A Dominican architect, Juan Alfonso Zapata, was part of the Space for Urban Research (Supersudaca) group that recently won the best entry award in the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, The Netherlands (http://www.biennalerotterdam.nl/biennale/item.jsp?item=3872), with the project Al Caribe about tourism and coastal urban developments in the Caribbean. The best entry award was chosen from the Mare Nostrum exhibition that closed last month in Rotterdam.
Al Caribe won for conveying a large amount of important new knowledge on the urbanistic, social, economical and cultural consequences of mass tourism on a relatively poor but very beautiful region – through a very effective, clear and attractive presentation. The presentation compares all-inclusive resorts to holiday suburbs. It describes these as strips that are monofunctional programmatically and stylistically echoing an unrolled American suburbia. It comments that the resorts have created parallel worlds. “Strips isolation nursed the all-inclusive concept into an unavoidable option, generating a parallel world, where these fantasy islands are detached from the local reality and have rationalized every link of the supply chain for profit.
While the all-inclusives are described as having been extremely successful among consumers for their promise of high security in a strange land and controlled expenditures, the authors conclude that this is a formula for unsustainable growth. They stress that the all-inclusive formula, paradoxically, excludes local economies by marginalizing local enterprises and causing environmental damage with the removal of essential mangroves, coral reefs and sand dunes in their construction. They highlight that the unprecedented scale reached by some resort strips has proven socially, economically and ecologically unsustainable.
The viewpoint will be presented at a forthcoming tour operators conference. Connected to the prize is a small grant by tour operator TUI Netherlands that will enable the group to further develop the presentation. The project was carried out with the support of Prins Claus Fonds, International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam and the Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra of Santiago where a urban research workshop was carried out in March to compile information for the presentation.
To view the presentation, see http://dr1.com/news/2005/071405_alcaribe.pdf