A departure from the gray past of the post-war period, a departure into prosperity, a departure into a new age with confidence.

In the 1960s, the economy was flourishing, the ruins of the war had been cleared away, the oil crisis was still a long way off and prosperity was on its way. Suddenly, vacation dreams could come true and the annual summer vacation by car became the norm for the masses. The regular migration to the south began and has not stopped to this day. The phenomenon of mass tourism was born and brought new demands in a flash. Social measures such as shorter working hours and vacation entitlement triggered a development from a working society to a leisure society. At the same time, tourism was organized and institutionalized: tour operators such as TUI, Neckermann, Quelle etc. put together offers for the movements of the masses and the state accompanied them with Austrian advertising and infrastructure measures, such as the expansion of the road network.

The vacation regions invested heavily to accommodate the onslaught of travelers.Now the upswing began here too. Suddenly, urbanity and modernity were in evidence. The buildings were full of confidence, as if the masses were flowing in inexhaustibly. People wanted to move away from the natural and towards the extraordinary.

Above all, buildings were built upwards. In the United States, mixed high-rise complexes with hotel rooms, apartments and office space were built, such as the UN Plaza Hotel by Kevin Rode in NYC.

The Hilton hotel chain led the way worldwide, offering uniformity through an architectural corporate identity with local color. One architect stood out in this development: John Portman, who is considered the inventor of the multi-storey atrium hotel. This newly created public space attracts not only travelers, but also the local population and allows hotels to become social meeting places. This zeitgeist can be seen beautifully in the current cult series “Mad Men” by Matthew Weiner. The chic New York society meets in the big hotels to do business and show off their wealth. Conference rooms become a permanent feature of city hotels and hotel openings a social event.

From the 1960s onwards, people liked to go on vacation to resorts. These are a place of refuge; people want to get away from everyday life and go on vacation. The separate area should appear spacious and convey the feeling of being free. The heart of the resorts is the pool, where society lives.

The wraparound building shapes and the lush greenery of the grounds provide security for the hustle and bustle. The atmosphere is reminiscent of Sean Connery alias James Bond with a cocktail by the pool and women lolling around in bikinis. In terms of design, rough materials are often used from 1955 to 1965, with exposed concrete and other grainy surfaces often being used. On the outside, the buildings appear relatively closed with concrete, steel and glass, with only continuous large ribbon windows revealing the colorful face of the interior. Extravagant shapes meet graphic patterns, from delicate pastels to expressive pops of color.

Wood can often be found in the reception design, the floor radiates liveliness and small seating areas tempt you to linger. The rise of plastic no longer set any limits to design and organic shapes shaped the furniture. But simplicity can also be found in the form of long, unadorned sideboards or airy bookshelves. Lamps were hung low and illuminated in radiant colors. The kidney-shaped table became famous, as did the Swan Chairs by Arne Jacobsen from Denmark.

Numerous design possibilities arose and in the mid-1950s, utopia took hold: Disneyland conquered the world. In 1955, the first Disney theme park and Disney Hotel opened in California (Fig. 3 and 4), ushering in a new era of fantasy architecture. Fairy tales and comic worlds seduce us to dream and immerse ourselves, reality loses out. Amusement parks also gain importance in Austria, hand in hand with the USA;

Minimundus opens in 1958. However, the aim of these parks is the same there as it is there: entertainment. The dreariness of the war years faded, anything was possible in the times of economic recovery. While Spain plastered the Costa Brava with bed castles, Greece rushed into the modern age and founded the Xenia construction program, a department of the Greek National Tourist Board. The program was intended to serve as a model for the private hotel construction industry, propagate hotels with architectural standards and inspire guests with comfort. Between 1955 and 1965, around 50 hotels were planned and built by young Greek architects.

Today, the legacy of the Xenia program is sparse and there has been no appreciation. Hotels have been closed, demolished and rebuilt beyond recognition. Only the Xenia Hotel on Mykonos has been restored in keeping with its listed status and reopened in 2004 as a design hotel under the name Theoxenia Mykonos.

Today, lifestyle magazines and trendy magazines propagate a clear message: retro is chic, the “Rolling Fifties” and the “Swinging Sixities” are on the rise. Motel One, a German budget hotel chain, for example, uses the retro look and Arne Jacobsen’s famous Egg Chair becomes the turquoise brand element of the reception. The architecture of the sixties is anything but a discontinued model. One example is the second Hotel Daniel, which opened in Vienna in 2011 and is based on the Hoffmann-La Roche office building from the 1960s by Georg Lippert and Roland Rohn. The original curtain wall-style façade has been preserved, a stroke of luck for this old architectural gem. The sixties look is also attractive in the Alpine region – the Hotel Miramonte in Bad Gastein, for example, markets itself as a third place with k&k urbanity and sixties flair. And in the hotel at Therme Vals, you can even still find original rooms from this period. The outer buildings Tomül and Zervreila give a 1960s high-sea feeling in the middle of the Swiss mountains.

And the Parkhotel Pörtschach is also sparkling in its 1960s splendor for its anniversary in 2013.

It was bright and fragile, and it still looks that way. What was really different about the new edition of pre-war modernism was a now truly democratised, largely non-elitist, but at times questionably popular version of modernism.

