Abstract
This chapter focuses on the construction of Sarajevo’s Holiday Inn hotel. Though it would later gain notoriety as an example of a ‘war hotel’ par excellence, familiar around the world as the base for journalists covering events in the city, the hotel had its roots in the construction boom that preceded the 1984 Winter Olympics. Built to house dignitaries from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Holiday Inn was the city’s most prestigious hotel. The focus of the chapter, therefore, is on Ivan Štraus’s design, the construction of the building, debates over its aesthetic qualities, and an overview of the role the hotel played in the social life of Sarajevo in the 1980s.
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Notes
- 1.
See Ivan Štraus, Arhitekt i barbari, and Sarajevo: Međunarodni centar za mir, pp. 98–99.
- 2.
The Holiday Inn’s exterior (and interior) provided the visual backdrop to myriad news reports being broadcast the world over. Many of the most famous images of the conflict were photographed from the hotel. Subsequently, the hotel has featured in numerous films, such as Michael Winterbottom’s Welcome to Sarajevo and Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s Territorio Comanche (both dramas about foreign correspondents in Bosnia during the war), Richard Shepard’s The Hunting Party; novels such as Charlotte Eagar’s The Girl in the Film; Kevin Sullivan’s Sleeping With Angels, and even graphic novels, such as Joe Sacco’s The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo and Joe Kubert’s Fax From Sarajevo.
- 3.
FAMA, Sarajevo Survival Guide, Sarajevo: FAMA, p. 84.
- 4.
Kate Meehan Pedrotty, ‘Yugoslav Unity and Olympic Ideology’, in Hannes Grandits & Karin Taylor (eds.), Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side: A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s–1980s), Budapest-New York: Central European University Press, 2010, p. 342.
- 5.
The Times, London, 7 April 1981, p. 7. Relations between Yugoslavia and Albanian worsened considerably after the events of April 1981. One month later, two bombs were thrown onto the terrace of the Yugoslav Embassy in Tirana provoking a sharp diplomatic protest. See The Times, London, 24 May 1981, p. 9.
- 6.
For a detailed analysis of rising anti-Yugoslav rhetoric going back to 1966, see Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji, Kovane antijugoslovenske zavere, Svedočanstva Br. 26, Knjiga 1, Zagorac, Beograd, 2006.
- 7.
Milica Uvalić, Serbia’s Transition: Towards a Better Future, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p. 24.
- 8.
Branka Magaš, The Destruction of Yugoslavia, London: Verso Press, 1993, p. 170.
- 9.
Kate Meehan Pedrotty, ‘Yugoslav Unity and Olympic Ideology’, p. 338.
- 10.
Aziz Hadžihasanović, 1984: Olimpijada trijumfa i šansi, Sarajevo: Rabic, 2010, pp. 11–12.
- 11.
Jason Vuić, The Sarajevo Olympics: A History of the 1984 Winter Games, University of Massachusetts Press, 2015, p. 55.
- 12.
See James Lyon, ‘Habsburg Sarajevo 1914: A Social Picture’, Prilozi/Contributions, Institut za istoriju u Sarajevu, No. 43, Sarajevo, 2014, pp. 23–40.
- 13.
Robert Donia, Sarajevo: A Biography, London: Hurst & Co., 2006, p. 233.
- 14.
Jason Vuić, The Sarajevo Olympics: A History of the 1984 Winter Games, p. 55.
- 15.
UNITIC is an acronym for the ‘United Investment and Trading Company’ (a joint venture between UNIS Holding and the Kuwait Consulting and Investment Company). Utilised to house a conglomerate of military enterprises before the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the building now houses a diverse range of ‘tenants’, from charitable organisations, media organisations to businesses.
- 16.
See Adnan Pašić, Arhitekt Ivan Štraus, Arhitektonski fakultet u Sarajevu, Sarajevo Green Design, Sarajevo, 2011. Momo and Uzeir were a Bosnian comedy duo comprising Rejhan Demiridžić (a Muslim) and Rudi Alvadj (a Serb).
- 17.
By his own admission, some of Ivan Štraus’s most important architectural prizes were won for collaborative projects with his fellow architects Zdravko Kovačević, Halid Muhašilović and Štraus’s brother, Tihomr. See Adnan Pašić, Arhitekt Ivan Štraus, p. 39.
- 18.
Štraus had previously designed (in 1962) with Zdravko Kovačević the Dom Štampe I gradki hotel for the same plot in Marindvor, though the project was never realised. See Ivan Štraus, Arhiteky i barbari, p. 101.
- 19.
Ivan Štraus, Arkitektura Bosne i Herzegovine, 1945–1995, Sarajevo: Oko, p. 101.
