mesarch-leisurescapes

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Uneasy Leisure: Modern Hotels and Shared Heritage on a Divided Island

The project examines the post-1974 ‘afterlife’ of ten paradigmatic hotels, analysing the operative agency of the multiple narratives and interpretations they embody. Through a comparative analysis that draws on theoretical tools from architectural history and theory and critical heritage studies, this research will interrogate competing narratives of nationalism and identity; oscillations between remembrance and oblivion; and environmental frictions regarding dereliction, demolition, and preservation. By exposing the complexities of modern architectural heritage in a conflicted landscape, this project aims to inspire alternative heritage practices that recognize the complex politics of modern buildings and probe possibilities of transcending polarization.

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The book is out! Find it here. 

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2021 Leisurescapes of the Global Sunbelt: Collaborative workshops

The editors of the volume Coastal Architectures and Politics of Tourism: Leisurescapes in the Global Sunbelt coordinated collaborative workshops with the chapter authors. These meetings help the development of papers and facilitate information sharing, feedback mechanisms and synergies across cases studies, contexts and methodologies.

Dates/Venue: Jan 22, Feb 19, March 5, March 22, April 5, April 19, 2021 (online)

Co-organisers: Panayiota Pyla, Petros Phokaides, Sibel Bozdoǧan

Images: Snapshots from zoom meetings

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2020 Leisurescapes of the Global Sunbelt: Kick off for the edited volume

An online workshop launched the collaborative publication project Coastal Architectures and Politics of Tourism: Leisurescapes in the Global Sunbelt. It brought together authors working on histories of tourism in different contexts – from California to Australia, and from Singapore to Estonia

Dates/Venue: June 1, 2020 (online)

Co-organisers: Panayiota Pyla, Petros Phokaides, Sibel Bozdoǧan

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Mapping international leisurescapes

The map shows the geographic distribution of case studies included in the publication Coastal Architectures and Politics of Tourism: Leisurescapes in the Global Sunbelt

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Mapping Cyprus’ leisurescapes

As part of research projects on Cyprus’ leisurescapes an extensive list of hotels and other tourist projects was created with the goal to collect the salient information on landscapes of leisure and tourism. The outcome is an evidence-based database, that is continuously updated through research on official archives, reports, primary and secondary sources including online material. 

This documentation includes a wide array of leisurescapes types (tourism accommodation, recreational spaces, entertainment, beaches, archeological sites, etc.) and covers an expanded timeframe from 1930s to 1980s. Information is not limited to the architects’ names, physical addresses, types and dates of the leisurescapes, but also includes data such as the patrons, contractors, alterations, accessibility, current use and the size of lodgings. This kind of data sheds light to a second layer of reading, where the primary mere data inputting turned into a distilled list of key correlations, revealing interesting patterns of local and international relationships, the state’s involvement, instigators of tourism development in Cyprus, typological similarities among the lodgings as well as their role in conflict and political events. Another goal of this documentation is to quantitively represent the period and location of leisurescapes by mapping the allotment of touristic activity over the island’s territory and identifying the years of the developmental upsurge. Therefore, this list beyond its taxonomic character, utilizes as a research matrix where one can refer to the relevant sources or to an imagery anthology to reflect upon the history of each individual entry.  

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2018 Workshop on Leisurescapes: Tours of Hotels and Coasts

During the 2018 Workshop, the invited speakers and other participants had more exchanges during two tours of key modern hotels and coastal landscapes in Cyprus. The first tour took place right before the workshop presentations, on the morning of June 5. It was a tour of the Nicosia city centre, which included visits to the Ledra Palace Hotel (1949) and the Saray Hotel (1957). The second tour on June 6 focused on the coast of Limassol, the Amathus Archaeological site and the adjacent Amathus Hotel (1973). The idea for the Leisurescapes Project as an ongoing collaborative work bringing together researchers on leisure and tourism emerged during those productive conversations.

On the Kourion beach in Limassol, during the last workshop dinner. From left to right: Jiat-Hwee Chang, Panayiota Pyla, Sibel Bozdoǧan, Juliana Maxim,  Meltem Gürel, Dimitris Venizelos, Petros Phokaides.

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2018 Workshop on Leisurescapes: Multimedia exhibition

The Constructed and the Unspoiled Accounts of tourist development in Cyprus, 1960-1974

Multimedia exhibit in the context of the workshop “Landscapes of Leisure: Architectural Histories of Tourism and Development”

June 5th 2018 at the Peace Room (62 Ledras street – Nicosia)

In 1962, Cyprus has its picture taken. Urbanist Eugene Beaudouin, architect and urbanist Manuel Baud-Bovy and architect Aristea Rita Tzanos comprise the group of French consultants that extensively photograph the Cypriot landscape. The team was invited by the nascent Republic of Cyprus to produce a report on the island’s future in the emerging industry of tourism. Their photographic lens highlights the island’s “unspoiled”coastal landscape as the quintessential tourist asset.

The pursue of the “unspoiled” as a characteristic of the Mediterranean landscape internalizes a contradiction: If on the one hand an idealized “unspoiled” Mediterranean coastline entailed emancipatory aspirations for the North European urbanite, as it was associated with the qualities of a “pre-urban” and “non-urban” lifestyle; on the other hand, the processes of urbanization unleashed by the pursuit of the “unspoiled” as an asset for the emerging tourist industry, paradoxically eradicated these qualities from the produced landscapes, the latters being shaped instead by processes of relentless real estate speculation.

