Architectural Research Quarterly The beauty of ...

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The beauty of production: module and its social signicance Ljiljana Blagojević and Marija Milinković Architectural Research Quarterly / Volume 17 / Issue 3-4 / December 2013, pp 253 - 268 DOI: 10.1017/S1359135514000074, Published online: 14 March 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1359135514000074 How to cite this article: Ljiljana Blagojević and Marija Milinković (2013). The beauty of production: module and its social signicance . Architectural Research Quarterly, 17, pp 253-268 doi:10.1017/S1359135514000074 Request Permissions : Click here

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history Modular coordination applied at the Hotel Mediterranean, Ulcinj, Montenegro (1961–64), reconciles post-War industrialised prefabricated construction with the notion of Mediterraneità.

The beauty of production: module and its social significance Ljiljana Blagojevi´ c and Marija Milinkovi´ c The need for architectural design to correspond to demands for productivity is contentious, invariably provoking strong opposition from architects on the grounds of aesthetics and the artistic freedom of designers. In ‘The Significance of Modular Coordination in Design and Construction of Buildings: An Example of Practical Application in Tourist Buildings on the Montenegro Littoral as Means of Increasing Construction Productivity’, published in the journal Produktivnost (Productivity) in 1961 [1], the architects Milan Zloković and Đorđe Zloković argue for ‘the usefulness of modular coordination not only from the rational but also from the compositional point of view’ (original emphasis).1 In order to achieve meaningful, if economically highly restrained, design, and efficient construction for developing mass tourism on the Montenegro littoral, the architects argued that the modular coordination of a relatively small number of simple and complex prefabricated building elements allowed for a high variability of combinations through the ‘elastic typification’ of individual buildings of comparable function. Subsequently applied in a tourist colony typology, consisting of accommodation units grouped in discrete pavilions, villas and bungalows, this ‘elastic typification’, they suggested, provided an ‘optimal solution from the point of view of function, making an attractive exterior in relation to beautiful natural surroundings, exploiting the potential for, and economy of, the prefabrication of building elements’.2 In this article, we examine ‘elastic typification’ and the tourist colony typology in relation to a specific interpretation of the notion of Mediterraneità, or Mediterranean-ness in socialist architecture, which, we argue, was sought through a combination of a scientific means of modular coordination and an interpretation of vernacular building traditions. The research focuses on the theories of modular coordination of the architect Milan Zloković (b. Trieste, 1898 – d. Belgrade, 1965), one of the most prominent Modernists in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia from the late 1920s and who was Professor of Architectural Composition and Design at the University of Belgrade.3 The paper analyses

the practical application of Zloković’s theories at the tourist colony Hotel Mediterranean in the city of Ulcinj in Montenegro, which he realised in coauthorship with his son, architect and engineer Đorđe Zloković (b. 1927, Trieste) and daughter, architect Milica Mojović (b. 1932, Belgrade) in the early 1960s [2].4 The colony’s site covers an area of approximately 1.2 hectares of terraced olive groves and is located on the town’s edge, between the pinewooded hill Pinješ and the residential part of town rising above the City Beach, overlooking the sea and the Old City [3a,b]. The typology of tourist settlements, colonies, holiday villages or hotel cities advanced worldwide in the 1950s, in response to a rise in mass tourism and an increased demand in the number of tourist beds for a wide range of different social

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1 Journal Produktivnost (Belgrade), 9 (1961), cover

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2 Milan Zloković, Đorđe Zloković and Milica Mojović: tourist colony Hotel Mediterranean, Ulcinj (Montenegro), 1961–64 3 a Hotel Mediterranean, view to the Old City b Ulcinj location map: (1) citadel; (2) church (1510) – mosque (from 1693) – city museum (since 1975); (3) Hotel Jadran (1938, extended 1962, demolished 1974); (4) Hotel Co-op (1936–37; 1939, Hotel Galeb from 1955, reconstructed 1962 and 1979, demolished 2007); (5) Hotel Mediterranean (1961–64). Drawing by the authors

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and consumer groups. In the Mediterranean, these ranged from the Club Méditerranée camps with accommodation units crafted as exotic huts, such as in Palinuro in Southern Italy (established in 1954) or Village de Sveti Marko near Tivat in Montenegro (established in 1962), to Modernist tourist typologies of the nationwide construction programme initiated by the National Tourism Organisation of Greece (EOT). Particularly significant examples of the dialogue of Modernist architecture with vernacular traditions, landscape and local climate are to be found in the Xenia Hotels series by the Greek architect Aris Konstantinidis, realised in the period 1957–67 when he was the head of EOT Technical Department, most notably the hotel colony on the island of Mykonos (1958–59).5 Even though chronologically and geographically distant, precedents of this Modernist interpretation of the vernacular can be seen to include the paradigmatic case of Villa de Madame H. de Mandrot in Le Pradet near Toulon in France (1930–31) by Le Corbusier6 and less widely

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4 Branko Bon, Vojislav Đokić and Radmilo Zdravković: CityHotel Sveti Stefan, 1960

