Profound socio-economic and cultural changes in Western industrial societies created the conditions for the emergence of mass tourism as one of the key forms of social mobility in the twentieth century. Rather than developing evenly, this phenomenon selectively produced spatially concentrated tourist landscapes, within which it acted as a powerful agent of transformation of social relations and local economies, while architecture and urban planning constituted the most visible media and material traces of these changes. These global dynamics are particularly clearly reflected in the case of the Makarska Riviera, which, until the Second World War, was characterised by a peripheral position, an economy largely based on agriculture and limited transport connectivity. Precisely because of this prior condition of underdevelopment, the post-war turn towards tourism triggered an abrupt and far-reaching transformation. With the recognition of tourism as a strategic development sector, sustained state-led investments in infrastructure, industry and the built environment rapidly reconfigured social and spatial structures, drawing trained architects into the formulation of new urban and architectural models. Within a relatively short period, the Makarska Riviera was transformed into a key site of modernist architectural production and an internationally recognised tourist destination. Focusing on the period from the late 1940s to the early 1980s, this study examines the cultural and architectural dynamics of the region, highlighting through stylistic analysis of selected examples its role as an internationally relevant testing ground for modernist architecture.
Dora Štublin (Wed,) studied this question.