Popular version of modernism. One could also call the reconstruction period, especially its late phase, which reached its glorious climax in the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels, an opening period.

The kind of opening that follows every liberation. It was a time of marvellous views and vistas, both of the future and of the landscapes of the time.

The hotel, with its balconies and loggias freed from the decor of outdated hierarchical symbols and now largely designed for utility, became the symbol. The loggia hotel, as I would like to call it, because it was actually a place to stay, and the café house. The most important architectural reflections of the prevailing social conditions have become the symbolic architecture of the reconstruction period. Formerly as common as fish in the Mediterranean, they have now become architectural-historical rarities. They are being demolished, renovated, rebuilt and modernised. More thoroughly and persistently than any other building era. The reconstruction period, a cultural and historical anomaly, is both nostalgically glorified and in fact despised and destroyed.

Only the Hotel Prinz-Eugen remains of the formally and functionally excellently designed Südbahnhof, which is not only of extremely poor repute in Vienna. This excellently designed hotel, a tourist hostel adapted to the Italienitá style of the now completely demolished railway station, was built almost simultaneously with and almost opposite the Südostbahnhof on the desolate Wiedner Gürtel. 1958, by Georg Lippert.

Von dem formal und funktionell vorzüglich gestalteten, jedoch nicht nur in Wien überaus schlecht beleumundeten Südbahnhof ist nur das Hotel Prinz-Eugen übrig geblieben. Dieses vortrefflich entworfene Hotel, eine dem Italienitá-Stil des mittlerweile restlos wegdemolierten Bahnhofs angepasste Fremdenherberge, wurde fast gleichzeitig mit und fast gegenüber dem Südostbahnhof auf dem trostlosen Wiedner Gürtel errichtet. 1958, von Georg Lippert.

The hotel, which still impresses with its bright, cheerful architecture, was not part of the railway station itself, but it was closely linked to it in terms of ideas and style. Like the railway station next door, it was associated with a wanderlust for the south, for Italy or Istria, Venice or Rimini. With the longing for the Mediterranean sun and fresh sea air. The hotel, which was named after Prince Eugene because of its proximity to the magnificent summer residence of the baroque general, was a logistical and aesthetic component of the railway station and a defining element of this specific area. It is a splendid example of the Strandhotel with its many equally large and richly dimensioned loggias – but without the beach in view. It is the architectural gesture of the spirit of the time – as a Vienna tourist hotel with preserved remnants of the original interior design and new 1950s imitations.

Just a few years earlier, in 1955, significantly in the year of the Austrian State Treaty, which marked the end of the occupation, Georg Lippert built a similar beach hotel in Graz next to the main railway station, the Hotel Daniel. Like the Prinz Eugen in Vienna, it still exists today. After a few adaptations to meet the changing and constantly evolving demands of the guest room clientele, it flourishes as a design hotel with a 1950s retro look.

The Hotel Daniel can be described as the prototype of the type of hotel that soon spread throughout Central Europe, including so-called Eastern Europe. It was the Austrian première of this new type of hotel north of the Alps, so to speak: a type of hotel that can be described as a Mediterranean sanatorium. Which can be seen in direct ideological and conceptual connection with the two mobility icons of the masses, the German Volkswagen and the Italian Vespa. These two vehicles were the carriers of a completely new attitude to life, for travelling to Venice or to Grado, Rimini and Rome with Ostia.

Of course, the now mobile masses needed a destination, and once there, they needed suitable accommodation. He finds this in a hotel that has travelled to Austria via complex architectural detours. Via detours such as sanatoriums in hilly forest clearings, mountain hotels on the alpine pastures of the European high mountains and, above all, via the initially largely empty beaches on the Mediterranean itself, which were colonised in advance in the Mussolini years with the holiday resorts for fascist youth, called Coloniamarina, for the later tourist rush.

The architects who introduced this new type of hotel to Austria were familiar with Italy’s maritime modernism. They studied and began working as architects during the Austrofascist period, which was characterised by the Mussolini era and its excellent architecture. Most of them – Georg Lippert, Adolf Hoch, Josef Vytiska, Carl Appel, Hermann Kutschera and Josef Becvar – who were later to build some of the best Austrian reconstruction-era hotels, had received excellent training from outstanding teachers such as Clemens Holzmeister and Peter Behrens. All of them, with the exception of Josef Vytiska, were architects who sympathised with National Socialism and its strange neoclassical building doctrine and collaborated with the Nazi regime.

After liberation in 1945 and especially during the reconstruction period, they became important proponents of adapting Austrian architecture, which was in a desolate ideological state, to the standards of international modernism.

Josef Vytiska, the architect of the excellent Mediterranean Hotel Capricorno on Schwedenplatz in Vienna, was a Viennese Czech who stubbornly refused to accept German nationality during the Nazi era, for which he was banned from his profession and rewarded with countless commissions after the liberation. The Hotel Capricorno, with its pseudo-Italian name, is reminiscent of the island of Capri – the dream destination of travellers to Italy. The Café Capricorno, which no longer exists, with its Mediterranean atmosphere was the favourite meeting place of Vienna’s golden youth after the hotel was completed in 1963.