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acknowledged but strikingly distinct buildings by Bohuslav Fuchs in interwar Czechoslovakia, such as Morava Sanatorium in Tatranská Lomnica (1930–31) and The Green Frog thermal bath in Trenčijanské Teplice (1936–37), designed in a ‘back-to-nature spirit’,7 as well as Oscar Niemeyer’s Grande Hotel de Ouro Prêto in Minas Gerais 1938–40.8 Analogous Modernist readings of the vernacular were explored by post-Second World War architects in the coastal area of the former Yugoslavia, such as in the work of the Croatian architect Ivan Vitić on the Adriatic island of Vis (Residential blocks 1 and 2 in Vis, 1952–53 and 1961, and Culture Centre Komiža, 1961),9 or in the reconstruction of the whole traditional island town of Sveti Stefan in Montenegro into the modern luxurious CityHotel (by Branko Bon, Vojislav Đokić and Radmilo Zdravković, 1960) [4].10 We argue that, while the tourist colony in Ulcinj engages in global dialogue, in a Modernist reading of the regional and vernacular, its reference framework relates primarily to a specific understanding of the concept of Mediterraneità. An ‘ambiguous “Mediterraneanism”’, as Jean-Louis Cohen writes, celebrating geometry and proportion and the indigenous Mediterranean spirit, originated in 1930s Italy.11 Following Michelangelo Sabatino’s argument that Mediterraneità resonated in Italian architectural debates well into the 1960s,12 we would suggest that, over the period of thirty years in its wider resonance across the Adriatic littoral, the notion was adapted to different regional, cultural and socio-political contexts. This paper aims to examine the post-Second World War expanded understanding of Mediterraneità in the South Adriatic coastal region of Montenegro in the former Yugoslavia, primarily as a Modernist recourse against the demand for productivity and tenets of both socialist-realism and socialist aestheticism.

Realism, aestheticism and debates about contemporary architecture in the 1950s and 1960s Demands for productivity were part of the debates of the period on both sides of the Cold War divide, focusing on issues of post-Second World War reconstruction and economic development such as standardisation, modular coordination and the industrialisation of construction. In socialist Yugoslavia, this period was marked by modernisation and urbanisation paralleled by a socio-political and cultural shift from socialist realism following the expulsion of the country from the Cominform in 1948 and the subsequent breaking-off of political relations with the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Instead, it was socialist Modernism, or ‘socialist aestheticism’ as defined by the Belgrade literary critic Sveta Lukić,13 which figured as the dominant direction of art and architecture from the mid 1950s.14 Negating ‘vulgar sociologism, moralism and extremist politicisation in the aesthetics’ of socialist realism, the artistic community or ‘collective author’, as Lukić wrote, turned to aestheticism, that is, the exploration of art’s own reality and its sublime autonomy, its critical edge being subsequently blunted by compromise.15 The theory of contemporary architecture based on rationality and objectivism in design methodology which was advanced by the architect Milan Zloković, as we aim to show, belonged neither to socialist realist dogma nor to socialist aestheticism’s compromise, but to the international discourse of the industrialisation of construction. As a member of several federal committees and organisations involved with these questions in Yugoslavia, Zloković actively participated in international dialogues on the subject. He was a delegate at the Congress of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) in Paris The beauty of production Blagojevi´ c and Milinkovi´ c



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5 Milan Zloković (central figure in the second row on the photograph) at the International Modular Group meeting in Paris, 1962 (photo Gaston Rochette) 6 Milan Zloković’s watercolours from 1950s: a not signed; b signed ‘PUČIŠĆA 19. VIII. 553л.’; c signed ‘САВИНА. 1950. 3Л’

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(1957), meetings of the European Productivity Agency (EPA) in Stockholm and Copenhagen (1957) and Athens (1958), as well as the Congress of the Conseil International du Bâtiment (CIB) in Rotterdam (1959). He was elected member of the International Modular Group (IMG) at their meeting in London in April 1960, and subsequently took part in its activities and meetings in Copenhagen (1960), Bamberg (1961), Paris (1962), Stockholm and Warsaw (1963), and Zurich (1964) [5]. Indeed, in the face of the socialist realist current of the late 1940s, Zloković argued for alternative analytical and formal-aesthetic criteria in scientific design methods, maintaining the same position even as the current changed towards socialist Modernism, that is, the aestheticism of the 1950s and 1960s.16 Despite continual marginalisation from both ideological camps, from the advocates of realism and aestheticism alike, Zloković advanced a fairly consistent theory of modular coordination as an aesthetic theory of contemporary architecture relevant in the wider context of the period.17 Its practical effect can be seen not just at the Hotel Mediterranean in Ulcinj, analysed in detail in this article, but also the Teachers College in Prizren (1959),18 similarly carried out in co-authorship with Đorđe Zloković and Milica Mojović.

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Theory makes perfect: Zlokovi´c’s aesthetics of modular coordination Born in the North Adriatic port city of Trieste to a naval family originating from Boka Kotorska (Montenegro), the architect Milan Zloković formed his worldview amid the multicultural contexts of the Adriatic littoral. A polyglot from an early age – speaking Serbian at home, Italian in everyday urban life, German at an Austro-Hungarian school and in the military and French as the language of poetry, art and architectural history – he was part of that last Triestino generation of the SerbIllyric community formed in the mid eighteenth century following the privilege granted by the Habsburg ruler Maria Theresa.19 The historian Marco Dogo writes of the multiple identities of

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7c 7 Milan Zlokovi´ c, interwar projects: ˘ i˘ a Hotel Z ca, Mataru˘ska Banja, 1931–32; b Hall of Commerce, Skopje, 1933–35; c School in Jagodina, 1937–40

