Theme
From the emergence in the nineteenth
century of the leisure class to the twenty-first century globetrotter, the
tourism industry has evolved from an upper-class form of pastime to a global
mega-industry of sectors comprising transportation, accommodation, food and
beverage, entertainment, and other connected services. Now serving a vast array
of holidaymakers, and creating jobs for hundreds of millions of people around
the world, the tourism industry’s economic potential is undeniable.
Consequently, this business has radically shifted the design and occupation of
the built environment. On the one hand, new iconic buildings have reinvigorated
former harbor and industrial cities such as Bilbao, Hamburg, and Rotterdam by
attracting visitors. On the other hand, historical city centers like Amsterdam,
Dubrovnik, and Venice struggle to cope with an influx of tourists that is
larger than the capacity their urban fabrics can handle. The necessary
infrastructures to accommodate mass tourism in popular destinations, both urban
and rural, often have a detrimental impact on the natural environment, cultural
heritage, and local communities. The drastic impact of measures against the
COVID-19 pandemic in recent months, have at once underlined that the tourism
industry is a significant part of our global economy, and revealed its
exploitative character. How then can we take this moment to rethink the effects
of tourism and its related industries on the built world in a constructive way?
How will this affect the future of the built environment?
While the tourism industry in Norway is already steadily growing—with a strong increase in foreign visitors in recent years—the majority of touristic consumption is from Norwegians themselves. Notably, a long tradition of outdoor recreation and a high standard of living courtesy of a flourishing economy, have contributed to a widespread culture of second homes. So much so, that the sprawl of these second homes has led to regional planning problems in certain attractive locations. While the government has welcomed and incentivized the growth of the tourism industry at large through marketing campaigns and a lack of tourist taxes until now, similarly one of the major, acknowledged challenges on a national level is the unequal distribution of tourism-related activities across the country, and throughout the year. In Roadmap Towards Sustainable Travel and Tourism, the Norwegian government set out to define a future for the tourism industry that provides pleasant experiences to tourists, is economically profitable, and avoids the dreaded detrimental impact to cultural heritage, natural environments, and local communities. Based on a “high yield/low impact” principle, it proposes to spread tourism more evenly in time and space, and to diversify what is on offer. Where Norway’s nature is now considered to be one of the main reasons to travel to certain places, cultural activities such as exhibitions, theater performances, and fine dining and shopping experiences, can contribute to higher economic yields with a relatively low impact on the environment.[1]
Embracing the “high yield/low impact” principle, two ideas of seasonality are taken as a basis to start constructing this collective project. Firstly the meteorological understanding of spring, summer, autumn, and winter; and secondly the three tourism variants of high, low, and shoulder seasons. While the first reading of seasonality denotes weather and daylight conditions, the second outlines the level of touristic activity in relation to fixed times and places. As such, both impact various parts of Norway in particular ways, where snow lures holidaymakers to ski slopes in one area, but prevents them from driving certain highways elsewhere, and extreme daylight conditions set the North clearly apart from the South. It is therefore equally important to consider the different geological conditions one can find in Norway, each of which may be impacted by the seasons in different ways. For this collective project, it was decided to take the geological conditions of the fjord, the mountain, and the island, selecting the specific sites related to the future of the tourism industry for the constituent thirteen contributions. Although perhaps befitting the vision of remoteness that is so embedded in the public imagination of Norway, it was not originally planned to document and analyze these sites completely from a distance. However, as travel bans due to the COVID-19 pandemic prevented fieldwork from happening, our remoteness was instrumentalized to be able to select the three sites from the confines of our desktops. Like prospective tourists planning a getaway, the Norwegian territory was not only documented through found imagery, satellite views, and various online mapping services, but also by looking at subjective reviews and data from the tourism industry. The spatial distribution of Airbnb accommodations, cruise ship routes, tourist guides, and architectural competitions for tourist attractions, were among the types of information used. Based on this analysis, the earlier described sites in Bergen, Kvitfjell, and Andøya—the fjord, the mountain, the island— were selected.
The thirteen individual contributions spread across these three sites—a flagship store, an architecture institute, a ministry, a cruise terminal, a catalog house, a train station, a charging station, a cabin, a royal palace, an astronomical observatory, a visitor center, a space complex, and an itinerant circus— explore the potential of architecture and urban design in relation to the tourism industry. Each contribution is structured according to both the meteorological and touristic seasons. On the one hand, this gives the opportunity to make each contribution comparable; while, on the other hand, it helps to articulate an argument about how the “high yield/low impact” principle can rethink the design of the built environment. At the same time, these contributions aim to rethink the relationship between “front stage” and “back stage,” a dichotomy first outlined by Dean MacCannell in his seminal bookThe Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class.[2] Although the understanding of MacCannell’s dichotomy has evolved over the past forty years since it was first published, its essence can still be considered relevant for today. By developing each contribution clearly in terms of the front stage—where traditionally hosts or service personnel interact with guests or customers—and the back stage—where staff members typically retreat from or prepare for work in the “front”—each contribution will start to consider relationships between global and local, between product and producer, between space and time.