Two basic types can be identified in the hotel architecture of the construction period. Firstly, the aforementioned loggia hotel for the emerging popular luxury, for the masses who were becoming mobile, characterised by the loggias or balconies as really usable places to stay and by the openness of the main fronts of the buildings. The Parkhotel Pörtschach also belongs to this type as an outstanding example in every respect of both the Weltanschauungshotel of the reconstruction/economic miracle/social partnership era and of hotel architecture characterised by loggias which, like theatre boxes, turn the hotel guests into spectators of the spectacle of the magnificent surrounding landscape.

Probably the most beautiful and at the same time most visible hotel of this type in Vienna was Hermann Kutschera’s Hotel Kahlenberg from 1963. Its fate is symptomatic of the current highly questionable cultural-historical treatment of buildings from the 1950s and 1960s. Despite its considerable qualities, the hotel, which belonged to the City of Vienna, was smoothly replaced by a penetratingly bad speculative building with private luxury flats. The publicly accessible viewing platform, which was popular with day-trippers, was built over and the spectacular panoramic view privatised.

Secondly: the type of loggia-less, meaningfully closed hotels. They were designed as skyscraper-like discs. These are hotels that were built in prominent locations in important cities, such as the Hotel Europa in Salzburg by Josef Becvar or the Hotel Intercontinental in Vienna by Carl Appel, who adapted the American design template to the Viennese building regulations and local conditions. These hotels were intended for city tourists and above all for business travellers, mostly from the upper social class.

The loggia hotel. Characterised by balconies or loggias that are relatively spacious in relation to the rooms or, particularly frequently, something in between in many variations. If you consider the purpose, the term loggia seems appropriate. This also applies to classic balconies. These building appendages are actually used for lodging, i.e. for spending time outdoors, which means continuing the beach holiday by other means. These loggias usually more or less completely cover the entire front facing the sea, the beach and the landscape panorama.

Sometimes, if the location makes it necessary and sensible, all house fronts are designed in this way. Although the loggias characterise the appearance of these hotels and are also impressive in terms of their formal aesthetics, they are not merely a formal end in themselves, but are actually a fully integrated part of the hotel room. In some cases even more important than the hotel room itself. Loggia hotels are not a place to stay for one or just a few days, possibly when travelling through. They are hotels that are the destination, the purpose of coming. People stay here for several days, even weeks. This is where you make yourself at home for a certain period of time and show that you are temporarily at home by decorating the loggia with colourful bathing utensils.

Loggia hotels are, in principle, perfectly developed functionalist buildings that are perfectly suited to their purpose. They completely fulfil some of the most important demands of modernism for residences with light, air and sun. They have forms that, to quote Otto Wagner, one of the pioneers of classical modernism, are beautiful because they are practical.

It can now be said that they are truly beautiful and remain beautiful – the most beautiful hotel of the loggia type of the reconstruction period and the best example of a hotel as a world view, designed by an Austrian architect, is located in Monrovia. It is the Palacehotel. Designed by Adolf Hoch in 1962, the white building on a hill high above the harbour town was long regarded as the most modern hotel in the whole of Africa. Even more: as the symbol of the new Africa, liberated from colonialism. Until it was severely damaged during the Liberian civil war.

Shortly before he was overthrown and killed, the Libyan dictator Gaddafi announced that he would acquire and renovate the famous hotel. The hotel ruins are currently the most important tourist attraction in Monrovia.

The white disc-shaped building from the 1960s rests majestically on the green peninsula, which stretches out into the turquoise waters with bays on both sides. It accompanies the popular lakeside promenade of the West Bay and forms its backbone, so to speak, at the point where it opens up to the flower corso with borders and park benches and a wide view of the lake towards Velden.

The promenade seems to want to take over the generosity of the buildings. Previously flanked by hotels and baths, it widens out in front of the hotel as far as the Pörtschach lido before continuing on narrower paths through the nature conservation park. Viewed from Velden Bay, the Parkhotel is nothing less than a spatial counterpart.

Hotel building with dimension

The Parkhotel, which opened on 1 July 1963, was not without controversy, as the well-known Wahliss establishment, which had already been severely dilapidated by war and neglect, had to be demolished for its construction. However, the spacious complex that was then built has spatial qualities that would hardly be feasible today. The location and positioning of the building are particularly impressive. The reception, lounge, conference rooms, kitchen and dining room on the ground floor stand out on a plinth formed by the lower and upper floors, while seven standard floors accommodate 350 beds. 110 rooms face west and 85 rooms face east, where the three lifts and the staircase behind them are also located.

All rooms offer a view of the lake: to the west with a broad panorama of the lake and to the east with a green view of the hotel’s own park, the hilly landscape and the bay of Sallach. The ‘stacking’ of rooms in height and width along a central corridor followed the principles of economy and density that were decisive for the era, without sacrificing aesthetic criteria.

The surrounding landscape was to be emphasised all the more, as modernist architects had already demonstrated decades earlier. The Parkhotel achieved this in an impressive way. The impressive 40,000 square metre park behind the hotel was preserved. Its well-kept, level lawn with its old trees has a sophisticated look and can also be walked through on paths by non-guests.

The expansive canopy pays homage to the car drive-up, with parking outside. The tennis courts are set slightly lower to the south, while the beach is separated by a residential road in the eastern bay. The extensive green oasis is particularly impressive on the shores of Lake Wörthersee, which is heavily built up. For years, the practice of investors has been to the detriment of open space and has been based on the idea of yield, the value of which is reflected in the residential space sold.