the first generation of Orthodox merchants in Trieste, formed between the global geographies of shipping and world trade and the affective and spiritual geography of religion and tradition of the old country.20 Not too dissimilarly, the architecture and theory of Milan Zloković relate to shifting geographies and multiple identities forged between modernity and antiquity in the Mediterranean region. Even after he moved permanently to landlocked Serbia in 1919, where he graduated in architecture and held a teaching post at the University of Belgrade until his death, Zloković kept a lifelong sense of belonging to the Mediterranean maritime culture and the building tradition of the Adriatic littoral cities of a RomanDalmatian-Venetian character [6a–c]. In addition, through frequent sojourns to his parental home in Trieste, yearly travels in Italy, contacts with Italian architects and journals such as Domus, Casabella and Quadrante, he was fully exposed to the Italian architectural discourse of the period. As noted by Kenneth Frampton, even a superficial look at his interwar architecture, such as the Hotel Žiča in Mataruška Banja (1931–32), Hall of Commerce in Skopje (1933–35) or the School in Jagodina (1937–40), reveals a ‘somewhat surprising influence’ of ‘the classic order of the Italian rationalist tradition’ [7a–c].21 In the latter half of his career, when his private practice diminished in the changed socio-political and economic conditions of post-Second World War socialist Yugoslavia, Zloković gradually built-up his theories through the piecemeal publication of original historical-analytical research in around twenty analytical papers and articles. The theory was only synthesised in his final study, titled simply ‘Modular Coordination’ and published in April 1965 in Italian as a chapter in the book Industrialisation of Construction [8].22 Co-authored by an illustrious group of fourteen experts, engineers and architects, the book resulted from the contributors’ participation as invited guest-lecturers in the ‘Course on Culture and the Latest Industrialised Construction and Prefabrication’ (Corso di cultura e di aggiornamento in industrializzazione edilizia e prefabbricazione) led by Professor Achille Petrignani and held in 1963–64 at the Institute of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, University of Bari.23 The distinctiveness of Zloković’s chapter becomes apparent when read in relation to the other writings in the book, most of which are shorter, narrower in scope and focus on specific issues such as functional, structural, technological, productive, economic and social aspects of prefabrication. The volume also contains two short chapters on the concept and process of industrialised construction by Giuseppe Ciribini who was, at the time, professor at the Milan Polytechnic where he was, incidentally, supervising Renzo Piano’s graduation thesis with a title echoing Zloković’s chapter, ‘Modulazione e coordinamento modulare’.24 Other authors include Bari professor and architect Vittorio Chiaia, who presented Italian residential The beauty of production Blagojevi´ c and Milinkovi´ c



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8 Book Industrializzazione dell’edilizia, title page, drawing by Milan Zlokovi´ c (courtesy Edizioni Dedalo, Bari)

9 M. Zlokovi´ c, Integration of Modulor into the international modular system, in: Industrializzazione dell’edilizia, fig. 9.4 (courtesy Edizioni Dedalo, Bari)

typology and construction in comparative international perspective, and his close friend, the German-American architect and engineer Konrad Wachsmann, who wrote on the complexity of decision making in architecture.25 The only chapter comparable in length and aspiration to Zloković’s, written by the architect and engineer ‘il Maestro’ Marcello Grisotti, professor at the University of Bari,26 presents a narrative history of modern architecture as an expression of ‘civiltà industriale’ (industrial civilisation), a cultural history of industrialisation of construction. Both chapters, Grisotti’s as the most historical and Zloković’s as the most theoretical, have the similar goal of giving historical legitimacy to the contemporary concept of industrialised construction. ‘Modular Coordination’ by Zloković is laid out as a set of carefully coordinated texts, graphics and tables organised in twenty-four thematic sections, amounting to a fifty-page treatise supported by a 163-item bibliography. Concise writing is interlaced with mathematical series and equations and 101 figures: fifty-one photographs and reproductions and fifty detailed geometric analyses, numerical tabulations and diagrams of great precision, all meticulously hand-drawn by the architect himself. Zloković’s hypothesis about the rapport of the proportional systems of the past with the contemporary notion of modular coordination, we would claim, serves to prove the elasticity of the rational compositional method and its capacity for varied architectural interpretation. This thesis is pursued through a geometric, numerical and diagrammatic translation of the proportional systems of historical case studies into the lingua franca of the International Standards Organisation.

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The argument opens with the integration of Le Corbusier’s Modulor into the international modular system by converting its irrational numbers sequence to commensurable, full number series in both imperial and metric units [9]. Starting from the Vitruvian anthropometric premise and its interpretations by Leonardo da Vinci and Giovanni Antonio Rusconi, Zloković approximates the height of man as 6’ = 72” = 1.829 m ≈ 18M (ISO). From Rusconi, he takes the square grid principle; from Le Corbusier, the system of ‘red’ and ‘blue’ interwoven f progressions related to the Fibonacci sequence (r11 : 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 …). But, instead of using the original Fibonacci series, he introduces the closely related recurrent ‘Lucas sequence’ (r31 : 1 3 4 7 11 18 29 …) and its double (r62 : 2 6 8 14 22 36 …).27 He thus devises the ‘integrated Modulor sequence’: 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 11 14 18 22 29 36 …, and represents the method of conversion in a comparative diagram of original ‘red’ and ‘blue’ values and the new modular Modulor series.28 This analysis, as we aim to show further on, had far-reaching practical consequences in the modular design applied throughout the typology, design and construction of the Ulcinj tourist colony. It thus seems fitting that the colony figures as the concluding point of Zloković’s chapter: an example of the practical application of the aesthetic theory of modular coordination. Modularity and Mediterraneità ‘Modular Coordination’ concludes with the terms ‘typification’, ‘compositional efficiency’ and ‘maximum economy’, effectively connecting the present reality of the Ulcinj colony with historical-analytical research into the Dalmatian and Montenegrin architecture of the past [10].29 Research of captains’ houses and palaces in Boka Kotorska from the period of Venetian rule, constructed between the sixteenth and the




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beginning of nineteenth century, informs the meaning of ‘typification’. Through geometric analysis, Zloković demonstrates that typical stone elements – cornices, balustrades, eaves, steps, consoles, balcony slabs and frames for doors and windows – which were manufactured for centuries to standard measurements in Venetian feet by stonemasons from the islet of Vrnik near the island of Korčula (Croatia), largely predetermined the architectural outlook of the traditional houses and their construction in simple numerical interrelations. Typification of historical elements is thus related to contemporary modular coordination. Similarly, ‘compositional efficiency’ correlates the ‘elastic typification’ of the group form of individual buildings of similar function to the differentiation of individual stone houses in traditional communities achieved by urban arrangement and variation of the primary volumetrics, the uniformity of window and door type notwithstanding. Finally, maximum economy of rational space and object is inherited from the maritime history of the region, where the captains were invariably the architects of their own houses and ‘ship’ and ‘house’ were correlative terms, as ‘reflected in the rational architecture of the captains’ houses built during the eighteenth and at the beginning of nineteenth century’.30 In that sense, ‘maximum economy’ implies minimum expenditure to maximum effect which the case of the tourist colony in Ulcinj translates as the rationality of ‘all dimensions expressed in modular aliquots, apt to the consequent typification’ of elements to the maximum relational and compositional effect of the architectural ambience and expression.31 10 M. Zloković, ‘La coordinazione modulare’, in: Industrializzazione

dell’edilizia, pp. 162–63, book spread (courtesy Edizioni Dedalo, Bari)

