Editors: Ana Tostões
Guest editors: Susana Lobo
Keywords: Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Holiday architecture, Leisure architecture, Tourism modern architecture.
In 1937, CIAM 5 specifically linked the housing question to leisure, considering it an absolute necessity to acknowledge that the most privileged places will be chosen for the location of these leisure areas. Taking possession of these places by large masses will allow for rest and outdoor exercise, the indispensable recuperation of the forces lost in the city. As Charlotte Périand (1903–1999) asserted, the need to create machines à recréer, the goal was definitively to assure “the happiness of men”. From the first optimistic architectural swimming-pool complexes to discovering the enjoyment of beaches or of winter sports in the mountains, these “architectures of the Sun” began to link the power of landscapes with the relaxation and pleasure of the human body. Associated with healthy living and claimed for all, for the first time, the beaches, mountains, lakes and forests became identified as places for vacations.
Published:
2019-07-01
Documentation Issues
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The investigation focuses on the relationship between tourism as a modernization strategy towards the integration of the Amazon within Brazil and modern principles adopted in the Hotel Amazonas in Manaus, analyzing how the pioneering project, designed by architect Paulo Antunes Ribeiro, aligned the economic, political and symbolic dimensions of the agents involved in the process. There is a growing need for the historical re-evaluation, the documentation and an emergency conservation of the building, which was an icon of tourist development and modernization of Brazil and the Amazon.
Editorial
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In 1937, CIAM 5 specifically linked the housing question to leisure, considering it an absolute necessity to acknowledge that the most privileged places will be chosen for the location of these leisure areas. Taking possession of these places by large masses will allow for rest and outdoor exercise, the indispensable recuperation of the forces lost in the city. As Charlotte Périand (1903–1999) asserted, the need to create machines à recréer, the goal was definitively to assure “the happiness of men”. From the first optimistic architectural swimming-pool complexes to discovering the...
Essays
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In Australia the image of sporting prowess and easy access to swimming venues — both natural and artificial — has ensured that public swimming pools became a site of modern architectural interest and design experimentation from the 1930s onwards. Ranging from prosaic, local amenities to award-winning significant complexes, public pools are fascinating and potent places of individual and community memories and experiences. Many still exist but many others have been lost or detrimentally altered in the last two decades. As a modern type they deserve further documentation and careful...
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Thousands of summer colonies were created for youth in Fascist Italy (1922–1943). Most were temporary structures set up to assist children only during the daytime; dozens became the concrete symbol of the totalitarian project undertaken by Fascism to shape “new Italians” starting from childhood. Actually the colonies promoted by the organizations of the regime, state agencies and industrial companies, due to a lack of precise “models” of reference for the architects involved, present a highly varied expressive panorama, reflecting the complexity of the architectural debate in those years...
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The Ciudad Sindical de Vacaciones [Vacation City for Workers] (VCW) constitutes a reference of leisure architecture in Spain during the Franco regime. Starting with a literature review and the process of its cataloguing and protection, the focus lies on the last of these structures ever to be implemented, built in Marbella and the only one still in use. It, then, traces the evolution in Spanish spatial formalization of workers rest, from the urban modern vocation of the GATEPAC (Group of Spanish Artists and Technicians for Contemporary Architecture, 1930–1936) proposals during the Second...
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Tourism is examined as a vehicle for modernizing society and educating the people about mobility and the emerging cultures of leisure in postwar Greece. The focus lies on the historical, social and political milieu in which the re-launched Greek National Tourism Organisation (GNTO) conceived and carried out the state-run Xenia program for a network of accommodation facilities and infrastructure, in the 1950s and 1960s. The Xenia network upgraded Greece’s hotel hospitality and consolidated its tourism industry as a strong pillar of its economy. More importantly, it rewove the country’s...