Spatial qualities of 1960s architecture

As a child of its time, the Parkhotel epitomises the efficiency and creativity of the early 1960s. The economic miracle after the Second World War was reflected in available leisure time, holiday money and motorised traffic. In the summer months, countless travellers, especially Germans, headed south, leading to a new boom in summer tourism at Lake Wörthersee, which peaked in the 1970s. Mass tourism brought with it urban lifestyles, which in turn influenced the architecture and landscape.

The advantages of modern technology and organisation were incorporated into the buildings and rational construction methods replaced the old, solid construction methods. In the case of the Parkhotel, the lightweight construction method enabled the filigree design of the façade – delicate loggias with blinds frame the room glazing, whose metal balustrades and handrails pleasantly emphasise the horizontal. The façade has pleasing proportions and, despite its dimensions, appears light and transparent and seems to want to compete with the gentle waves of the sea for finesse. This elegance is all too rarely reflected in today’s waterfront architecture.

The way in which the hotel is embedded in the island grounds is also worthy of note. As the lakeside promenade is a few metres lower than the hotel park, the basement acts as an edge to the west, above which the glazed ground floor with balcony juts out in an attractive manner. Between the lakeside promenade and the building, there is plenty of space for a slightly raised hotel terrace, from which two elegantly curved staircases lead upwards.

The Parkhotel is unusually designed from a single mould and, apart from extensions to the basement and ground floor, is preserved as such today, while many other hotels are remodelled and extended year after year in small parts and without any apparent overall concept.

Architectural challenge

1960s on Lake Wörthersee in the future. Villas and castles are recognised cultural monuments, while post-war modernist buildings are generally held in low esteem and have often been demolished. Slowly, a rethink is taking place. The German Foundation for Monument Protection, for example, wants to renovate outstanding buildings from the 1950s and 1960s and sees its responsibility in terms of building culture in finding solutions for structural defects and changing energy standards. In Carinthia, a workshop held in 2011 as part of the INTERREG project ‘Cultural Experience Carinthia-Gorenjska’ focused on high-quality construction on the waterfront, not through new construction but by revitalising existing tourist facilities. Mass tourism on the lake began to ebb in the 1980s and the length of guests’ stays is shorter, even though various major events from sporting to cultural events attract crowds of guests. Coach and business tourism require sufficient room availability.

However, the culturally educated guest will be catered for more in the future. Studies such as ‘The Hotel of the Future’ (www.hotelderzukunft.at) predict the experienced guest who is looking for authentic luxury experiences in everyday life and enjoys fine materials, room architecture and extravagant places. Hotels will become destinations that offer an extraordinary, minimalist ambience with a special living experience. In some places, the synergies of contemporary accents and unconventional retro chic are already being successfully utilised.

Recognising and raising awareness of the spatial qualities of the remaining 1960s architecture is the first necessary step. The next step can be its careful and creative adaptation by suitable specialists as part of a comprehensive overall concept.

The buildings of the old Wahliss establishment were in a desolate state after the withdrawal of the British troops.

After the municipality acquired the complex in 1953, the Viennese architect Georg Lippert was commissioned to plan the hotel. Born in 1908, Lippert had studied at the Technical University and under Clemens Holzmeister at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. At the time of his planning for the Parkhotel, he was involved in the construction of the Opernringhof in Vienna; the Hotel Prinz Eugen opposite Vienna’s Südbahnhof railway station was also built according to his plans. It opens onto the Gürtel, which was less congested at the time, and the railway station site with balconies as light and airy as if it were in Caorle or Bibione.

It was Lippert’s best and most productive time. At the beginning of 1955, he planned a new building for Pörtschach in the form of a four-storey, horizontal cuboid as an extension to the ‘Seehaus’. The old building was to be extended by two storeys and a polygonal dining room with a large terrace was to be added to the ground floor on the lake side, supplemented by a dance hall in the basement of the old building and a bowling alley in the basement of the extension. Lippert planned the double rooms to be very small, only 12 m² in some cases. Lippert’s plans were not realised.

Instead, Josef Vytiska was commissioned with new plans in 1958. Vytiska, born in Vienna in 1905 to Czech parents, had studied under Oskar Strnad at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and then under Peter Behrens at the Academy of Fine Arts. With his discreetly modern and at the same time noncommittally conservative architecture, he was just as successful in residential construction as he was in Catholic church building. After the war, Vytiska realised several new buildings in Vienna, including opposite the opera house, on Stephansplatz and on Franz-Josefs-Kai.

From January 1958, Vytiska prepared four variants for Pörtschach for submission to the building authorities. Vytiska envisaged a new building in the form of a nine-storey, horizontal disc similar to the building that was later realised, but with compact flats instead of small cell-like hotel rooms. Design variant 2, as a 15-storey point tower with a windmill-wing floor plan, probably had little chance of being approved. With the four-sided orientation of the tower block, Vytiska planned the rooms, each with spacious corner balconies, to be offset in height by a few steps. In the end, the building was realised with 25 flats and 147 rooms measuring a good 26 m² and a projecting glazed dining room on the promenade side. The roof accommodated a terrace with a ‘sunbathing area’. The staircase on the east side (access side) is recognisable as a separate structure with a vertical band of windows (profiled glazing). An elegant, two-storey glazed dance café with a winter garden and courtyard with three fountains was planned at an angle to the south-east of the new building. In its metropolitan dimensions and attitude, the building is modelled on the simultaneous construction activity in booming tourist destinations on the Adriatic such as Rimini and Riccione.

