Alfred Keller's architectural works in Kvarner/Arhitektonski opus Alfreda Kellera na Kvarneru

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Croatian coast of the Adriatic Sea turned into a huge construction site for the purposes of tourism development. Since there were no Croatian experts for hotel and resort architecture, it was mostly foreign architects who designed and built tourist buildings whose constructions required particular knowledge of specific functional and technological processes. Numerous foreigners working on the Adriatic coast in Croatia also included architect Alfred Keller. The Austrian architect Alfred Keller (Graz, 17 Jun 1875--Vienna, 8 Mar 1945) started working in Croatia after the First World War and made his first architectural accomplishments in Kvarner, the area which represents the cradle of Croatian tourism. Keller arrived in Croatia as a 35-year-old architect with mature experience and he worked there from 1910 to 1936 on approximately 30 projects which were almost exclusively related to the Adriatic region, with the exception of the Kastner & Ohler department store (today's NAMA) in Zagreb for which he designed the front facade. Various building projects on which Keller worked in Croatia include villas, hotels, pensions, health resorts, hospitals and the department store. He also participated in several architectural and urban design competitions (Opatija, Vis, Split and Dubrovnik). In addition to Austria, Keller worked in the present territories of Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, the Czech Republic, Canada, USA etc., which suggests that borders were not an obstacle to his architectural endeavours. Regardless of his educational background in the traditional historicism, the new movements in the architecture of Vienna, where he was employed upon completing his studies in Graz, represented a great influence, which is discernible in his 1906 designs for the Hansa sanatorium in Graz. Two of his numerous projects that clearly stand out are the International Trade Academy (1914-16) and the David-hof residential estate built in cooperation with Walter Brossman (1926-1927). Despite the fact that Keller's most famous projects in Croatia are the houses along the south facade of Diocletian's Palace in Split (1922-27) and the Scheherazade Villa in Dubrovnik (1928), numerous hotel building that he designed before the First World War in Mali Losinj, Susak, Trogir, Split, Trsteno and Dubrovnik most certainly represent a contribution to the development of hotel architecture. Even in the period between the two worl