Each contribution will use the format of the calendar to chart out respective year-round front- and back- stage activities, revealing possible relationships between all of them. In addition to suggesting certain spatial configurations, each calendar will establish a set of constraints from which the design specificities on either side of the front-stage/back-stage division may be understood, and thus speculated upon accordingly. In the next phases of the collective project, the calendars will be used to link the contributions respectively within one of the three sites—or possibly across all—projecting a set of spatial ideas beyond a yearly cycle. Each of the contributions aims for a critical speculation on the spatial implications of the tourism industry in Norway, and collectively these thirteen points of departure are destined to travel a varied journey across Bergen, Kvitjfell, and Andøya, awaiting arrival at a future Norway yet to be imagined.
[1] Innovation Norway, Roadmap Towards Sustainable Travel and Tourism, Oslo, 2017, 5.
[2] Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, Berkely: University of California Press, 1976), 91-94.
While the tourism industry in Norway is already steadily growing—with a strong increase in foreign visitors in recent years—the majority of touristic consumption is from Norwegians themselves. Notably, a long tradition of outdoor recreation and a high standard of living courtesy of a flourishing economy, have contributed to a widespread culture of second homes. So much so, that the sprawl of these second homes has led to regional planning problems in certain attractive locations. While the government has welcomed and incentivized the growth of the tourism industry at large through marketing campaigns and a lack of tourist taxes until now, similarly one of the major, acknowledged challenges on a national level is the unequal distribution of tourism-related activities across the country, and throughout the year. In Roadmap Towards Sustainable Travel and Tourism, the Norwegian government set out to define a future for the tourism industry that provides pleasant experiences to tourists, is economically profitable, and avoids the dreaded detrimental impact to cultural heritage, natural environments, and local communities. Based on a “high yield/low impact” principle, it proposes to spread tourism more evenly in time and space, and to diversify what is on offer. Where Norway’s nature is now considered to be one of the main reasons to travel to certain places, cultural activities such as exhibitions, theater performances, and fine dining and shopping experiences, can contribute to higher economic yields with a relatively low impact on the environment.[1]
Embracing the “high yield/low impact” principle, two ideas of seasonality are taken as a basis to start constructing this collective project. Firstly the meteorological understanding of spring, summer, autumn, and winter; and secondly the three tourism variants of high, low, and shoulder seasons. While the first reading of seasonality denotes weather and daylight conditions, the second outlines the level of touristic activity in relation to fixed times and places. As such, both impact various parts of Norway in particular ways, where snow lures holidaymakers to ski slopes in one area, but prevents them from driving certain highways elsewhere, and extreme daylight conditions set the North clearly apart from the South. It is therefore equally important to consider the different geological conditions one can find in Norway, each of which may be impacted by the seasons in different ways. For this collective project, it was decided to take the geological conditions of the fjord, the mountain, and the island, selecting the specific sites related to the future of the tourism industry for the constituent thirteen contributions. Although perhaps befitting the vision of remoteness that is so embedded in the public imagination of Norway, it was not originally planned to document and analyze these sites completely from a distance. However, as travel bans due to the COVID-19 pandemic prevented fieldwork from happening, our remoteness was instrumentalized to be able to select the three sites from the confines of our desktops. Like prospective tourists planning a getaway, the Norwegian territory was not only documented through found imagery, satellite views, and various online mapping services, but also by looking at subjective reviews and data from the tourism industry. The spatial distribution of Airbnb accommodations, cruise ship routes, tourist guides, and architectural competitions for tourist attractions, were among the types of information used. Based on this analysis, the earlier described sites in Bergen, Kvitfjell, and Andøya—the fjord, the mountain, the island— were selected.
The thirteen individual contributions spread across these three sites—a flagship store, an architecture institute, a ministry, a cruise terminal, a catalog house, a train station, a charging station, a cabin, a royal palace, an astronomical observatory, a visitor center, a space complex, and an itinerant circus— explore the potential of architecture and urban design in relation to the tourism industry. Each contribution is structured according to both the meteorological and touristic seasons. On the one hand, this gives the opportunity to make each contribution comparable; while, on the other hand, it helps to articulate an argument about how the “high yield/low impact” principle can rethink the design of the built environment. At the same time, these contributions aim to rethink the relationship between “front stage” and “back stage,” a dichotomy first outlined by Dean MacCannell in his seminal bookThe Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class.[2] Although the understanding of MacCannell’s dichotomy has evolved over the past forty years since it was first published, its essence can still be considered relevant for today. By developing each contribution clearly in terms of the front stage—where traditionally hosts or service personnel interact with guests or customers—and the back stage—where staff members typically retreat from or prepare for work in the “front”—each contribution will start to consider relationships between global and local, between product and producer, between space and time.
Each contribution will use the format of the calendar to chart out respective year-round front- and back- stage activities, revealing possible relationships between all of them. In addition to suggesting certain spatial configurations, each calendar will establish a set of constraints from which the design specificities on either side of the front-stage/back-stage division may be understood, and thus speculated upon accordingly. In the next phases of the collective project, the calendars will be used to link the contributions respectively within one of the three sites—or possibly across all—projecting a set of spatial ideas beyond a yearly cycle. Each of the contributions aims for a critical speculation on the spatial implications of the tourism industry in Norway, and collectively these thirteen points of departure are destined to travel a varied journey across Bergen, Kvitjfell, and Andøya, awaiting arrival at a future Norway yet to be imagined.
[1] Innovation Norway, Roadmap Towards Sustainable Travel and Tourism, Oslo, 2017, 5.
[2] Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, Berkely: University of California Press, 1976), 91-94.