A sweeping, angled flying roof illuminated with spotlights above the driveway welcomes arrivals, while under the bold lettering ‘Parkhotel’, swinging glass doors with tomato-red square plastic handles lead into the lobby, whose glazing offers a southern view of the park and lake. The foyer was furnished with lavish materials in the taste of the time: The walls and floor are in black marble in the entrance axis, elsewhere in terrazzo, the lift doors in anodised ribbed sheet metal. The hard, cool surfaces are in keeping with Italian taste.

The supporting pillars are also mirrored and thus virtually dematerialised. In contrast, the reception area is clad in warm wood panelling above the reception desk, which is intended to give guests a feeling of noble elegance and homely cosiness at the same time. Here, too, the details of the original period have been preserved, right down to the row of cylindrical metal pendant lights. On the restaurant’s terrace, the original glass cylinder lamps with black metal caps are still lined up along the parapet. Particular attention was paid to the lamps in general; in addition to the large-volume, rectangular glass ceiling lights in the seminar area, the round wall lamps framed by wreaths of leaves stand out in the piano room. These – together with the typical vertically lined and concave wooden strip panelling – diffuse a pleasantly mild, indirect light. This wood panelling runs through the entire ground floor (entrance, dining room) as a counterpoint to the cool stone panelling on the pillars and floor.

The rooms and flats were furnished in the simple, elegant spirit of ‘good form’ in a cosy and informal way with seating groups, shelves and sideboards in wood and black lacquered metal. Only the yellow curtains and small colourful accessories brought colour into the room. Strong colours were only used outdoors (balcony furniture, parasols). In addition to the clear form, visitors are impressed by the sophisticated details, which are still largely original today: for example, the tomato-red plastic door handles, the blue Resopal-coated handles at the entrance to the seminar rooms or the brass round handles on the telephone booths and the free-form brass handles at the entrance to the dining room. The transparency of the room dividing elements also makes them stand out.

The modernity of the building can also be seen in the technical innovations in the building technology (telephone connection in every room, ventilation system including water treatment).

When the hotel reopened in 1963, it was one of the most important buildings of modern Wörthersee tourism – even if it was not recognised in the specialist press. Shortly before this, the architect Karl Hayek had remodelled and extended the Hotel Sonnengrund in Pörtschach in the style of the 1950s, with balcony balustrades made of ‘Wellcotalit’ in optimistic lemon yellow and turquoise, which was typical of the period. At the same time as the Parkhotel was built in Pörtschach, the minimalist elegance of the sixties also moved into Velden and Klagenfurt.

It seemed that Lake Wörthersee had arrived in the modern age.

A new development, which was and still is strongly influenced by tourism, began in the middle of the 19th century – in 1853 with the opening of shipping on Lake Wörthersee and in particular when the village was connected to the Southern Railway network with a railway station in 1864.

Now, on the one hand, local landowners began to build tourist facilities and, on the other, wealthy guests – mostly aristocrats and businessmen – bought lakeside properties and built villas on them for their summer holidays.

The porcelain manufacturer Carl Ernst David Wahliss (1837-1900), who was born in Saxony and based in Vienna, was important for the Wörthersee region. In 1882, he acquired the large plot of land in Pörtschach from the headland to the main road and had the ‘Etablissement Wahliss’ (in today’s terms: a leisure complex) built on it. The complex consisted of numerous buildings (villas numbered with Roman numerals), leisure and sports facilities such as restaurants, a music pavilion, a bathing establishment and tennis courts, as well as a peninsula with promenade paths that had been transformed into a nature park. There were music, cultural and leisure events every day. Many prominent artists from the Court Opera visited and performed here.

The buildings were designed in the historicist style, whereby elements of local architecture with neo-Renaissance references were used in particular. Local materials were mostly used, wood and stone from the surrounding area, such as ‘Pörtschach marble’ from the so-called Wörthersee quarry, for representative surfaces. The Bavarian-born architect Wilhelm Heß (1846-1916), who also had a formative influence on the style as director of the Klagenfurt School of Architecture and Arts and Crafts, was important. Numerous tourist buildings on Lake Wörthersee were realised according to his plans, such as the Schlosshotel Velden – also owned by Wahliss – and numerous buildings of the Wahliss establishment in Pörtschach. The main building in particular – Villa IX – was the most elegant and comfortable hotel on Lake Wörthersee in its day and was even visited by Emperor Franz Josef I in 1889.

Pörtschach had developed into a spa resort known far beyond the borders of the monarchy.

After the death of Carl Ernst David Wahliss in 1900 – he is still commemorated by a bust on the lakeside promenade – the family was only able to hold on to the hotel empire for a short time. Ownership subsequently changed and some of the large properties were sold off. In 1928, the municipality of Pörtschach acquired the site and subsequently had structural alterations made to the villas, whereby the properties – in particular Villa IX – were modernised with stylistic elements typical of the period.

