Fiume Fantastika: Phenomena of the City is a central exhibition of the Sweet & Salt flagship programme, realized within the Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture project. Based on the recent research by DeltaLab – Centre for Urban Transition, Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Rijeka, the exhibition follows the last hundred and fifty years of Rijeka’s urban history, during which the city experienced radical growth and became a global transport and industrial centre.

Fiume Fantastika: Phenomena of the City is an exhibition, a new urban hub and an experiential-cognitive space which tells a story and explains the history of modern urban development of Rijeka and the region, following the influence of economic, political and social processes on the architecture of the city. Both the exhibition and an accompanying publication are results of research into the turbulent history during which Rijeka switched various socio-political systems and territorial structures, while urban development focus was based on new technologies and economic effects. In these circumstances specific architectures and urban phenomena arose, surpassing questions of style, language, or aesthetics, and generating their own, locally specific, and autonomous urban culture. Freely combining themes and exhibition genres, the exhibition recognizes and explains urban phenomena on the overlap of social and architectural projects. Radical transformations of topography, unexpected transformations of buildings, and brutal collisions of nature and industry are only some of the elements of a complicated mosaic, the untold story of Rijeka’s urban lessons.