Modern architecture in Igalo (Montenegro)

After crossing some parts of Croatia visiting Gomirje monastery (here), Krupa monastery (here), Krka Monastery (here) and driving throught ghost-villages (here) stopped on the montenegrin coast, just after the croatian border in a thermal spa place called Igalo.
To be honest, Igalo is really nothing picturesque and lovely to look at, the reason for stopping here here was because my husband's relatives were spending their holidays here and so we enjoyed the time together in this place.

Nevertheless, I could spot some interesting buildings even in this rather trivial place! The first building to catch my atention was Hotel Centar in these pictures.


I really love this space-age inspired facades!!!


Here some pictures from the interiors: mirrors, gold, silver, glass, shiny surfaces...



...I hope this hotel will mantain this look as long as possible!!!


Walking to the beach, I always passed by these huge buildings. 14-storey skyscraper at the beach?! Yes, in Igalo! But if you look a them they are quiet lovely: with shell-shaped balconies and palm-tree garden around them.



The beachwalk is not really exiting, hovever you can find some strange, almost funny things:

Pseudo-mediteranean building in the center with full-collored lights inside (was tricky to photograph)


Entry of a backery shop inspired by saturday-night-fever.



Arrangement of a sea-food buffet!!


Ant a tleast, two more example of daring architecture in Igalo:



Above: the newly built indoor-pool of the Swimming Club Igalo


Below: DR Simo Milosevic - Institute for physical medicine and rehabilitation

This enormous building was expanded in the 1980's and for the project following architects were responsable: Goran Popin (arch.), Aleksandar Djordjevic (arch.), Nikola Grujic (civil eng.), Mihailo Jon (arch.), Zoran Radosevic (mech.), Dragan Simoric (electr.)
Years of Construction (2nd phase): 1982-1986

The construction of the second phase of the Institute implies three buildings - bays of the total area 64,000 m2, plus therapeutic, hotel and sports-recreational part.

The therapeutic part with the ground floor and three floors has adequate pools, 48 rooms for different therapies, clinics for medical specialists, therapy premises, central pharmacy, laboratories, and swimming pools with sea and mineral water.

The hotel part has 900 rooms and suites for the patients. The building for social activities, sports and recreation has a restaurant with 3,000 seats, a seminar hall with 250 seats, a post office, a hairdressing shop, an indoor swimming pool, sports hall.

Hotel Avala in Budva

Hotel Avala in Budva was once built in best position on the Budva bay with a stunning pool directly over the sea, but after the wars and before Budva became a hype place, it was open though but there was no money and no valuable concept (and no tourists) on what to do with this big but outdated house!

The location was good even if it can gets loud at night, since it’s next to the most two polpular beaches of Budva: Mogren I and Mogren II and to some nightclubs in the old city.
A good idea was to seek for the wealthy in Serbia and Russia and to attract some celebrities with a clean modern architecture.
So people like Severina (Croatian starlet) and Jelena Jankovic (tennis player) spent some days there and did good job to promote the hotel.

Just back in 2005 it was a scary spooky place that had seen better times.

Now what a difference, it looks trendy and groomed and adds attractiveness to Budva’s landscape.




The Belgrade based architects of sinestezia are about to renovate the pavillons (row houses) behind the hotel complex.

Communist time hotels: Hotel Canj

This in one of the fascinating communist time hotels of former Yugoslavija. Situated in a little village on a particularly beautiful coastal place in Montenegro.

Allthough this hotel has a wonderful location and is architecturally stunning, it's extremely difficult to run it profitably. It needs works to be done, and because of its size it would need a big staff to represent a classy hotel.

And for all this Canj is probably too small...only when the nearby crowded places will be saturated Canj will maybe get a good oportunity to be discovered as a magnet of tourism. For now, only the fish restaurant is properly working.

Čanj lies between bar and Budva and is surrounded by the 496 m high mountain VELJI GRAD.

The sea is really beautiful and clear around this place.
Not many years ago the place was untouched and populated just by farmers.