February 14, 2020 – The Poljud Museum and Hajduk Interpretation Center projects were presented in Split on Hajduk’s 109th birthday.
Hajduk.hr reports that the Poljud Museum and the Hajduk Interpretation Center will be housed on approximately 2,500 square meters, located below the eastern stand of Poljud Stadium. Through a series of interactive interpretive elements, visitors will be told through three floors (basement, ground floor and first floor) the centuries-old story of Split sport and Hajduk and the unique architectural narrative of the stadium.
The biggest challenge for the project team was certainly to interpret and present the unique relationship between the Split club and Split and Hajduk fans in general, that specific, almost phenomenological connection that is created by birth and never breaks.
It is these topics that open Hajduk’s story. Through the first topics – ‘Idea and Genesis’ and ‘A Brief Overview of the History of Split Sports’, visitors will be introduced to Split’s sporting beginnings, the development of the most important sports and sports clubs, trophies and historical moments and the most influential athletes throughout history. Fabjan Kaliterna, the initiator of the development of a series of sports in Split, is also represented within the whole.
After exploring the rich sports history, visitors are presented with a series of the interactive content as a key theme of the setup – the relationship between the fans and the club through the ‘Outside View’ theme. First, through the testimonies of numerous famous and celebrated Split athletes who talk first-hand about what it was like to take their first sports steps in Split and how the city rewarded and celebrated their greatest sports achievements. It will also tell the story of the city’s specific attitude to sports in general.
In addition to showing Split as a sports city through these stories, it will also give the visitor an insight into the special sports heart of Split, the habit of citizens to celebrate the greatest athlete achievements and organize grand receptions for their winning athletes. This element of interpretation is crucial to understanding the relationship between Split and Hajduk, which rests on the aforementioned mutual appreciation, but is far deeper and more specific. Visitors see this relationship and its features in the ‘Inside View’ theme, which will offer a series of testimonials from fans who will talk about why they love Hajduk and what role that club plays in their lives. It will be intimate confessions, personal perspectives, and emotions conveyed to a specific multimedia platform. The original stories conclude the first stage of the setup, which continues on the first floor.
The first floor is reserved entirely for Hajduk’s history. Through introductory stories in the theme ‘Development of the club’s coat of arms and kit over time’, through presenting the most important facts from the club’s past and interactive multimedia systems, visitors will uncover the club’s centuries-old history, and the most valuable sports figures – from the founders to the players and coaches through ‘Hajduk 1911 to today’.
The emergence of the Torcida fan group, an integral part of Hajduk, is also interpreted in this topic. The interpretation will be placed on specific visual platforms that accompany the decades. Visual platforms are a kind of homage to the unique construction of the Poljud roof, built by the MERO technique. The same technique is applied in the implementation of the aforementioned visual platforms, which are also unique in the world (surface banners in combination with graphic maps from the rear and interpretation texts from the front, with integrated multimedia and product design solutions, all in harmony with the dominant glass floors of the floor first floor).
After learning about the club’s history, visitors descend into the basement, which is a kind of showroom setup. In this section, the topic “The Museum of Poljud” presents the origin of the idea and the construction of the Poljud Stadium into its basic features. The entirety of ‘Historic Retrospective’, ‘Hajduk and Torcida’, ‘Torcida First Hand’ is replaced, and the latter offers a personal experience by showing the fans in the north stands and the most beautiful choreographies of Torcida. The space is equipped as a 9D cinema.
The basement also contains a corridor through which visitors can enter the eastern stand or take a tour of the stadium and club rooms with prior notice. It is important to note that visitors are allowed to continually update their lineups through booths where they will be able to record their testimony of the Hajduk and Split experience, or comment on a Hajduk match, and the content will then be played on one of the screens in the facility.
With accompanying facilities – a souvenir shop/fan shop, multifunctional halls for various exhibitions, lectures and games, a tasting room designed after the Prague beer pub ‘U Flek’ where the Hajduk story began – the Poljud Museum and the Hajduk Interpretation Center will be a place that is attractive and educational, and where interactive content presents the unique story of this Split club.
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