In these three terms – typification, compositional efficiency and maximum economy – and the way in which they structure the argument throughout, we argue, lies the deeply embedded Mediterraneità of Zloković’s aesthetic theory of modular coordination and its application in the Ulcinj project. It would appear that the method dispenses with the ‘deceit’ that Benedetto Gravagnuolo sees critically as ‘the transhistorical representation of the past as present’ effected by the Mediterranean myth: ‘It is exactly as myth, as a desire for simple and harmonious construction, as a simulacrum of absences of decorum and pure Euclidean volumes, as symbolic expression of the arithmetic canons of “divine proportion”, as a shade of Apollonian beauty and as an echo of sirens transmitted on the waves of the sea, that the concept of mediterraneità can and must be evaluated beyond its objective verifiability’.32 Even though Zloković goes to some length to objectively verify the correspondence of historically disparate cases through rigorous geometric and mathematical analysis, his theory advances this same myth. We would contend, however, that in the austerity of post-Second World War Ulcinj, both modularity and Mediterraneità acquire not mythical but very real social significance. Financed by Ulcinj’s council development funds and run at economic, socialist market prices, the colony brought not only tourist industry and employment opportunities to the locale but a democratisation of the right to pleasure of a new consumer class of working people.33 A reflection of the Mediterraneità is discernible also in the typology of the colony, that is a group form in a landscape as opposed to a single large object. In 1930s Italy we find a similar typology of ‘colonie climatiche di soggiorno’, climatic holiday colonies for children of working-class families, on the Ligurian and Adriatic coasts.34 Based on the twofold therapeutic and social goal of providing healthy and active holidays for the masses, these

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11 Rajko Tati´ c: Youth City, Belgrade, 1947: a dormitory, b refectory

12 Milan Zlokovi´ c’s collection of photographs of the Balkan vernacular architecture

a Prizren, 1920s b Mosque in Ulcinj Old City, 1935 (photo Milan Zlokovi´ c)

colonies were established by public assistance and private corporate industrial capital (Fiat, Agip, Piaggio), and coordinated and directed by organisations of the Fascist regime (Opera Nazionale Balilla). Correspondingly, in Yugoslavia, the colony typology can be traced back to the immediate postSecond World War years and the construction of summer camps for urban school youths – Tito’s ‘pioneers’ – on the outskirts of major cities; such as the ‘Youth’, that is, ‘Pioneers’ City’ in Belgrade by Rajko Tatić, constructed in 1947, or its Zagreb counterpart in ‘a somewhat Mediterranean impression’ by Ivan Vitić, built in 1949 [11a,b].35 In Italy, as Sabatino argues, the Rationalist architects who aspired to Mediterraneità in the 1930s admired the whitewashed surfaces of vernacular buildings typical of the seaside towns along the Mediterranean coast while their neo-Rationalist counterparts of the 1950s were inspired by the rugged vitality of rural environments whence came the new proletariat.36 Similarly, in the youth cities built in Zagreb and Belgrade in the socialist realism period of the late 1940s, rustic materials, pitched roofs and vernacular elements were substituted for the pure white Modernism of the 1930s, and the sparsely urbanised colony typology for the dense urban forms of the interwar period. Even though socialist realism and its agitprop precept of ‘national in form – socialist in content’ was widely renounced, both vernacular and social aspects remained critical tools for Modernist interpretations in the 1950–60s. The idea of the vernacular seems likely to have been an inspiration for Zloković, an avid traveller and researcher of traditional and historic

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13 Comparative views of vernacular stone houses in Ulcinj Old City (photo Marinko Bu˘ ci´ c for purposes of survey led by Milan Zlokovi´ c, 1935) and Hotel Mediterranean 14 Hotel Mediterranean, rustic stone gable wall: a preliminary project, 1959; b as built, 1964

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architecture in the Balkans and the Adriatic littoral since the 1920s. Postcards and photographs in the 10 family archive testify to his study trips, such as a research expedition to Ohrid in Macedonia in 1923, travels to Prizren and Peć in Kosovo in 1928, a photographic and geodetic survey of Ulcinj’s Old City in 1935, and a detailed survey and archival research in Kotor, Prčanj and Dobrota in Boka Kotorska and on the islands of Vrnik and Korčula, involving, among others, Đorđe Zloković and Milica Mojović, in 1951 [12a,b]. The inclusion of local building materials and skills in the Prizren school and the Ulcinj colony reflects the designers’ deep understanding of the vernacular technê as the combination of practicality, economy and social relations. In both of these, at the time, underdeveloped and peripheral municipalities, the severe scarcity of funds necessitated efficient The beauty of production Blagojevi´ c and Milinkovi´ c



