Concrete Sleeperes

Season 1

In the first season, we examine Croatian tourist architecture—places where citizens from both the East and the West could meet during the Cold War and, alongside their hosts, forget political divisions through moments of leisure. Many of these fascinating structures, situated in incredible natural locations, are forgotten today, left to decay and disappear. These proud ruins bear witness to a recent past in which it was believed that architecture could make the world a better place; they serve as disturbing symptoms of poorly managed privatization processes and the inability of ruling elites to resolve burning social issues.

Season 2

While the first season focused on abandoned hotels on the Adriatic coast, the second season of "Slumbering Concrete", subtitled "Unfinished Modernizations", explores examples of top-tier modernist architecture from the 1960s and 70s. Through their programming and spatial concepts, these buildings served the emancipation of citizens. Although recognized as cultural heritage, they are now covered by a patina of neglect and the socio-economic inability to revitalize the grand structures and public goods of that era.

Season 3

After World War II, Yugoslavia—and Croatia as one of its republics—built a new society positioned between the East and the West. This was an experiment marked by many contradictions, which were reflected in architecture—a vital component of that grand social project.

On an unusual journey from Zagreb to Belgrade, via Zenica and Sarajevo, all the way to the small Belgian town of Wevelgem, these four episodes explore architecture that represented the core values of the society of that time: federalism, non-alignment, modernization, and anti-fascism. We visit the homes, monuments, and cities that embodied these ideas. We examine the fate of architecture with the highest symbolic meaning—structures that lost their original purpose through a radical historical break, but never lost their cultural and spatial importance.