After the second world war, socialist Yugoslavia set out to reconstruct a land destroyed by fighting. Concrete residential blocks, hotels, civic centres and monuments shot up across the country in a show of power from a state between two worlds, western democracy and the communist east.

Genex Tower is unmissable on the highway from Belgrade airport to the centre of the city. Its two soaring blocks, connected by an aerial bridge and topped with a long-closed rotating restaurant resembling a space capsule, are such an unusual sight, the 1977-build tower has become a magnet for tourists despite years of neglect. The tower is one of the most significant examples of brutalism – an architectural style popular in the 1950s and 1960s, based on crude, block-like forms cast from concrete... [+]