Famagusta’s leisurescape exemplifies this contradiction. Featuring as one of Cyprus’s unspoiled beaches in the French photographic collection, Famagusta’s Golden Coast becomes, less than a decade later, the country’s flagship leisurescape, catering to half of the island’s mass-tourism flows.Far from the 1962 Edenic visions captured by the photographic lens of the French team, the pictures of the 1970s Famagusta depict a coastal landscape densely constructed with hotels that offered all the amenities of modern urban life for the European and North American tourist. The remarkable transformations of the Golden Coast during the period of 1960 - 1974 make visible this often-concealed aspect of landscapes of leisure as operational landscapes of a post-Fordist economy. Moreover, and as they increasingly became part of the government’s agendas for economic development during the 1960s and early 70s, these developmental landscapes also embody various forms of politics, inequality and dispossession. Or even, they become spaces of contestation and conflict, despite the iconography of relaxation portrayed in promotion pamphlets and newspaper articles in Cyprus and internationally.

The multimedia exhibit titled “The Constructed and the Unspoiled” curated by the Mesarch Lab team is a reflection on these thoguhts. The exhibit attempted a synthesis of photographic content from the two archives mentioned above (the Beaudouin - Baud-Bovy – Tzanos photographic collection hosted at the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation and the Press Information Office of the Republic of Cyprus photo archives of the period 1960-1974) in conversation with other archival material (architectural models and publications). The parallel display of what was envisioned (extrapolating from the perspectives introduced by the French photo archive) and what was constructed until the early 70s (documented in the various photographic collections of the Press Information Office) aimed to highlight precisely this contradictory nature of the landscapes of leisure: as both developmental landscapes and as spaces permeated by utopian aspirations.

The Mesarch Lab is grateful to the Press Information Office of the Republic of Cyprus and the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation, for offering access to their archival material. Special thanks to Dr Ioanna Hadjicosti, Director of the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation and Dr Christodoulos Hadjichristodoulou, Director of the Bank of Cyprus Historical Archive, for their engagement and interest in our research work.

Archival Research: Dimitris Venizelos Curators: Dimitris Venizelos, Panayiota Pyla, Petros Phokaides. Assistant curator: Michalis Psaras

References

Gaviria, Mario. “La producción neocolonialista del espacio.” Papers. Revista de Sociologia3, (July 1, 1974): 201–17.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford, OX, UK ; Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell, 1991: chapters 4-6  

Lefebvre, Henri. Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Lefebvre, Henri. Introduction to Libro negro sobre la autopista de la Costa Blanca, ed. Mario Gaviria (Valencia: Editorial Cosmos, 1973), xiii–xiv.

Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Republic of Cyprus, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, French Republic—Eugene Beaudouin, Manuel Baud- Bovy, Aristea Rita Tzanos. Cyprus Study of Tourist Development. 1962.

Raymond, Henri. “Le littoral et l’usager.” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, no. 175 (1974): 28.

Raymond, Henri. Les significations culturelles du littoral français. Institut d’Etudes et de Recherches en Architecture et Urbanisme, 1973.

Raymond, Henri. “Le littoral et l’usager.” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, no. 175 (1974): 28.

LEGEND

1.    L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, no. 175 (1974): 28 2.    Review of foreign and national newspapers on Hotel developments in Cyprus (Mesarch Lab working documents) 3.    Original Model of Golden Sands Hotel by Garnett-Cloughley-Blakemore Architects. Donated to Mesarch Lab by Derry Garnett 4.    “Microcosms”, Mesarch Lab working documents 5.     The Golden Sands hotel Promotional video from Golden Sands hotel opening on 7 July 1973, Patrick Garnett’s archive, Mpeg video, 17:26 6.    Photographs of Famagusta’s leisure strip – content from various photographic collections of the Press Information Office of the Republic of Cyprus 7.    Photographs of the Beaudouin-Bovy-Tzanos archive, hosted at the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation.   8.    Workshop presentations

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2018 Workshop on Leisurescapes

Landscapes of Leisure: Architectural Histories of Tourism and Development

The Mesarch Lab of the Department of Architecture of the University of Cyprus organized the workshop “Landscapes of Leisure: Architectural Histories of Tourism and Development, on June 5, 2018 at the «Peace Room», 62 Ledras street, Nicosia.

Tourism has been intricately tied to international development agendas since the Cold War, and just like the themes of housing, environment, and peace, tourism has been at the root of decolonization, modernization and development strategies crossing the industrial and non-industrial worlds. This workshop aimed to offer timely and crucial insights into the potentials and perils of tourism politics, by revisiting their histories and their impact on the built environment from the 1950s until today. The workshop situated the architectural and urban history of tourist landscapes within the discourses of modernity, nation-building, urbanization, and decolonization; focusing on the way these landscapes have been intertwined with social, political, ethnic, and environmental challenges. By reflecting on the intertwinement of tourist landscapes with multiple types of politics the workshop ultimately aspired to introduce critical perspectives to the past and present discourses of development. The following speakers discussed the above-mentioned topics through case studies of landscapes of leisure in Cyprus and internationally.

Speakers Sibel Bozdoǧan, Boston University  | Jiat-Hwee Chang, National University of Singapore | Meltem Gürel, Bilkent University | Juliana Maxim, University of San Diego | Panayiota Pyla, University of Cyprus | Socrates Stratis, University of Cyprus | Maria Hadjimichael,  University of Cyprus | Petros Phokaides, National Technical University of Athens | Georgia Daskalaki, University of Cyprus | Dimitris Venizelos, University of Cyprus.

Image caption:  Amathus Hotel, The Architects Collaborative International Inc. (TAC), in collaboration with Fotis Kolakidis, Limassol, 1971-1973. Source: Κολακίδης και Συνεργάτες, ψηφιοποίηση από Mesarch Lab, UCy, 2012.