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and Ulcinj commissioned Zloković to design typical projects for tourist development in 1959, he had few contemporary precedents and relevant standards to rely on. The ensuing typology, worked out in collaboration with Đorđe Zloković at the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism of Serbia in Belgrade, emphasised that ‘elastic typification’ of apartment units (as opposed to rooms) in the form of the tourist colony (in distinction to a large hotel) provided the most economical approach to tourist development. The typology is premised on what Zloković calls the ‘modern module’ (10 cm ≈ 4”)39 or base module, in effect from 1 January 1958 as the Yugoslav standard on Integral modular coordination in building construction and subsequent regulations for housing from 1960, which also defined modular grid density of 1M = 10 cm and a modular design grid based on the multiplied base module nM = 1Mn.40 The typology adopts a system of load-bearing walls of either 5M in traditionally built rustic dry stone or 2M in hollow concrete block walls, giving good acoustic and thermal insulation between units and a discontinuous modular grid of clear spans standardised for housing: 36M, 42M, 48M, 54M and 60M (divided into two units of 29M clear width each with 2M partition), adding one extra clear span of 30M (for a rational unit width). The 48M span, proving inefficient for accommodation, was used in public spaces such as the restaurant and reception, and 54M and 60M feature in the bungalows typology. The preferential modular spans and consequent modular unit widths generate the primary scale of differentiation, that is, the first level of elastic typification [15]. The basic accommodation unit is tworoom apartment ‘type A’, each modular width corresponding to four variants A-29, A-30, A-36

construction, the use of locally available materials and the employment of a local workforce. By their recourse to the efficiency of consistent modular coordination used throughout, the architects made virtue out of necessity. In the Ulcinj colony, we argue, the ideal of Mediterraneità is contained in the balance of vernacular technê and scientific design episteme [13]. With its typology firmly based on an exact study of modularity, proportion and disposition of buildings, the colony appropriates an idea of organic vernacular where it appears climatically or economically suitable, such as shallow pitched roofing in cheap grey Eternit, traditionally laid rustic stone gable walls or landscaping technique of olive grove dry-stone wall terracing of the steeply sloped terrain [14a,b]. The tourism of scarcity: a typological framework for the Montenegro littoral In the late 1950s, building regulations, standards, recommendations and norms in Yugoslavia applied mainly to mass housing, while almost completely lacking for tourist development. Consequently, the growing tourist sector often developed in an unplanned and haphazard manner with inefficient buildings of inadequate capacity situated in unsuitable locations, adversely affecting the local environment and character. Even as late as the mid-1960s, when tourism on the coast rapidly expanded, there were no techno-economic and hygienic criteria, comfort and spatial standards or normative areas for hotels, motels and guesthouses.37 The only relevant document pertaining to tourist development was the ‘Rulebook on Classification of Hotels and Guesthouses’ from 1955, itself deemed outdated from the moment it was introduced.38 When the local authorities of the cities of Budva

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double-room type H2 with loggias equal in size to those of apartments. Variations correspond to specifics, such as subtypes A’ and A1’ denoting types divided by 5M rustic stone walls, subtypes A3-36 and A4-36 permitting the rotation (other than in a row) of units within the group arrangement, and subtypes A2-42 and A3-42 with a variable internal layout in the middle zone. Maximum depth increase determines subtype A4-42 with two large double rooms and the limit case A5-42 which is split in depth into two independent units with side access. The type differentiation A-A1-A2- … -An represents the secondary scale of differentiation, that is the second level of elastic typification [17].

and A-42. Apartments are grouped in detached pavilions, horizontally arranged in rows of type A with subtype A1 at row ends and vertically stacked on three floors, with one-double-room apartments of sub-type A2 on the ground floor reduced in depth to accommodate situating the pavilion on steep terrain. All apartments have a typical sanitary unit, direct external access on one side and a loggia at the opposite end of the unit which faces the view. In A1-36 and A1-42 subtypes, the side entryway affords extra space in the single room for an additional bed [16]. The typology includes two types of hotelrooms with internal corridor access and collective bathrooms and WCs: the single-room type H1 and 15 Hotel Mediterranean accommodation units modular coordination. Drawing by the authors 16 Typical apartments A1-36 and A-36 – plan diagram of building with modular blocks 17 Hotel Mediterranean accommodation units typology. Drawing by the authors 18 a Successive modular incremental increase of accommodation units typology. Drawing by the authors b Correspondence between proportional systems (√1 (1:1) √2 √3 √4 (2:1) √5 (f)) and accommodation units typology. Drawing by the authors

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and 11.88 m2 to 13.64 m2 per person in basic type variants A-29, A-30, A-36 and A-42, due to the increase in modular width. The typology is groundbreaking in this respect, as comparable surface ranges will come into effect in Yugoslavia only in 1980 hotel regulations which standardised the minimum of 10 m2, 12 m2 and 14 m2 per person for two-bed rooms depending on the hotel’s classification (C, B, A).44 The secondary scale of differentiation, on the other hand, allows for adaptability of typology in relation to social structure, that is, diverse user configuration, such as a standard two-child nuclear family in apartment types A1-36 and A1-42 at row ends, a single child family in standard A-30, a single child and baby family in A-36 or A-42 types, couples or a single parent family in the economic A2-29 and A2-30 or more expensive A2-36 and A2-42 types, and so on. By combining the two scales by method of successive incremental modular growth in two directions, the typology provides a mechanism of differentiation that closely corresponds to diversity of social milieu and changeability of tourist standards, while keeping the formal architectural language even [19].

Diagrammatic analysis adapted from the method used by Alexander Klein41 shows the outcome of progressive structural modular width increase by 2M3 = 1M6 increments on the ‘x’ axis and modular unit depth increase by 7M3 = 21M increments on the ‘y’ axis. The width increment derives from housing regulations, while the depth increment is deduced from the modular dimension of a standard bed of 20M with 1M tolerance, as the minimum depth of a single room. This dimension was also found appropriate for the typical sanitary unit and optimal for the overall depth of the loggia: 18M +1M (parapet) + 2M (facade wall to room). The most profitable, hygienic and practical types range between A-29 as the lower and A-42 as the upper limit case of comfort and economy. The table demonstrates correspondence of efficiency to proportion: A-30 is based on the ‘quadratura’ ratio √2 ≈ 7/5 ≈ 10/7, A-36 on the ‘triangolatura’ ratio √3 ≈ 7/4 ≈ 12/7, A-42 on harmonic proportions √4 = 2/1 and type A-29 on ϕ ratio of the golden section and its constitutive ratio of √5.42 This pattern of variation corresponds to Richard Padovan’s thesis of the fundamental unity of commensurable and incommensurable proportional systems (√1, √2, √3, √4, √5, ϕ and ψ) and demonstrates how it may be applied in a concrete case of architectural design [18a,b].43 In sum, the primary scale of differentiation regulates spatial comfort and relates to the ratio of standard room areas and the rating of hotel buildings. Numerical indicators of efficiency show a net increase of area ranging from 9.54 m2, 9.93 m2 19 Hotel Mediterranean, Villa Sarajevo, access stairs with balconies