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The Balaia Hotel (1964–1968) near Albufeira, in the Algarve, designed by Francisco Conceição Silva and Maurício de Vasconcellos, is one of the first and most iconic seaside holiday megastructures built in Portugal. In its territorial approach, physical dimension and range of amenities, it represents a new stage of development in seaside tourism accommodation facilities. A self-contained and self-sufficient structure that shapes its own landscape. Also, the “turn key” commission implied the transition from the small-scale architecture office to the multidisciplinary design and planning...
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Greenfield tourist towns in Languedoc-Roussillon, built in the 1960s, are some of the best examples of the application of modern principles in the production of architecture and space for mass tourism. Contributions of the Modern Movement in the construction of tourist facilities are thus exposed through the analysis of the theoretical proposals put into practice by Georges Candilis and Jean Balladur, modern architects of the third generation in France, in two of the tourist projects on the Languedoc-Roussillon coastline: La Grande-Motte and Port Leucate-Barcarès.
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The High Tatra Mountains are the most prominent alpine center of recreation and sport in Slovakia. The development of this site dates back to the end of the 19th century. From the architectural point of view, the beginning of the 20th century, the 1920s, the 1930s and the post-war period of the 1960s and the 1970s should be considered the most interesting periods. At that time, the most important architectural works were created in the High Tatras, which in different ways dealt with the fundamental question: how to build in the mountains? Through the built results achieved in the region,...
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The house by the sea — Maison en Bord de Mer — formed the basis of Eileen Gray’s spatial research, in this case applied to a vacation residence. The subsequent sequences of programmatic and typological researches into summer vacation facilities exemplifies Eileen Gray’s interest in generalizing the comprehension and acceptance of compact places of abode during vacations. Her ability to thoroughly project a comprehensive and mutually supportive program for a large organization such as a vacation center was the ultimate result of these paths of research. Even though the project was never...
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The bouquet of stories related to E.1027, the house built 1926–1929 by the Irish architect and furniture designer Eileen Gray with the support of Jean Badovici, is colorful and intriguing. In “E.1027: Murder and Mystery of the Camera”, gems on the history of the house, new research material and previously unpublished facts related to E.1027 are revealed. Above all, the search for an answer to the question “Which photo camera was used to take the original pictures of E.1027”.
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Eileen Gray’s design approach, resulting in the production of her two houses E.1027 and Tempe à Pailla as complete works, could have been influenced by the revolutionary effects of Cubism, in particular Marcel Duchamp’s version “Elementary Parallelism” and some of his later art practices. There are parallels between Gray’s use of purpose-made and standard fittings and Duchamp’s adaptations of mechanisms and his “readymades”. This is discussed in the multiple design fields in which Eileen Gray worked. There is a similarity in her approach to transformable fixed and loose furniture and...
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Le Corbusier’s murals in E.1027, the famous house designed by Eileen Gray, have been maintained and restored as “historical monuments”. I subscribe to a different view, and shall express it from three perspectives: • a legal and administrative dimension: only Eileen Gray’s E.1027 is designated a Historical Monument. The murals are not covered by this classification. • an artistic point of view: Le Corbusier’s murals are detrimental to the original state of the architectural work and to the spirit of the house, they are discordant. The murals, by their mere presence, endanger the...
Introduction
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The 1919 ratification of the 48-hour working week by the Organization Internationale du Travail [International Labor Organization], created by the signatory countries of the Treaty of Versailles, raises a new challenge to industrialized society: the organization of workers’ free time. Divided the day into “three eights” — eight hours of work, eight hours of rest and eight hours of sleep — the social framework of leisure is understood as a moral duty of the state. This issue takes on a never before considered dimension with the attention given to the instrumental use of popular recreation...
News
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In contrast to art, architecture itself cannot be exhibited. While in sculpture and painting the original works themselves are shown, in architectural exhibitions models, photos and drawings can only refer to something else. Although they can convey a design concept, they do not convey the real spatial experience, which only emerges from the passage through the building, and, in interaction with changing situations of light, specific atmospheres result. The current exhibition on the legendary house E.1027, which the artist Eileen Gray built (1926–1929) as her first architectural work on...