- 20.
The Holiday Inn was one of a number of hotels built for the Winter Olympics. Others included the ŽTO hotel in Sarajevo, the Bistrica, Košuta, Vučko, and Ferolelectric hotels on Jahorina, the Koran and Panorama hotels in Pale, the Hotel Igman on Mount Igman (which doubled as ‘Olympic Village ‘B’), and the Famos hotel on Mount Bjelašica. There were a number of existing hotels that were reconstructed—including the Evropa, Bosna, and Stojčevac hotels in Sarajevo, the Yugoslav Army (JNA) hotel (Borik) on Jahorina, the Turist hotel in Pale, and the Mrazište hotel on Mount Igman. See ‘Završni izvještaj—Organizacionog komiteta XIV zimskih olimpijskih igara Sarajevo, 1984’, Sarajevo: Oslobodjenje, 1984, p. 106 and Ivan Štraus, Arkitektura Bosne i Herzegovine, 1945–1995, p. 105.
- 21.
Author’s interview with Ivan Štraus, September 2013.
- 22.
For an overview of the history and the activities of SORA/ORA see Dragan Popović, ‘Youth Labor Action as Ideological Holiday-Making’ in Hannes Grandits & Karin Taylor (eds.), Yugoslavia’s Sunny Side: A History of Tourism in Socialism (1950s–1980s), Budapest-New York: Central European University Press, 2010, pp. 279–302.
- 23.
For a fascinating overview of life in Habsburg Sarajevo see James Lyon, ‘Habsburg Sarajevo 1914: A Social Picture’, Prilozi/Contributions, Institut za istoriju u Sarajevu, No. 43, Sarajevo, 2014, pp. 23–40.
- 24.
Ivan Štraus, Arkitektura Bosne i Herzegovine, p. 113.
- 25.
Ivan Štraus, Arhitekt i barbari, p. 118.
- 26.
Ivan Štraus, Arkitektura Bosne i Herzegovine, p. 102. In their book Modernism In-Between: The Mediatory Architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia the architectural historians, Vladimir Kulić, Maroje Mrdjulaš and Wolfgang Thaler argue that many of the hotels, conference centres, and public buildings that were constructed for the numerous events that Yugoslavia hosted in the 1970s and 1980s (such as the 1979 Mediterranean Games in Split, the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, and the 1987 University Games in Zagreb) evoked ‘Fredric Jameson’s famous analysis of John Portman’s Bonaventura Hotel in Los Angeles, which Jameson casts as an example of the postmodernist “cultural logic of late capitalism”: sprawling, self-contained quasi-public interior worlds that repel the outside city, with inconspicuous entrances and the urban presence that stresses surface effect. Indeed, with its atrium lobby equipped with exposed glass elevators, the Holiday Inn Hotel in Sarajevo, built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, directly relied on the models established by Portman, and its aluminium façade in yellow and ochre offered a pop-art celebration of pure surface.’ The authors acknowledge, however, that Štraus rejects this, claiming instead that he ‘arrived at the atrium solution independently of Portman and that the cantilevered floors on the exterior refer to Bosnian vernacular architecture’. See Kulić et al., Modernism In-Between: The Mediatory Architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia, Jovis, Zagreb & Vienna, 2013, p. 48.
- 27.
Author’s interview with Ivan Štraus, September 2013.
- 28.
Zoran Manević et al., Arhitektura XX vijeka, Prosveta, Beograd, 1986, p. 64.
- 29.
Adnan Pašić, Arhitekt Ivan Štraus, p. 33.
- 30.
Slobodna Bosna, Sarajevo, 25 April 2013, p. 65.
- 31.
Author’s interview with Ivan Štraus, September 2013.
- 32.
Author’s interview with Ivan Štraus, Sarajevo, September 2013. See also Slobodna Bosna, Sarajevo, 25 April 2013, p. 65.
- 33.
For an excellent analysis of the 1948 Tito–Stalin split, Yugoslavia’s expulsion from COMINFORM and the internal consequences, see Ivo Banac, With Stalin Against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism, Ithica and London: Cornell University Press, 1988.
- 34.
Author’s interview with Ivan Štraus, September 2013.
- 35.
Ivan Štraus, Arhitekt i barbari, p. 118. See also Adnan Pašić, Arhitekt Ivan Štraus, p. 33.
- 36.
Olimpijski informator, Broj 22, Sarajevo, Oktobar 1983, p. 2.
- 37.
James Potter, World of Difference: 50 Years of Intercontinental Hotels and Its People, p. 73.
- 38.
