Mar 28, 07:15 pm
2A magazine on Architecture + Tourism publication
The 2A Art and Architecture magazine issue #4 on Architecture + Tourism is published. The magazine is edited by George. Twenty six articles are included and it is the first publication of its kind that contains such a large collection of critical text on Dubai.
The theme of the current issue of 2A magazine is Architecture + Tourism.
The 21st century and the technology of speed and travel have brought about some dramatic changes in the way we design and use our cities: we are tourists in our environments. We spend more and more time traveling as nomads in global neighborhoods. Those cities that will attract the most tourists will be the most successful ones. Like cities the contemporary hotel is the product of two violently contradictory but equally strong impulses: it has to make the strange seem familiar, but also to make the banal seem exotic. At the same time a hotel has to be somewhere, rather than nowhere. It has to give us at least the illusion that we can do something to dispel the existential angst and emptiness that might come from the realization that we travel all this way, and find ourselves in a place that is exactly the same as the one we left.
A number of international designers and writers have contributed to this issue and I am grateful to the dynamics and variety they have brought to the pages of this magazine.
In Dubai there is little difference between holiday accommodation and housing. Architectural programs are becoming fused and undifferentiated. The morphology of the landscape and seascape is becoming fabricated to the point that it may soon be difficult to differentiate between the natural and the constructed. Dubai’s natural beachfront is 45km long. Artificial islands will add another 1,500km of beachfront, turning the coastline and the city into an inexhaustible holiday resort. The trajectory of the development of Dubai is reflected in its population, which has grown fifteen-fold since 1969: from 60,000 then to well over 1.3 million today. It is projected that, by 2010, Dubai’s tourist trade will accommodate around 15 million tourists per annum, serviced by more than 400 hotels.
As Briavel Holcomb points out in his essay “Marketing Cities for Tourism” (1999), in the tourist realm “it is the consumer, not the product that moves. Because the product is usually sold before the consumer sees it, the marking of tourism is intrinsically more significant than the conventional case where the product can be seen, tested, and compared to similar products in situ. It means that the representation of place, the images created for marketing, the vivid videos and persuasive prose of advertising texts, can be as selective and creative as the marketer can make them – a reality check comes only after arrival”.
Historically, the origin of modern vacation time can be traced back to the 1930s, when workers in France, for the first time, were given the right to twelve paid vacation days. Today, tourism has become a “total lifestyle experience.” The modern tourist resort is by definition a constructed one. The tourist’s perception seems to have shifted away from the pictorial 18th century: there is no longer the desire for the panoramic view. The excessively visual contemporary culture has made everything look familiar. Contemporary tourists are looking for familiarity: they want to feel at home in a strange place.
George Katodrytis
Guest Editor of 2A #4: Architecture + Tourism
TOC (table of contents) 2A#4: Architecture + Tourism
A. Dubai / Local tourism
Dr. Yasser Elsheshtawy: The Accidental Tourist: Dubai’s transitory spaces
Tim Kennedy: Gathering at Dubai Creek
Dr. Ali Alraouf: Learning From Bab Al-Bahrain: The Authenticity of Fake.
B. Dubai / Global tourism
Virginie Lefebvre: On Life style and beach culture
Marc Angélil and Dr. Cary Siress: Dubai, Inc.:
Marco Vanucci: Dreaming Dubai
Adina Hempel and Mirco Urban: Dimension Dubai: Sensibilities of Global Tourist Urbanism
André C. Meyerhans: Destination Dubai – Land of comparative architecture
C. Global /Urban Tourism
Sumaya Dabbagh: Homecoming
David M. Foxe: Urban Tourism in Landscapes of Les Grands Projets
Boris Brorman (images)
D. Projects on Tourism
Tom Heneghan: Forest Park Adatara, Fukushima, Japan
Andreas Angelidakis: Hotel Blue Wave
Naga Studio Architecture: OQYANA
Joe Zaatar: A hotel between the desert and the city of Dubai
Michael Schwarz
Simos Vamrakidis: The O2
Inga Dagfinnsdottir (Architecture Factory): Art Island
Steven Lombardi: “Gateway” [Hong Kong], Hang Hau Metro Station [Guangzhou, China] and 1997 [Hong Kong]
Laila Barakesh: Nomadic Corporations
Maher Rahim (University of Toronto): Dubai: The City of ‘Green’ (When Junk-Spaces develops into new Spaces of Tourism)
Dubai on the beach
Armando Montilla (Arquitectoniqa):
“Babel City: Real Estate and Part-time-living Speculative Architecture in Miami”
Filed under: NEWS+ PUBLISHED-ARTICLES