During the Nazi era, it came into the possession of the German Reich, which ceased hotel operations and used parts of it for a Reich finance school and later as a military hospital. After the British invasion in May 1945, British frontline troops were accommodated and the entire area of the peninsula was closed to locals. Due to the confiscation of the area as German property, the buildings were not renovated and were in a very desolate state by the time the British left.

In 1953, after lengthy negotiations, the municipality was able to reacquire the property from the German Ministry of Finance. It was subsequently sold to Parkhotel AG, which wanted to build a new hotel and spa centre on the site. As nothing happened beyond the agreed period, the property reverted to the municipality.

It was not until the construction company Wayss & Freytag – Simplexbau, which acquired the property in 1959, that a hotel was built and opened as the Parkhotel Pörtschach on 1 July 1963. The construction company had initially appointed an external operator for the hotel and later ran into financial difficulties. In 1969, Hans Pruscha, who ran a wholesale business in mineral oils and their derivatives in Vienna and later became known as a garage operator, stepped in. He became the sole owner in 1972. The hotel has remained in the

and today belongs to the List Group based in Vienna.

The peninsula’s favourable location for tourist use was soon recognised after Pörtschach opened up to tourism in 1864 by connecting to the railway network with the important southern railway link between Vienna and Trieste.

In 1872, Wörthersee Bad AG bought an extensive area – including the Landspitz – and began building hotels. In 1882, the Viennese porcelain manufacturer Carl Ernst David Wahliss acquired the property and expanded the complex into a tourism enterprise with 13 hotel buildings as well as a restaurant, bathing establishment, nursery, hot springs, sports facilities and a large landscaped park.

The most prestigious building, designed by architect Wilhelm Heß in 1894, was the ‘Villa IX des Etablissement Wahliss’ on the peninsula. Shortly before this, Wahliss had also acquired Velden Castle and converted it into a tourist centre. The Wahliss establishment in Pörtschach and Velden Castle were managed jointly.

Today’s Parkhotel, built on the site of the old Villa IX, is ostensibly late functionalist architecture whose concept and formal expression arise solely from the purpose of the building. Or does it tell us more? The floor plan organisation could not be more succinct and economical: a two-hipped layout with rows of rooms on either side of a central corridor. Under normal topographical conditions – a straight shoreline – this design results in an attractive, privileged side of the lake and a disadvantaged rear side facing away from the beach (or, in the case of a building positioned perpendicular to the shore, allows only limited angled views of the water from both sides).

Thanks to the ideal semi-island situation with its two almost parallel shores, the concept results in two equal halves of the building with sweeping views across the lake. In addition to the overwhelming view from the inside, the building also offers a remarkable image from the outside: a landmark that is visible even from a great distance.

The design of the façade appears to fulfil a single function: to open up the beautiful view. A balcony in front of each individual room allows guests to step out of the room and into the landscape. Set in front of the sloping end walls of the rooms, multiplied and lined up in long strips, the balconies become the dominant façade figure. (The Eternit balustrades in the west were recently replaced with glass, thus maximising the opening and view). The veranda already played an important role in the experience of the landscape when aristocrats, wealthy merchants and bankers discovered the Carinthian lakes as a holiday destination and summer resort landscape in the late 19th century and built their villas on the shores of Lake Wörthersee. The semi-open, outward-facing living space made it possible to spend time in the fresh air, protected from the wind and, above all, the sun. (At that time, a pale complexion was just as important a sign of a distinguished class, i.e. one that did not work manually outdoors, as a deep tan today is hard-earned proof of proletarian or bourgeois idleness when on holiday).

These verandas and loggias were also a feature of the old Villa IX of the Wahliss establishment. With the early modern quest for light, air and sun, the balcony became one of the most important elements of multi-storey holiday hotels and at the same time their architectural leitmotif.

As simple as the basic concept is, the architecture of the Parkhotel also reveals a lot about socio-economic contexts. The old Villa IX, with its dominant centre and symmetrical side risalits, was still hierarchically structured and was based on the palace type; the uniformly arranged guest rooms of the Parkhotel behind the continuous balconies correspond to a more democratic society.

The architectural language has changed with the social status of the guests. Some sublimely used aesthetic codes are also interesting. If the white balconies in front of the white wall made guests think of a cruise ship, then this association was certainly right for the client and the architect.

And is it a coincidence that the hotel is somewhat reminiscent of the Unités d’Habitation, the mighty high-rise apartment blocks that were built in multiple variations between 1947 and 1965 and float like giant ships in the urban landscape? They were declarations of love, Le Corbusier’s, to the ocean liners, to their modernity, efficiency and probably also to the cosmopolitan attitude to life associated with them.

The architectural play with such associations and aesthetic images shows that the building’s attitude to water is completely different from that of older buildings in the region. Above all, the staging of views of a picturesque water scenery fundamentally distinguishes the leisure architecture of the last century and a half from the rural and commercial pre-modern buildings. Until the 19th century, the lake was not perceived as a place of pleasure, but as an area of work – for fishermen and raftsmen, for example – and as a potentially dangerous natural element. Houses were built at an appropriate distance from the shore in flood-safe areas. Only craft businesses that relied on the water were built directly on the lake or at the mouths of streams. The architecture of this period reveals a correspondingly unsentimental and pragmatic attitude towards the water. The house was introverted and closed off as a sheltering shell. Windows that opened more generously to the view and allowed a romantic view of natural atmospheres were an invention of the late 18th, if not the 19th century, and a privilege of builders who did not have to earn their living in the countryside but, coming from the city, regarded the lake landscape and the lake district as a place of recreation and an aesthetic image.

