SLUMBERING CONCRETE (Triumphs of Modernism)

SYNOPSIS

After the Second World War, Yugoslavia and Croatia as one of its republics embarked on building a new society between the East and the West. This experiment was marked by numerous contradictions that also manifested in architecture – an important part of this grand social project.

On an unusual, four episode journey from Zagreb to Belgrade via Zenica and Sarajevo to the small Belgian town of Wevelgem through four episodes, we will explore the architecture that represented the fundamental values of that society at the time: federalism, non-alignment, modernization, and anti-fascism. We will visit houses, monuments, and cities that embodied these ideas. We will examine the fate of architecture of the highest symbolic significance that, through radical historical changes, lost its original meaning but not its cultural and spatial importance.

Can we separate the original ideological meaning from architectural value and remove the stigma of ideological enemies from some of the most valuable examples of our architectural heritage?

Can we critically assess the achievements of a generation and thus establish continuity in our urban and cultural history?

Development supported by Croatian Audiovisual Centre and Creative Europe – MEDIA