The most modern hotel in Sarajevo at the time was the Hotel Bristol, which was built in the early 1970s and used frequently by the communist elite; but in terms of luxury and modern conveniences, the Holiday Inn was in a class of its own.
- 39.
Interview with Sabahudin Selesković in Jason Vuić, The Sarajevo Olympics: A History of the 1984 Winter Games, p. 55.
- 40.
Conrad Hilton stated that the Cold War could not be won with satellites and H-bombs and that the building of hotels provided an opportunity to sow the communist world ‘the other side of the coin’. For Conrad Hilton’s political views, see Annabel Jane Wharton, Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, pp. 8–11.
- 41.
The story of Kemmons Wilson’s endeavours to create the Holiday Inn Hotels Group; see Kemmons Wilson, Half Luck and Half Brains: The Kemmons Wilson, Holiday Inn Story, Memphis: Hambleton Hill, 1996.
- 42.
The name ‘Holiday Inn’ was not Wilson’s idea. In a speech he gave in Tennessee in 1998, he said that his draughtsman, Eddy Bluestein, had written the name on some rough drawings of the hotel Wilson proposed to build. When he was given the drawings, he saw the words ‘Holiday Inn’ and the brand was born. ‘I asked him where the name came from and he said he had seen a Bing Crosby movie on television the night before. In the movie the inn was only open on holidays. I said “Eddie, that’s a great name—we’ll use it”.’ Speech by Kemmons Wilson, Tennessee Governor’s School for Hospitality and Tourism, 8 June 1998.
- 43.
The Independent, London (Travel Supplement), 13 February 2010, p. 6.
- 44.
The Times, London, 9 August 1972, p. 13.
- 45.
The Times, London, 3 November 1980, p. 16.
- 46.
Time Magazine, New York, 12 June 1972, p. 1.
- 47.
P.J. O’ Rourke, Holidays in Hell, p. 27.
- 48.
Author’s interview with Holiday Inn (Sarajevo) employee, September 2013.
- 49.
‘Samaranch Itinerary in Sarajevo’, 6 September 1983, International Olympic Committee Archives, Lausanne, Switzerland (CIO JO-1984W-HEBER, folder 204627).
- 50.
Sabahudin Selimić, Sarajevo ’84, Organazacioni komitet XIV zimskih olimpijskih igara Jugoslavija, Sarajevo, 1984, p. 2.
- 51.
Olimpijski informator, Broj 22, Sarajevo, Oktobar 1983, p. 2.
- 52.
Author’s interview with Ivan Štraus, September 2013.
- 53.
Holiday Inn, Sarajevo, brochure from 1984 (courtesy of Amira Delalić).
- 54.
The district of Marindvor comprises four blocks positioned at the intersection of the main boulevard (Zmaja od Bosne) and the streets that encircle the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian sections of the city. The area possesses several public buildings from different periods of Sarajevo’s history, amongst which the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) commissioned and built a number of modernist landmarks (such as the Bosnian parliament, the Faculty of Philosophy building, the UNIS towers, and the Holiday Inn), though there have been new developments in the forms of the ‘Sarajevo Centar’ and ‘Alta’ shopping centres since the late 2000s. The residential suburbs to the west of Marindvor (Alipašino polje, Otoka, Socijalno Grbavica, and Dolac Malta) were built as neighbourhoods composed of free-standing high-rise apartment buildings constructed around open spaces and public facilities, including squares, playgrounds, schools, nurseries, and sport halls. Robert Donia argues that these suburbs brought a revolution to Sarajevo’s everyday residential life because unlike the Ottoman period mahalas, which were ethnically segregated neighbourhoods composed around a religious building, the socialist-period suburbs built west of Marindvor were ethnically and religiously mixed neighbourhoods concentrated around places for public gathering, (interethnic) socialising, and living. See Robert Donia, Sarajevo: A Biography, p. 231.
- 55.
‘Accommodation of Olympic Family’, 6 September 1983, International Olympic Committee Archives, Lausanne, Switzerland (CIO JO-1984W-HEBER, folder 204627).
- 56.
See Jason Vuić, The Sarajevo Olympics: A History of the 1984 Winter Games, p. 55.
- 57.
“Holiday Inn, Sarajevo: Receptions, dinners, cocktails and buffets in the hotel during the Olympic Games”, 30 January 1984, International Olympic Committee Archives, Lausanne, Switzerland (CIO JO-1989W-RP, folder 204755).
- 58.
Author’s interview with Holiday Inn (Sarajevo) employee, September 2013.
- 59.
Author’s interviews with Holiday Inn (Sarajevo) employees, September 2013 and April/May 2014.
- 60.
Jason Vuić, The Sarajevo Olympics: A History of the 1984 Winter Games, p. 9.