The interpretation of the landscape as a working environment or leisure area, the functional-practical or the playful-enjoying approach to nature give rise to introverted or extroverted architecture. Tourism has transformed Lake Wörthersee into a bathing and viewing landscape.

The most important prerequisites for its development were the introduction of steam navigation on Lake Wörthersee in 1853 and the completion of the Marburg-Klagenfurt railway line in 1863, as well as the continuation of the railway from Klagenfurt to Villach (along Lake Wörthersee) in 1864.

(In the following years, it was not only middle-class families from Klagenfurt who were drawn to the lake, but the first guests from Vienna arrived by train. From 1870, they built villas in Pörtschach, Velden and Krumpendorf and the first hotels were built at the same time.

The listed Hotel Wörthersee (1892) in Klagenfurt is one of the few surviving examples of hotel architecture from this period.

Around 1900, the ‘summer resort’ reached its first peak, which was reflected in the lively building activity around Lake Wörthersee. Inspired by the Heimatstil, romantic historicism, late historicism, art nouveau and the English country house, architects Franz Baumgartner, Josef Viktor Fuchs, Wilhelm Heß and others built villas and private houses around the lake, which are commonly summarised under the term ‘Wörthersee architecture’. The Austrian doyen of architecture Friedrich Achleitner understands this as ‘a kind of blend […] between the free floor plan of an English country house and the Palladian villa type, while the architecture mostly borrowed from German National Romanticism’.

In Velden, Baumgartner succeeded in realising these stylistic elements on a larger scale. For example in the Mietvilla (today Hotel Hubertushof 1910). Several hotel buildings were built on Karawankenplatz according to his plans – Hotel Kointsch (1909/10), Mösslacherhaus (ca. 1910) and Hotel Carinthia (1924/25) as well as the former Hotel Schranz (1928), today Velden’s municipal office, which form an urban ensemble and create an urban character.

Tourism also developed in Pörtschach with numerous accommodation establishments, including the Parkhotel and the Werzer establishment, also designed by Baumgartner. In the interwar period, the summer resort experienced a second boom: dance events, sports competitions and sightseeing flights with the ‘Nelly’ seaplane attracted an international audience. However, the international influence was hardly noticeable in hotel construction; only a few properties were built, such as the Hotel Europa in Pörtschach. After the Second World War, tourism on Lake Wörthersee was initially slow to pick up again. Reconstruction was successful with the help of loans from the Marshall Plan and from 1949, international guests once again came to Lake Wörthersee.

The casino opened in Velden in 1950 and the ‘1st International Water Ski Championships’ took place in 1951. Fashion shows, dance tournaments and spa concerts, boat parades and car flower parades were organised. Popular songs such as ‘Die Rose vom Wörthersee’ and films about the region served to cultivate the image and create a sense of identity. Private houses and villas were converted into guesthouses and hotels through conversions and extensions. The tourism boom that began in the 1950s also necessitated numerous new buildings, which were repeatedly modified and adapted to current needs in the following years.

The hotels were simple and unadorned: functionality and capacity were at the forefront of the new buildings at this time. The tour operators Touropa and Scharnow brought mass tourism to the Carinthian lakes. Cheap accommodation and camping were increasingly in demand. ‘Parallel to the remodelling of the hotel projects, a type of rational-functional hotel developed in the 1960s and 1970s,’ writes architect Peter

Schurz in his dissertation on the architecture of Lake Wörthersee.

The new buildings of this period responded to changing holiday requirements and offered rooms with a bathroom/WC. Long-term considerations were not usually included in the planning. The hotel architecture of the 1960s was characterised by cubic structures, structured façades (window strip – solid wall) with a strong horizontal structure (balconies) and large window openings. The floor plan and functions (rooms, access) can be read from the façade. Above a representative plinth storey. A flat roof or gently sloping roof forms a light upper finish.

While the hotels of the 1950s still drew on the building tradition and had to economise on size and design, the economic upturn was already noticeable in the hotel construction of the 1960s. Spaciousness was to be conveyed through the proportions and arrangement of the rooms and elegance through the selection of fine materials. While the hotel buildings of the 1950s usually had a continuous balcony (arcade) divided only by elements, the desire for private open space was now met by loggias.

At the Parkhotel in Pörtschach, this was skilfully solved by twisting the façade lines. Other examples of hotel architecture from this period in Pörtschach are the Hotel Werzer (1958), remodelled by architect H. Rabl in 1968/69, the Hotel Samitz (Ambassador), built by BM Ernst Sztriberny in 1968/69, and the Hotel Dermuth. In Velden, the Hotel Europa (1960) by architect Ferdinand Brunner and in Sekirn the holiday home (1966) of the Vienna Boys’ Choir by architect Karl Heinz Lanugger should be mentioned. In Krumpendorf, architect Martin Schmid erected a modern building (1964/65), which houses the municipal and tourist offices as well as the Kursaal and surrounds a spacious L-shaped forecourt.

