Abstract: Defining architecture seems to be a tough and often futile business. Nevertheless, we must not give up on its persistent explanation and new understanding. Today, when architecture has moved heavily into media space, and then also promoted itself to an authentic communication medium, talking about architecture is just as important as talking through architecture. On this occasion, we open a conversation about architecture through the discourse of Croatian national culture, its history, its present, and its future. We wonder whether this small but distinctive culture, whose key components are precisely the inherited urban and architectural values, and, above all, the fascinating landscape culture, can, first, successfully overcome the abyss of discontinuity, and then also resist the osmotic pressure of globalism and cultural imperialism. How to struggle for cultural as well as for architectural identity in the time of a communication revolution that has produced planetary space-time convergence, or, as it is said, the “compression of the World,” and the illusion of its daily “shrinkage.” This reflection seeks to find an answer to the question whether there is any sense in resisting the inevitable civilizational convergence and identification? Can we, and may we, despite everything, unyieldingly persist on our own cultural identity, especially the one that architecture could, or should, carry and promote?

Keywords: architecture, architectural language, communication, continuity, context, cultural identity

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