Synthesis of the Arts with the Region: Juraj Neidhardt’s Sculptural Architecture of the 1960s within Regional Planning of Tourism

Mejrema Zatrić

doi:10.52200/docomomo.72.11

Synthesis of the Arts with the Region

Juraj Neidhardt’s Sculptural Architecture of the 1960s within Regional Planning of Tourism

Authors

Mejrema Zatrić International University of Sarajevo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0424-1704

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52200/docomomo.72.11

Keywords:

Juraj Neidhardt, Yugoslav modern architecture, Geography, Regional landscape, Regional planning, Synthesis of the Arts

Abstract

Some of Juraj Neidhardt’s most emblematic projects are situated in pristine, non-urban settings. From the Ski House in the pine forests of the Bosnian hills to the Hotel Agava immersed in the Mediterranean shrubbery of the Adriatic Coast, his designs in the landscape were key for him to define his architecture as seeking proximity to and harmony with nature. The design strategy that Neidhardt utilized to realize this ambition was, however, far from constant. While in the 1950s, he relied solely on the “unwritten laws” of the vernacular models to define techniques of new design integration into the specific regional environment, in the 1960s, he produced a series of striking artistic compositions of natural and architectural visual elements, which he described with the notion of “phantasy in tourism.”
This paper analyzes Neidhardt’s writings and several projects of the 1950s and 1960s in order to situate his 1960s architecture excursus into the visual arts within the post-war discourse of the “synthesis of the arts.” Under the influence of his and Dušan Grabrijan’s geography-informed understanding of the unity between art, life, and the regional environment and his research in the regional planning of tourism (both presented in the book Architecture of Bosnia and the Way towards Modernity (Grabrijan & Neidhardt, 1957), Neidhardt developed an original architectural language that synthesized not only architecture and sculpture but also the specific regional landscape into one harmonious visual whole. This aesthetic synthesis, however, communicated a deeper synthesis between architecture, geographic region, and modern state economy, facilitated by the emerging regional planning as the ultimate absorption of the total environment into the comprehensive kind of modernism.

How to Cite

Zatrić, M. (2024). Synthesis of the Arts with the Region: Juraj Neidhardt’s Sculptural Architecture of the 1960s within Regional Planning of Tourism. Docomomo Journal, (72), 90–95. https://doi.org/10.52200/docomomo.72.11

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Published

2024-12-07

Issue

No. 72 (2024): The Way towards Regional Modernities

Section

Essays

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Author Biography

Mejrema Zatrić, International University of Sarajevo

is an architect, architectural historian, and assistant professor at the International University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her research focuses on the relations between architecture and the environment, Yugoslav modern architecture and genealogies of modernist regionalism in the Western Balkans and beyond. She holds a doctoral degree from ETH Zurich and a Master of Architecture and Urban Culture from the Metropolis program of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. She has been a curatorial advisory board member for the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, and holds a certificate of the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in Los Angeles for the conservation of modern architecture. She is Chair of Docomomo Bosnia-Herzegovina and co-founder of the Archive of Modern Architecture of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

References

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