Hotel Žiča, owned by Hovan Desider, is the first modern hotel in Serbia, whose architecture combines Western modernist practice in designing this typology and Zloković’s unique prose, then still in the development phase, aimed at researching proportional relations, which were initially applied by determining optimal surfaces of the main contents and the composition of the basic volumes. With the realization of the hotel in Mataruška Banja, Zloković introduced Serbian modern architecture into a new decade during which modern architecture will become the main orientation of a group of prominent Serbian architects. Advertised as a modern hotel with “thirty hygienic, airy and sunny rooms”, Hotel Žiča introduced new standards in hotel architecture and enabled comfortable stay of guests, and in addition to accommodation and catering services, guests had at their disposal an open cinema on the roof terrace of the hotel. Zloković presented the sketch of the Hotel Žiča at the First Exhibition of Contemporary Yugoslav Architecture organized in Belgrade in 1931. Commenting on the exhibition, the architect Đurđe Bošković said about the design of the hotel that “with its simplicity, quiet surfaces, harmony of proportions and rhythm of openings, it represents the right pattern to which modern architecture strives”.
Herceg Novi, Montenegro
1934
During the thirties of the 20th century, due to the development of modern tourism and strengthening of tourist activities in Yugoslavia, the focus of tourist construction was on private initiative, i.e, on private investors who invested in the construction of accommodation and catering facilities (hotels, boarding houses, and villas) contributed to the improvement and modernization of the tourist offer.
