Weaving the Xenia network in post-war Greece: The ethical structure of hospitality

Abstract
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 war-torn social fabric by infusing Greek society with visions of individual prosperity, collective progress and democratic participation.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Holiday architecture, Leisure architecture, Tourism modern architecture, Greek modern architecture, Modern hotels.

Issue 60
Year 2019
Pages 34-41
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/60.A.TTORF6J5

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From the Ciutat de Repòs to the Ciudades Sindicales de Vacaciones: seaside Vacation City for Workers in Marbella. The present of modern leisure heritage

Abstract
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 Republic, to the Vacation Cities for Workers of the dictatorship, idealised as islands in privileged enclaves. Finally, reflections on transformations underwent in the VCW of Marbella, in the context of its heritage value, will be made.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Holiday architecture, Leisure architecture, Tourism modern architecture, Spanish modern architecture, Spanish Dictatorship, Modern urban planning.

Issue 60
Year 2019
Pages 24-33
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/60.A.COIHW6CJ

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Holiday colonies for Italian youth during Fascism

Abstract
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 and the difficulties that faced any truly modern approach to architecture.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Holiday architecture, Leisure architecture, Tourism modern architecture, Italian modern architecture, Italian Dictatorship, Modern holiday colonies.

Issue 60
Year 2019
Pages 16-23
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/60.A.ZSEOPKAA

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Public swimming pools in Australia

Abstract
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 conservation and adaptation to suit contemporary use.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Holiday architecture, Leisure architecture, Tourism modern architecture, Australian modern architecture, Swimming pool architecture.

Issue 60
Year 2019
Pages 8-15
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/60.A.F7E4DRU2

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From paid holidays to mass tourism: a typological evolution

Abstract
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 by European totalitarian regimes and its centralization in organisms of a political and ideological character. Leisure, in this context, would work as a privileged area of indoctrination and diffusion of the nationalist rhetoric that supports the construction of fascist dictatorships. But the recognition of the necessity to organize leisure was not restricted to totalitarian states, nor was it an exclusively political and/or social issue.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Holiday architecture, Leisure architecture, Tourism modern architecture, CIAM, Eileen Gray.

Issue 60
Year 2019
Pages 4-7
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/60.A.XXHLZKUU

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The right to holidays or the emergence of an era of optimism

Abstract
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.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Holiday architecture, Leisure architecture, Tourism modern architecture, CIAM, Eileen Gray.

Issue 60
Year 2019
Pages 2-3
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/60.A.IU28TYMD

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Conservation or Change for Works of the Modern Movement

Abstract
The Modern Movement in architecture, in so far as any such movement can be defined, was predicated on the idea that architecture had to change to reflect the radical technological advances that had occurred during the century preceding its formulation, and also to reflect the changing social needs that those advances had generated. Architecture, it was felt, had ossified and lost vitality as a result of not recognizing those changes. A century has now passed since the Modern Movement first formulated this program, and technical advances and the social changes they induce have of course by no means ceased, rather they have accelerated. So, it seems legitimate to say that a technologically – and socially – determined architecture should reflect these further advances and changes. The evolution continues. But does that mean that each Modern Movement building created at a particular point in that evolution has in itself to continue to change in order to “catch up” with the evolution subsequent to its creation? It is a question that has importance when it comes to considering the conservation of Modern Movement architecture. It is an assertion that would ignore the formal element in architecture.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Conservation of modern architecture, Rehabilitation of modern architecture, Balfron Tower.

Issue 58
Year 2018
Pages 86-87
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/58.A.RJLKET21

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Isokon Furniture — Modernist Dreams in Plywood

Abstract
The Isokon Furniture Company was never commercially successful, yet its legacy has stubbornly refused to die and disappear. Even today, this radical collection of plywood furniture is manufactured and used. The main reason is of course the names associated with it: Jack Pritchard, Wells Coates, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy and – more recently – Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby. The genius little Isokon Penguin Donkey, first designed by the Austrian émigré architect Egon Riss in 1939 and marketed by publisher Allen Lane’s then new imprint Penguin Books, is particularly popular with younger generations of design students.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Isokon furniture, Plywood furniture, Furniture modern design, Lawn Road Flats, Bauhaus.

Issue 58
Year 2018
Pages 82-85
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/58.A.KY5UAJ0P

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Lawn Road Flats (The Isokon) – A New Vision of Urban Living

Abstract
So much of modern architecture’s early history depended on a handful of courageous pioneers. One of the first Modern Movement buildings in England was the achievement of an unlikely trio — a plywood salesman and his psychotherapist wife, and a Canadian part-time journalist turned architect. This article and the accompanying text by Magnus Englund tell the extraordinary story of the Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead, London – their origins and heyday, the linked program of furniture design, their declining postwar fortunes and ruination, and then their recent and remarkable rescue and restoration to become a beacon of modern heritage and the epitome of progressive 21st century urban living.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Lawn Road Flats, The Isokon, Molly Pritchard, Wells Coates, Plywood architecture.

Issue 58
Year 2018
Pages 78-81
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/58.A.TNH2MPCO

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Post-War Modern Architecture in Tunisia

Abstract
At the end of the spring of 1943, the German forces were finally defeated in Northern Tunisia and had to leave the country. This allowed the French protectorate to take power and in the years that followed, thanks to massive American economic aid, undertake a very important project of architectural construction and reconstruction. All of Tunisia was involved but the four main cities (Tunis, Bizerte, Sousse and Sfax), whose populations were expanding, saw entire parts of themselves reconstructed. Today, a unique experience of modernity still remains in the tissue of all these cities, but with big issues of conservation.

Keywords
Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Design with climate, Tunisian modern architecture, Bernard Zehrfuss.

Issue 58
Year 2018
Pages 74-77
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.52200/58.A.3S7GVGOZ

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