Holiday Camps and Religious Accommodation in Sardinia in the 1960s: The “Casa La Scogliera” in Solanas

Abstract

Holiday camps represent a significant example of the architecture for mass tourism in Sardinia after the Second world war, and a concrete example of the health and recreational function of local welfare state policies and religious pedagogical activities. Although marked by simple and sometimes questionable formal solutions – often far from relevant architectural experimentation – holiday camps are now characteristic elements of many Sardinian coastal landscapes, as well as examples of architectural and building articulations which were functional to the pedagogical conceptions of the time. Prominent among these cases are a seaside colony and an accommodation facility for social tourism in the picturesque bay of Solanas (hamlet of Sinnai) in southern Sardinia, both run by religious organizations and located just two hundred meters apart from each other. The first is the “Colonia Salesiana Don Bosco,” built between 1956–58, the second is the “Casa La Scogliera,” completed in 1971. The reconstruction of the design and construction history of the “Casa La Scogliera,” through unpublished original plans, documents, and memories, allows this article to assess the relationship that this building had both with the specific pedagogy developed in the context of religious organizations and with the tumultuous tourist development of Sardinia during the 1960s. This paper aims at revealing the history, values and critical issues of this architecture and the cultural context in which it is embedded, thus contributing to the current debate on the conservation and transformation of holiday camps.