Alpine huts: Architectural innovations and development in the High Tatras in the second half of the 20th century

Abstract The innovative 20th century brought many problems, but it brought many solutions too. The problems architecture was trying to handle at the time were no longer solvable with traditional methods. The world learned about new architectural movements like post-war modernism, brutalism, high-tech architecture, and postmodernism. However, there were places where innovative tendencies were implemented at a slower rate, with some delay, or not at all. The paper analyses buildings built in the alpine territories of the High Tatras in former Czechoslovakia and examines three typologies of huts: small huts, large-capacity huts, and huts transformed into mountain hotels. The research concentrates on huts and the innovations through the process of architectural planning, changes and adaptations of newly-built objects, extensions of the existing and reconstruction of decayed huts and also on the never built projects. The main focus is on the huts Chata pri Popradskom plese, Sliezsky dom, Chata pod Rysmi, Chata pri Zelenom plese and Kežmarská chata. The building process of the huts is explained in the social and political context with the notion of the second half of the 20th century paradigm. It was the era shaped by post-war recovery, architecture for the masses, television, exploration of eight-thousanders and space trips. In the second half of the 20th century, Czechoslovakia was under Soviet control with the command or planned economy. The paper explores the phenomena of the period, examining the effect they had on the care for the huts and what happened after the revolution in 1989. Despite the lack of architectural interventions in the alpine territories, the paper found examples of socialist realism, post-war modernism, and high-tech ideas in the architecture of the High Tatras highest terrains.