In the 1970s, hotel construction activity on Lake Wörthersee reached a peak. This had a lasting effect on the landscape and led to a shift in scale (building volumes versus open space), as can be seen on the peninsula in Maria Wörth. At the same time, increasing mobility and competition from cheaper and weather-resistant destinations on the Mediterranean changed travelling habits. The emerging trend towards long-distance travel, the lack of positioning of Lake Wörthersee as a destination and the investment backlog at many hotels led to a decline in the number of overnight stays in the 1980s. The promotion of quality tourism attempted to counteract this. Since the 1990s, hotel and apartment complexes have been built around Lake Wörthersee, with the construction costs being covered by the revenue from the flats. This resulted in oversized first-row buildings and second residences with ‘cold beds’. Schurz identifies three problems in hotel construction: the functional organisation, the formal design and the scale to be mastered. ‘This is […] the fundamental question in architecture as to how hotel construction can and should be solved in the future.’ The parameters are the same today as they were 50 or 100 years ago.

Die Zukunft der Wörtherseeregion und deren Erfolg als Tourismusdestination werden wesentlich davon abhängen, ob es gelingt, ein ausgewogenes Verhältnis von Naturlandschaft und gebauter Umwelt zu schaffen.

I was even more pleased that I immediately had a great team of authors with specialised knowledge at my disposal. So my thanks go to Gordana Brandner-Gruber and Astrid Meyer-Hainisch from the Kalt&Warm association, to Barbara Feller from the Architekturstiftung Österreich, who sacrificially supported me with the editing, to Karin Raith with her expertise as a university professor for the history and theory of landscape in the field of building on water, and to Jan Tabor, who has been working on post-war modernism for decades, to Iris Meder, who analysed the Parkhotel in detail, and to Barbara Guger, whose special position between architecture and tourism was very helpful to us. Many thanks again to all of you! The work on the publication also provided an opportunity for many interesting conversations.

For example with Arch. DI Wolfgang Grillitsch, an architect who grew up in Pörtschach and now works in Stuttgart and Berlin, who experienced the Parkhotel in the 1970s, with Dkfm. Valentin Petritsch, a former mayor of Velden, who was very helpful to me with his postcard and film archive, as well as with Mag. Andreas Kleewein, who spent many hours searching for material in the Velden municipal archives, and Geraldine Klever from the Federal Monuments Office in Klagenfurt, who provided me with valuable information on how to deal with the building and its history. And last but not least with Peter Napetschnig: as one of the contemporary witnesses with architectural understanding, who was allowed to work on the construction of the Parkhotel and provided me with the most valuable documents from his archive, thank you very much!

In addition to the conversations with the owner family and their employees, those with contemporary witnesses such as Uwe V. Kohl, who was the restaurant manager at the time, Emmerich Müller, who was the first receptionist at the Parkhotel, and Ferdinand Treiber, who now runs a hotel in Obertauern and was the head technician at the time of the opening, were also impressive. They all provided valuable input for this work, as did Sabine Klimpt, who fulfilled all my photo requests, and Carola Holland, who developed graphics that were precisely tailored to the property and the situation. The Parkhotel – the building – in this special position, facing the water, the surrounding landscape, the mountain silhouette with its views, vistas and visual relationships; this ‘landmark’, which on the one hand integrates itself into the terrain with the promenade floor, and on the other hand appears light thanks to the ground floor, which is elevated on supports and thus exposed, incorporating the surroundings and allowing the landscape to resonate; This body, which characterises the site but keeps the park free of buildings, this generosity, which radiates freedom and supports the grand gesture of the place, this understanding of the architecture of the democratic building, the order, which for this very reason allows not only publicity but also privacy; all this is the Parkhotel, and all this cannot be appreciated enough, because only this can lead to a new appreciation by society of the creative period of the 1960s. Because back then it was once again possible to show generosity, openness, transparency and volume. There was security and, for the first time, the technical and financial possibilities for such a building. The demand was there; the Republic was still suffering from the loss of the Adriatic after the First World War, and German tourists – who already had more holiday days and higher earnings – were also looking for bed capacity on Lake Wörthersee. There was a need to catch up and people got to work!

Not only the Parkhotel, but also the Hotel Werzer, which has traditionally been the counterpart to the Parkhotel in Pörtschach for 100 years, and many other establishments (Samitz Ambassador, Dermuth, Europa, Prüller, Seefels etc.) have invested heavily, and it has paid off.

The guests came and still come and enjoy the special atmosphere. What can we take away from this era for the future?

Spaciousness is a gesture:

This does not necessarily mean many square metres, but openness and transparency.

Building-landscape relationship:

Not full paving with medium-sized volumes, but selective densification and keeping parks and green spaces free give surrounding space quality.

Attention to design and detail:

In hotel architecture in particular, it is unfortunately all too often no longer possible to recognise where you are; this is completely different at the Parkhotel: specially coordinated shapes and details can be found at every corner. Courage for the new: The Parkhotel was a new mindset, both in its form and in its location, technology and utilisation.

Openness and democracy as a mindset:

Free access to the park, the lake, the water is not a matter of course, but a basic attitude. This publication deals with all these aspects. It is therefore more than just a book about the Parkhotel Pörtschach and its history and architecture. It also conveys the zeitgeist of the 1960s on Lake Wörthersee.