19

Concluding notes: practice makes perfect, after all This typology was originally developed in relation to a wide spectrum of cases applicable to three potential locations, Zavala cape in Budva and two sites in Ulcinj. Only Hotel Mediterranean was realised in the ‘B’ standard category. The first phase, consisting of seven accommodation pavilions was constructed by ‘Komgrap’ building enterprise from Belgrade (the same contractor who built Belgrade Pioneers’ City dormitories years previously). Using two structural spans for accommodation buildings, 30M and 36M with an area/per bed ratio corresponding to category ‘B’, and the application of rigorous modular coordination in all three dimensions with a limited number of elements, allowed for fast-track construction. The whole colony was constructed out of ten modular prefabricated concrete elements (including stairs, structural members and building blocks) and seven types of windows and doors (the sliding shades on the external side of the balcony doors being the eighth typical element). The first phase – comprising six buildings with ninety-six two-room apartments (three or four beds) and forty-eight with one room (two beds) in total, and one building with forty-five rooms (one or two beds) with shared bathrooms and WCs – was constructed and fittedout in less than seven months, from October 1961 to May 1962 [20a,b,c,d]. In interview, Žarko Brnović (the son of Ljubo Brnović, the former Director of Tourist Enterprise ‘Ulcinj’ and manager of the Hotel Mediterranean) recalled that the first season had been completely pre-booked by the Belgrade tourist agency ‘Putnik’, mostly for foreign tourists.45 The second phase, comprising a central building with reception and restaurant and two additional accommodation pavilions, was constructed by the local contractor ‘Primorje’ in 1963–64.46 A final capacity of 632 beds in total was distributed in 132




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20a

20 Hotel Mediterranean under construction: a first phase site plan; b Ljubo Brnovi´ c, director of the Tourist Enterprise ‘Ulcinj’, on site, 1961; c finalisation of the first phase of construction, 1962; d construction of the gable wall of the central building, 1963–64

type A-30, A-36 and A1-36 apartments, sixty-four subtype A2-30 and A2-36 apartments, eighteen type H130 single rooms and twenty-seven type H2-30 double rooms. While keeping surface areas comparable to figures set in basic regulations, the achieved standard of 90% independent apartment units, each with en suite bathroom and direct external access, greatly exceeded the general hotel rating in years following. All apartments and double-rooms, however modest in surface area, have loggias of the same modular depth throughout, all of them, without exception, with a view of the sea and the Old City [21]. Most significantly, the cost per bed for apartments was lower than that for rooms, as Milan Zloković himself wrote in a short summary (in English and French) of his article about the colony: ‘the usual disposition [i.e., rooms with one or two beds with washbasins and separate shared bathrooms, showers and WCs], less comfortable than that of the apartments, was more expensive per bed and this was intentionally demonstrated in practice [our emphasis]’.47 The theoretical hypothesis of the typology study was thus proved in practice. All beds and built-in furniture in rooms (closets and desks) and custom-made interior pieces in the public building (restaurant elements, bar or reception desk) were designed by Đorđe Zloković in solid elm and made to order by a joinery enterprise from Sarajevo. As there was no separate budget for the interior, furniture and fitting-out, costs had to be closely monitored from the outset since all elements had to be calculated into the set construction budget estimated administratively

20b

20c

20d




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21 Hotel Mediterranean, view of the sea and the Ulcinj Old City 22 Hotel Mediterranean, central building: a reception and restaurant building in context; b reception interior; c restaurant terrace 23 Hotel Mediterranean, central building in the foreground and Villas Beograd and Titograd in the background, 2003 (photo by Marija Milinkovi´ c)

21

22a

23

22b

22c

per bed in a standard category ‘B’ hotel. As Đorđe Zloković recently recollected, even though the interior was simple and modest, the joinery work executed was of exceptional quality.48 The choice of solid elm, he continued, reflected the architects’ preference for materials which would also have been used traditionally, that is, stone walls externally and solid wood internally. Besides, he says, timber was chosen for its durability and permanence, especially with the prospect of school excursions staying at the hotel in the periods out of season [22a–c].




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The construction of the colony, then the largest single resort on the Montenegro littoral, marked the turning point for mass tourism on the Ulcinj Riviera and a consequent economic and social progress of the area.49 In the years since the end of socialism and the break-up of Yugoslavia, the colony largely resisted the overwhelming process of densification and the illegal construction which followed the liberalisation and collapse of the planning system. Notwithstanding the demolition of three villas and their terraced gardens in an uncontrolled moment immediately following privatisation,50 it largely retains its original form and atmosphere [23]. Conceived as a specific formalisation of a typology ‘elastically’

