OASE 64 / Landscape and Mass Tourism

The relationship between architecture and tourism has already been the subject of frequent research from the urban context. Theories about the tourist gaze are the result of this. Themes such as identity and city branding are now familiar. The relationship between architecture and the tourist landscape has received much less attention until now. Now that tourism is taking over the natural landscape en masse, the ideal of pure, untouched nature can no longer be maintained. By definition, the tourist landscape is a construction in which cultural and functional aspects play a role. From the eighteenth century onwards, the experience of a tourist landscape has increasingly become a physical event. An irrevocable transformation of the landscape is the result. This issue of OASE focuses on the contribution of architecture to the structuring of mass tourism in the context of the landscape. Architecture frames the landscape and organizes the flow of tourists. Various interventions and approaches are reviewed, from megastructures and infrastructures in ski resorts and Mediterranean holiday centres to nostalgic settlements in artificial miniature landscapes.