- 61.
Maurice Ravel’s ‘Boléro’ will forever be associated with the 1984 Winter Olympics. The music was a key element of Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean’s performance of the same name. The British ice dancers would return to Sarajevo in 1999 to make a documentary with National Broadcasting Company (NBC) crew. They also returned to perform their ‘Boléro’ routine in 2014, marking the thirtieth anniversary of their gold medal performance. See The Telegraph, London, 14 February 2014, p. 31.
- 62.
Kate Meehan Pedrotty, ‘Yugoslav Unity and Olympic Ideology’, pp. 337–338.
- 63.
Silvija Jestrović, Performances, Space, Utopia: Cities of War, Cities of Exile, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013, p. 110. For an excellent study of Yugoslav rock music and the many Sarajevo-based bands, see Dalibor Mišina, Shake, Rattle and Roll: Yugoslav Rock Music and the Poetics of Social Critique, Farnham: Ashgate Press, 2013.
- 64.
For an overview of the construction of hotels during the Austro-Hungarian period, see Mary Sparks, The Development of Austro-Hungarian Sarajevo, 1878–1918: An Urban History, Bloomsbury Press, London & New York, 2014, pp. 171–173.
- 65.
The Hotel Europa was, according to Dževad Karahasan, ‘The semantic centre of Sarajevo. Bearing elements of both the East and Central Europe, this hotel is like a prism that gathers within itself the diffuse rays of what Sarajevo really is… To know Sarajevo means to need to go to the Hotel Europa quite regularly.’ See Dževdad Karahasan, Sarajevo: Exodus of a City, Kodansha International, New York, 1994. p. 91. The Europa was, in July 1995, destroyed by artillery fire by Bosnian Serb forces who claimed that the hotel was being used by a Muslim paramilitary group Zelene beretke (Green Berets). See Dani, Sarajevo, 12 December 2008, p. 11.
- 66.
For the Central Intelligence Agency’s then view on the economic crisis, see Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Directorate of Intelligence, ‘Yugoslavia: Key Questions and Answers on the Debt Crisis: An Intelligence Assessment’, Document No. (FOIA)/ESDN (CREST): 0005361799.
- 67.
The disintegration of the SFRJ can only be dealt with superficially in this book. However, for a succinct explanation of the contributory dynamics and a review of relevant literature, see Dejan Jović, ‘The Disintegration of Yugoslavia: A Critical Review of Explanatory Approaches’, European Journal of Social Theory, 4(1): 101–120.
- 68.
See, for example, Ruža Petrović & Marina Blagojević, The Migration of Serbs and Montenegrins from Kosovo and Metohija: Results of the Survey Conducted in 1985–1986, Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU), Demographic Studies, Volume III, Belgrade, (English translation) 1992.
- 69.
For an analysis of the events surrounding the Eighth Session of the League of Communists of Serbia see Dejan Jović, Yugoslavia: A State that Withered Away, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana, 2009, pp. 268–272.
- 70.
See Nebojša Vladisavljević, Serbia’s Antibureaucratic Revolution: Milošević, the Fall of Communism and Nationalist Mobilisation, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2008 and (by the same author) ‘The Break-up of Yugoslavia: The role of popular politics’, in Djokić & Ker-Lindsay, New Perspectives on Yugoslavia: Key Issues and Controversies, Routledge, London & New York, 2011, pp. 143–160.
- 71.
The demonstrations in Montenegro were primarily driven by economic discontent. They were, however, quickly manipulated by Milošević’s supporters to replace the Montenegrin communist leadership with younger elites (within the party) who were more inclined towards Belgrade. See Kenneth Morrison, Montenegro, A Modern History, pp. 81–88. See also Srdjan Darmanović, ‘The Peculiarities of Transition in Serbia and Montenegro’, in Dragica Vujadinović et al., Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, CEDET, Belgrade, 2003, and Nebojša Vladisavljević, Serbia’s Antibureaucratic Revolution: Milošević, the Fall of Communism and Nationalist Mobilisation, pp. 160–166.
- 72.
For the events leading to the war in Croatia, see Hannes Grandits & Carolin Leutloff, ‘Discourses, actors, violence: the organisation of war-escalation in the Krajina region of Croatia, 1990–1991’, in Jan Koehler & Christopher Zürcher (eds.), Potentials of Disorder, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003, pp. 23–45. Branka Magaš & Ivo Žanić, The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina 1991–1995, London: Frank Cass, 2001.
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Morrison, K. (2016). The Construction of Sarajevo’s ‘Olympic Hotel’. In: Sarajevo’s Holiday Inn on the Frontline of Politics and War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57718-4_4
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