Fuel’s latest foray into the crumbling ruins of architectural good intentions is Socialist Hotels, a photographic monograph by Elena Amabili that traces the state-sponsored holiday industry in the former Eastern Bloc. It follows on from works like Soviet Scientific Institutes, the Soviet Bus Stops series and the Spomenik Monument Database, all of which pair a fascination with monumental mid-century ambition with a study of a lost era of architectural politics.
Hotel Pusynas, Lithuania
Inside the Hotel Slovakia, Slovakia
Socialist Hotels is no different. Amabili is a Berlin-based Italian photographer whose work mines this rich but vanishing seam of socialist brutalism. Her extensive travels for this new book took her to, deep breath, Abkhazia, Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Crimea, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and many more, a comprehensive laundry list of countries who laboured under the yoke of Soviet influence. In all, over 150 hotels are featured, ranging from modest writers’ retreats to time honoured classics of the genre, like Crimea’s Hotel Druzhba.
Hotel Druzhba, Crimea
Inside Moscow's Hotel Cosmos
Like many visual travelogues of these regions and styles, part of the fascination lies in the apparent stasis of the subjects – décor that feels unchanged in decades, along with crumbling façades and the occasional modern ruin. But many of these outfits are still in operation, fulfilling their original function as affordable palaces of the people, seaside destinations for everyday workers to enjoy.
Sevan Writers’ House, Armenia
Like all the most intriguing architecture of the period, the best works here excel in geometric invention and richness of fittings and fixtures, from elaborate chandeliers to murals and signage. The book also contains an introduction from food writer Caroline Eden, setting these structures in their social and historic context, as well as sharing her own personal experiences staying in some of these locations.
Interhotel Pomorie, Bulgaria
Inside the Hotel Karap, Armenia
Described by the publishers as a ‘fascinating legacy of a social and cultural idiosyncrasy,’ many of the featured buildings are under threat of destruction, redevelopment or ill-considered ‘modernisation’, making Socialist Hotels another valuable study of an intersection of time, place and politics that may never again come to pass.
Socialist Hotels, Elena Amabili, £28, Fuel Publishing, Fuel-Design.com, @FuelPublishing