The area of Istarske Toplice, like the wider Istrian countryside, is slowly but continuously changing. Once-recognisable vernacular architecture is losing its character under the pressure of extensive, anonymous construction that gradually yet persistently transforms the space. Alongside the depopulation of inland villages and intensive tourism development on the coast, generic patterns detached from their context are emerging, leading to the erosion of spatial continuity and ultimately to the loss of spatial identity.
Post-industrial society, marked by digitalisation, an accelerated pace of life and the alienation of the individual, increasingly requires spaces of retreat where balance, contact with the environment and, ultimately, with oneself can be restored.
Through four fields of research, the thesis first defines the problem, through theoretical premises, translates it into a design brief for the renovation of the Istarske Toplice resort into a contemporary, experiential health resort. As a basis for health tourism, the spa becomes a hybrid model, neither hospital nor hotel, but an environment combining treatment, accommodation and leisure.
Istarske Toplice, once an important and idyllic health resort in the Mirna River valley, is today understood mainly as a place of unrealised potential. The interplay of natural, geographical, historical, cultural, social and economic factors, together with ill-considered additions of recent decades, has disrupted the spatial logic of Boris Magaš’s original modernist complex, diminished its architectural value and severed its relationship with the surrounding context. The thesis aims to highlight the problems and potential of the site and propose an urban-architectural solution directed towards restoring balance between body and mind, natural and built, private and public, past and future. The space of conflict is thus transformed into a space of opportunity, where architecture becomes a tool for restoring links between spatial continuity and discontinuity.
The architectural solution combines the renovation of the existing modernist complex with a new connective element in its hinterland, derived from the topographic logic of dry-stone walls and the spatial principles of Istrian vernacular architecture. The new element accommodates supporting therapeutic and technical programmes, until now located mainly in temporary and spatially incoherent additions to the existing hotel structure. The wall thus goes beyond its basic role of spatial delimitation and becomes a tool of urban and architectural design that enables new forms of treatment, connects individual parts of the complex and restores the relationship between architecture, topography and landscape.
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