Avantura Creative development studio
We imagine, brand and bring to life hospitality destinations and private residences across the Adriatic, beginning with an idea rather than a building programme.
Istria Kvarner Dalmatia The islands
01 Vision
The Adriatic has no shortage of accommodation, nor of investors building villas, apartments, hotels and resorts. Many are handsome. Most are interchangeable, competing on location, amenities and price.
Too much hospitality development begins with a spreadsheet, a plot of land and a building programme. Avantura begins somewhere else: with a vision of a place that does not exist yet, and a reason someone would travel specifically to experience it.
People forget rooms. They remember atmosphere, encounters and discoveries: the moments that could not have happened anywhere else.
So we treat architecture, landscape, interiors, food, culture, programme and story as parts of one experience, held together by one idea. A destination should not merely occupy its landscape. It should belong to it.
Places to sleep are plentiful. Places worth remembering are not.
02 Selected visions
Each began as a question rather than a plot of land. All three are original Avantura concepts, developed as propositions and open to the right investment and development partners. Sites, approvals, partners and funding are still to be secured, which is precisely where the conversation begins.
A wine destination · Istria
A life among the vines.
Istria has wineries that welcome guests and hotels that look out over vines. Collis Rubini is neither. It is a place where wine is the organising idea behind everything: how you arrive, where you sleep, what you eat, when you gather and why you return in another season.
Not a hotel among vineyards. A place organised around wine.
Living and working · The Adriatic
A refuge for independent minds.
Coworking spaces sell desks. Coliving sells beds. Asylum House offers something rarer to people who work on their own terms: a house that takes both their work and their life seriously, and leaves room for each.
Not an office with bedrooms. A house with a culture.
An architect-designed village · Istria
A village of individual visions.
A small Istrian village in which every house is designed by a different outstanding regional architect. Individual residences, held together by one masterplan, shared public spaces and a common respect for the hill they stand on.
Not a compound of identical villas. A collection of houses.
Have a site, a building or an ambition that deserves an idea of its own?
03 Past project
Conversion of a ruin · Istria
From a Venetian olive mill to a family home.
The ruin was once the olive oil mill of a noble Venetian family. In 2021 it was bought by a prominent entrepreneur, and between 2022 and 2024 it was converted into a family residence with a character of its own.
Marko Brdarski led the project from the very beginning: scouting locations and finding the property, developing the vision, assembling the team and overseeing all of the work.
The original stone walls were restored and deliberately left bare, so that rough local stone and centuries of history hold a dialogue with a modern, minimalist and entirely bespoke interior. The ancient stone olive mill was preserved and now stands at the centre of the main space as a sculpture.
At the owners' request, the residence is not shown in photographs and its location is not disclosed.
Discuss your property04 Approach
Investors have no shortage of suppliers. What they rarely have is one party accountable for the idea, from the first question to the opening day, with the judgement to choose everyone else.
Concept origination · Opportunity assessment · Experience strategy · Positioning
We establish what would make the place compelling, whom it serves and why it should exist at all.
Brand strategy · Identity direction · Architectural vision · Guest experience · Commercial concept
The idea becomes a coherent proposition and creative brief that investors, architects, operators and specialists can each work from.
Team assembly · Creative leadership · Coordination · Vision stewardship
We bring together the architects, designers, hospitality specialists, contractors and suppliers the project needs, and lead the creative direction throughout development, so the finished place is still recognisably the one that was imagined.
Architecture, engineering, statutory approvals, construction and other regulated work remain with appropriately qualified and licensed parties, appointed for each project.
The emotional argument earns attention. The commercial logic earns confidence. A coherent concept gives an investment case clearer answers to the questions it turns on.
These are opportunities a strong concept can open, not promised financial outcomes. Feasibility studies, planning, financial diligence and operator validation still do their work. A better idea gives them something worth testing.
Avantura is not a furniture supplier, an interior design service, an architectural practice, a contractor or a consultancy that presents and leaves.
We decide what should exist, and stay until it does.
05 Why the Adriatic
Istria, Kvarner, Dalmatia and the islands hold some of Europe's most compelling settings for hospitality: ancient towns and stone villages, vineyards and olive groves, mountains within sight of the sea, a maritime culture, living craft and a serious table.
Yet beautiful surroundings alone do not make a remarkable destination, and the coast's future should not be written by the repetition of familiar accommodation formats. It deserves developments with more imagination, cultural depth and architectural sensitivity, built for the long term rather than the next season.
Avantura works from Rijeka, where Istria meets Kvarner: rooted in the region, internationally minded, and impatient with the interchangeable.
Beautiful surroundings do not make a destination. Vision does.
06 Studio
Founder & Creative Director
A destination is a brand, a building, a kitchen, a programme and a business at the same time. Someone has to hold all of it in view.
Marko Brdarski has spent more than twenty years starting and running businesses across technology, brands, art, design, lifestyle and hospitality, in London, Prague and Croatia. He founded a digital studio in Prague, co-founded a contemporary art gallery and event venue, built a beauty business that opened a new category in Central Europe, and has created and operated boutique hospitality offerings of his own.
His main work is B2B marketing, at markobrdarski.com. Spaces are the other passion, and from time to time he takes on one worth transforming.
That breadth is the point. Commercial thinking, design and storytelling are usually bought from different people and reconciled too late. At Avantura they start in the same place.
His role is closer to a film director's than an architect's. He sees the opportunity, develops the original proposition, brings in the right specialists and keeps the vision coherent from the first question to the finished place. Architecture, engineering and construction remain with the licensed professionals appointed to deliver them.
07 Questions
Avantura is an independent creative development studio based in Rijeka, Croatia. It originates and shapes hospitality destinations and private residences across the Adriatic: it defines what a place should become, develops its brand and commercial concept, and assembles and leads the specialists who bring it into being.
No. Avantura provides the vision, positioning, brand direction and creative leadership. Architecture, engineering, statutory approvals and construction are carried out by independent, appropriately licensed professionals appointed for each project. Avantura is not a furniture supplier, a contractor or a developer of standard hospitality products.
Private investors and family offices, owners of exceptional land or existing properties, developers looking for differentiation, entrepreneurs with an ambitious hospitality idea, boutique operators, and individuals creating exceptional private homes and estates.
Across the Adriatic, with a focus on Istria, Kvarner, Dalmatia and the Croatian islands. The studio is based in Rijeka, where Istria meets Kvarner.
Yes. Avantura can originate a concept from nothing, or start from an existing site, building or hospitality business. Either way the work begins with one question: what could this place become that would make it genuinely extraordinary?
In three stages. Imagine: what the place should be, whom it serves and why it should exist. Define: brand, architectural vision, guest experience and commercial concept, set out as a brief that investors, architects and operators can work from. Realise: assembling the right specialists and leading the creative direction through development.
They are original Avantura concepts that have not yet been realised. None is an operating business, and sites, partners, approvals and funding are still to be secured. Each is open to the right investment and development partnership.
No. A concept informs feasibility, planning, financial diligence and operator validation; it does not replace them. It gives them something worth testing.
Use the enquiry form below or write to marko@markobrdarski.com. A few lines on the site, the project or the idea are enough.
08 Conversation
Whether you have a remarkable site, an ambitious development or the appetite to create something entirely new, we should talk.
Or write directly to marko@markobrdarski.com
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