ABSTRACT
Starting in 1955, the Romanian socialist state commissioned a string of holiday facilities along the Black Sea coast that significantly democratized the summer holiday. As the seaside became accessible to a large part of the population, the resorts became a key terrain for imagining and experiencing a socialist environment. This essay argues that planning principles and architectural typologies and solutions used in the construction of the resorts were formative of the socialist project rather than an exception to its norms. Indeed, some of the concerns that architects and planners first articulated for the seaside resort were generalized shortly after in the construction of urban housing ensembles. More generally, the luminous, wholesome sensuality and togetherness the resorts promoted with the support of mass media were constitutive of the socialist project of transforming everyday life. Finally, the essay places the celebratory resort iconography in a broader history of the region and of the state violence against human and non-human worlds that preceded the construction of worry-free leisure spaces.