Notes 1. Milan Zloković and Đorđe Zloković, ‘Značaj modularne koordinacije u projektovanju i konstruisanju zgrada: primer praktične primene na turističkim objektima za crnogorsko primorje kao sredstva produktivnijeg građenja’, Produktivnost, 9 (1961), 583–93 (p. 584). 2. Ibid. 3. Ljiljana Blagojević, Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919–1941 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). 4. Marija Milinković, ‘Setting the Distance: Theoretical Practice of Milan Zloković and its Material Corollaries’, Serbian Architectural Journal, 1 (2010), 19–46. 5. Yannis Aesopos and Yorgos Simeoforidis (eds.), Landscapes of Modernisation: Greek Architecture 1960s and 1990s (Athens: Metapolis Press, 1999), pp. 218–19. 6. Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Œuvre complète de 1929–1934 (Zurich: Les Éditions Girsberger, sixth edition, 1957), pp. 58–62. 7. Vladimír Šlapeta and Wojciech Leśnikowski, ‘Functionalism in Czechoslovakian Architecture’, in East European Modernism. Architecture in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland Between the Wars, ed. by Wojciech Leśnikowski (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), pp. 91; 94–95. 8. Carlos Eduardo Dias Comas, ‘O passado mora ao lado. Lúcio Costa e o projeto do Grand Hotel de Ouro Preto, 1938/40’, Arquitextos, 11:122 (July, 2010). http://www. vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/ arquitextos/11.122/3486 [accessed 19.11.13]. 9. Tadej Glažar, ‘Interpretations of the Regional Context’ and ‘Archetype and Polygon for Innovations’, Arhitektura, 1–217 (2005), 58–67 and 68–77. 10. Đ. Z., ‘Sveti Stefan – Grad-hotel’, Arhitektura urbanizam, 22–23 (1963), 42–43.

suited to the unique conditions of the particular site, the colony has stood the test of time as an example of consistent, yet sensitive, combination of modular coordination and vernacular tradition in modern architecture. In a time of scarcity and in the ideological context of socialism, such an understanding of the concept of Mediterraneità gave architects the means for overcoming the socio-aesthetic paradigms of both socialistrealism and socialist aestheticism. Indeed, the high standard of socio-spatial and environmental quality achieved in the Ulcinj colony has hardly been matched since, despite the dynamic changes in the Montenegro tourist industry in the last five decades.

11. Jean-Louis Cohen, The Future of Architecture. Since 1889 (London: Phaidon, 2012), pp. 208–09. 12. Michelangelo Sabatino, ‘The Politics of Mediterraneità in Italian Modernist Architecture’, in Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues and Contested Identities, ed. by Jean-François Lejeune and Michelangelo Sabatino (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 41–64. 13. Sveta Lukić, ‘Socijalistički estetizam’, Politika, 25 April 1963, 17 (Cyrillic). For an expanded discussion, see: Sveta Lukić, ‘Socijalistički estetizam’, in his: Umetnost na mostu: rasprave (Beograd: Predsedništvo Konferencije SSOJ, 1975), pp. 225–43. 14. On socialist aestheticism in Serbian architecture, see: Miloš R. Perović, Serbian 20th Century Architecture: From Historicism to Second Modernism (Belgrade: Faculty of Architecture, 2003), pp. 148–209. 15. Lukić, ‘Socijalistički estetizam’, 17. Cf. Ješa Denegri, ‘Socijalistički estetizam’ in Istorija umetnosti u Srbiji XX vek, drugi tom. Realizmi i modernizmi oko Hladnog rata, ed. by Miško Šuvaković (Belgrade: Orion Art, 2012), pp. 395–400. 16. Milan Zloković, Kritički osvrt na značaj proporcijskih dijagrama i modularnih mreža u projektovanju, in: Referati za I savetovanje arhitekata i urbanista: prvi deo. Dubrovnik, 25–27 November 1950 (Belgrade: Naučna knjiga, n.d.), pp. 161–68 (Cyrillic). Cf. Milan Zloković, (no title), in: Drugi razgovori o arhitekturi. Ohrid 1960. Izraz u našoj savremenoj arhitekturi (Belgrade: Institut za arhitekturu i urbanizam SRS, 1964), pp. 20–21. 17. Cf. Caroline Voet, ‘The Poetics of Order: Dom Hans van der Laan’s Architectonic Space’, arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, 16:2 (2012), 137–54. 18. Milan Zloković, ‘Učiteljska škola u

Prizrenu’, Arhitektura urbanizam, 38 (1966), 48–50. 19. Ljiljana Blagojević, ‘Transkulturalni itinereri arhitekta Milana Zlokovića’, Arhitektura i urbanizam, 32 (2011), 3–15 (Cyrillic). 20. Marco Dogo, ‘Una nazione di pii mercanti. La comunità serboillirica di Trieste, 1748–1908’, in Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, Vol. I: La città dei gruppi, 1719–1918, ed. by Roberto Finzi and Giovanni Panjek (Trieste: LINT, 2001), pp. 573–602. 21. Kenneth Frampton, endorsement of: Blagojević, Modernism in Serbia, dust jacket. 22. Milan Zloković, ‘La coordinazione modulare’, in AA.VV. Industrializzazione dell’edilizia (Bari: Dedalo, 1965), pp. 139–96. 23. Introduction Achille Petrignani, chapters 1–14, by: Giuseppe Ciribini, Marcello Grisotti, Roberto Guiducci, Giuseppe Signorile Bianchi, Vittorio Chiaia, Marcello Petrignani, Giuseppe Ciribini, Konrad Wachsmann, Milan Zloković, Michele Salvati, Federico Gorio, Guido Veneziani, Gèrard Blachère and Raffaele De Vita. 24. Stefano Boeri, Anna Foppiano, … et. al., ‘Abitare 497 – Being Piano’ [accessed 21.03.13]. 25. Vittorio Chiaia, ‘Lettera a Marcello Grisotti’, Scritti di Architettura e Urbanistica per Marcello Grisotti in Puglia: Quaderni dell’Istituto di Architettura ed Urbanistica, Facoltà di Ingegneria – Università di Bari, 22 (Bari: Edipuglia, 1992), pp. 5–18. 26. Renato Cervini, ‘La presenza di Marcello Grisotti in Puglia. Una testimonianza’, ibid., pp. 1–4 (p. 1). 27. On the correspondence of the Fibonacci series to the Lucas series, see: Richard Padovan, Proportion. Science, Philosophy, Architecture (London, New York: E&FN Spon, 1999), pp. 53–54.




