Throwback Tunnel

In Zagreb Grič Tunnel we created an exhibition which covers 2100 square meters in total, spanning the full 350 m of the main tunnel hall, including 200m of its passageways. We wanted this exhibition to make people feel the history as a living whole in which every individual takes their significant part and creates a single story. The foundation for the entire spatial design was the concept of time travel and engaging individual historical stories. A net-like steel structure is installed in the tunnel like a tunnel inside the tunnel, the surface of which is partially empty, with an idea to take up the content of precisely those individual stories in time. The remaining surface is filled up with reproductions of historical artifacts. The digital part of the exhibition allowing the visitors to exhibit fragments of their own histories. One passageway is dedicated to Nikola Tesla. The other passageway has become a war bunker, whereas the third is a tavern from the 1960’s in which the visitors can dance to the music of the time. We have transformed the central part of the exhibition into a multisensory experience. In order to see the rest of the exhibition, the visitors have to walk through a dimmed, rainy section of the tunnel representing a sort of cleansing and a break for personal reflexion, as well as a safe passage into a new more optimistic period of the 1950’s after the grave period of the World War II history. In the end, when exiting the tunnel to enter into the future, everyone can send their own digital text message that will also become a part of the exhibition.