Fashion Week is a seasonal showcase of the Sweet and Salt flagship, which is a part of a project Rijeka – European Capital of Culture 2020, presenting us with themes, concepts, works, plans and cooperative developments connected to the understanding and designing the future city through the context of Rijeka and the S&S territory. This year’s event took place 19th – 21st December at the DeltaLab, presently situated in the exIvex building, and its themes were the reinvention of Delta Hood and the introduction of the newly formed DeltaLab.

FW2017 kicked off with a Reinventions Live workshop which gathered architecture students, exIvex residents and Rijeka “creatives” for the task of reinventing the exIvex building by coupling the various unexpected potential users with a variety of non-physical contexts. In the second part of the day, Urbanist Platform provided the trip to Lipa Remembers museum and conversation with the exhibition authors and the curator, as well as the trip to the Museum of Contemporary and Modern Art and the conversations with the director and the author of the reconstruction.

The second day started with the opening of the exhibition and the presentations of Reinventions – Delta Hood, beginning with the thought-provoking results of the previous day’s workshop, which sparked off debates concerning the future developments of tourist, military, agricultural and administrative realities. The debates continued with the presentations of the outstanding student works, including the reinventions of exIvex, reinventions of ExportDrvo and the reinvention of Delta Beach. These were followed by the presentation of the “reinvention” of the two-week European architecture students assembly taking place in Rijeka in the summer of 2018 – Re:EASA.

After lunch, DeltaLab was introduced as the new center for urban reinvention, a  platform for research, education and policy development, and Vedran Mimica gave a lecture on Berlage Affairs, reminding us of what a vibrant alternative institution such a center could become. The day ended with the Understading the City roundtable, with Vedran Mimica, Snježana Prijić-Samaržija, Idis Turato, Mia Roth-Čerina, Dinko Peračić and Leo Modrčin discussing the possibilites, challenges, risks and reinventions of education on the contemporary and future urban issues, moderated by Luka Skansi and Nebojša Zelič.

The third day of FW2017 was reserved for discussing the themes and results of the Mare Monti project, an inquiry into the contrasts of Primorje-Gorski Kotar County.

FW2017 ended buzzing with discussion about the futures, of DeltaLab, of the city of Rijeka, of the numerous concepts we once held as familiar which we now recognize to be in the state of strange transformation, of cities, of the planet.