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28. Zloković, ‘La coordinazione modulare’, pp. 141–43. 29. The closing line relates two photographic views of the Ulcinj colony to: ‘the compositional efficiency of modular coordination in architecture, applied in semi-typified construction of maximum economy’ (l’efficienza compositiva della coordinazione modulare nell’architettura, applicate a costruzioni semitipizzate di massima economia). Ibid., p. 192. 30. Milan Zloković, ‘Kapetanske kuće u Boki’, Politika, 13 April 1958, 19 (Cyrillic). 31. Zloković, ‘La coordinazione modulare’, p. 192. 32. Benedetto Gravagnuolo, ‘From Schinkel to Le Corbusier: The Myth of the Mediterranean in Modern Architecture’, in Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean, pp. 15–40 (p. 16). 33. ‘The development of mass society in the post-war years or the “society of mass consumption” is based, inter alia, on the assumption of the necessity to democratise the right to pleasure’. Ivan Rogić Nehajev, ‘Utopijske maske turizma’, Čovjek i prostor, 7–8 (1982), 13–16 (p. 15). 34. Fulvio Irace, ‘L’Utopie nouvelle: L’Architettura delle colonie’, Domus, 659 (1985), 2–29. 35. Tomislav Odak, ‘Synergy with the Landscape’, Arhitektura, 1–217 (2005), 104–15. 36. Michelangelo Sabatino, Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), pp. 10–11. 37. Mate Bajlon, ‘Regulativa u oblasti izgradnje turističkih i ugostiteljskih objekata’, in Referati: Konferencija o izgradnji turističkih objekata Jugoslavije (Belgrade: Savez arhitekata Jugoslavije, 1965), p. 92. 38. ‘Pravilnik o razvrstavanju hotela i pansiona u kategorije’, Službeni list FNRJ, 41 (1955), 707–11 (p. 708) (Cyrillic). 39. Zloković, ‘La coordinazione modulare’, 144. 40. JUS-U.A9.001/1957. ‘Naredba o privremenim tehničkim propisima o projektovanju i građenju u stambenoj izgradnji po sistemu modularne

koordinacije’, Službeni list FNRJ, 4 (1960), 67–68 (Cyrillic). 41. Marco Giorgio Bevilaqua, ‘Alexander Klein and the Existenzminimum: A “Scientific” Approach to Design Techniques’, Nexus Network Journal, 13:2 (2011), 297–313. 42. In A-29 type variants, numbers 18 and 29 relate to Integrated Modulor series, while the omnipresent number 21 is part of the Fibonacci series. 43. Padovan, Proportion. Science, Philosophy, Architecture, pp. 49–50. 44. ‘Kategorizacija hotelskih soba (Zagreb, 1980)’, quoted in Bao Zhi Fang, Hotelska soba – mogući vidovi formiranja, Doctoral dissertation (University of Belgrade, Faculty of Architecture, 1983), p. 19. 45. Interview with Žarko Brnović, 29.09.13. 46. The first phase pavilions were named after the capital cities of the six constituent republics of former Yugoslavia, viz.: Titograd, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Beograd, Sarajevo and Skopje, plus the old capital of the Kingdom of Montenegro, Cetinje. The two additional pavilions built in the second phase were named after the Adriatic cities Opatija and Dubrovnik. 47. The summary in English and French is available only in the reprint. Milan Zloković, ‘Novo turističko naselje u Ulcinju’, Arhitektura urbanizam, 22–23 (1963), 47–50. 48. Interview with Đorđe Zloković, 19.09.13. 49. Demographic growth from 3184 inhabitants in 1921 (4919 in 1953, 5705 in 1961), to 9464 in 1981 was paralleled by an approximately 10% growth per year in the total number of tourist beds in Ulcinj during the period 1965–82. The increase in the total number of tourist beds was as follows: 6227 (1965), 11,837 (1970), 15,296 (1975), 25,601 (1982). Studija ‘Razvoj turizma i zdravstvenog turizma na priobalnom području SR Crne Gore’ Opštine Bar i Ulcinj. (Dubrovnik: Fakultet za turizam, Belgrade: IAUS, Titograd: Institut za društveno-ekonomska istraživanja, 1984), pp. 1–4. 50. Villas Beograd, Titograd and Opatija, demolished 2006.

Illustration credits arq gratefully acknowledges: Authors, 3a, 15, 17, 18 (a, b) Žarko Brnović, 20(b–d) Edizioni Dedalo, Bari, 8, 9, 10 Journal Arhitektura urbanizam, 4, 16, 20a Journal Produktivnost (Belgrade), 1 Miloš Jurišić, 11 (a, b) Marija Milinković, 23 Đorđe Zloković, 2, 3b, 5, 6 (a–c), 7 (a–c), 12 (a, b), 13, 14 (a, b), 19, 21, 22 (a–c) Acknowledgements The authors extend their thanks to the Academician Đorđe Zloković, Prof. Dr. Milica Mojović and Dr. Đorđe Mojović, for the rights to print previously unpublished documentation from the family archive of the architect Prof. Milan Zloković, and to Žarko Brnović for the rights to publish photographs from the collection of his father Ljubo Brnović. The authors are grateful to anonymous referees for the close reading of the previous version of this article and their most constructive comments. Author biographies Ljiljana Blagojević, architect, is an Associate Professor and Vice Dean for Research at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Architecture. She is the author of Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919–1941 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003) and Novi Beograd: osporeni modernizam (New Belgrade: Contested Modernism, Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike, Arhitektonski fakultet and Zavod za zaštitu spomenika kulture, 2007). Marija Milinković is an architect and Teaching Associate at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Architecture. Her forthcoming monograph on the architect Nikola Dobrović will be published by The Architecture Observer. Authors’ addresses Ljiljana Blagojević [email protected] Marija Milinković [email protected]




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