look out over the Slavonian plains.
Utopian pragmatism in the countryside
The building works hard to justify its presence in a rural area by being highly functional while offering something visually unexpected. It takes the simple necessity of two acoustic boxes and wraps them in a form that respects the local geography, using regional materials to ground a very modern piece of architecture.
True success in regional architecture happens when a building manages to feel entirely new while belonging to the ground it stands on. EVE Music Hall achieves this by turning local stone and timber into a dramatic public living room for eastern Croatia. By creating a world-class performance space in the middle of quiet farmland, the project shows that ambitious cultural hubs do not always have to belong to major capital cities, ultimately proving that bold architecture can turn any landscape into a shared destination.
