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The Architecture of Tourism: Decoding the Built Environment of Travel and Leisure

Deadline for receipt of abstracts : September 30th 2025
Deadline for receipt of full texts :
January 30th 2026

Call coordinated by:
Maria Gravari-Barbas,
Architecture, Geography, EIREST Research Unit, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University, France.
Maja Jović, Architecture, University of Westminster, UK.

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© https://laramoneta.com/to-see/la-grande-motte/

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© M.Jovic

Much like all economic, social and cultural activities, tourism has created its own spaces - and continues to do so. Its emergence as a social, cultural, and economic phenomenon at the end of the 18th century was accompanied by the invention of buildings, places and spaces that did not exist before then - the ones that therefore had to be imagined, designed, drawn, and built: the modern traveler’s hotel, a developed beach, a summer camp, a resort, holiday villages, theme parks, etc. (Rouillard, 1984; Toulier, 2016).

Over the past two centuries, architects have followed or contributed to the evolution of tourism, from the seaside resorts of the 19th century, over high mountain resorts of the 20th, to the most exuberant projects of the 21st century. Architecture for tourism has followed functional developments, while also allowing itself the freedom to create places for dreaming and fantasy (Picon-Lefebvre, 2019). In tourism, form does not (always) follow function. Today, marked by climate crisis, digital tourism, and post-pandemic reconfigurations of mobility, tourist architecture re-emerges as a critical site where fantasies, ideologies, economic aspirations, and ecological responsibilities come together.

Scholarship, including Urry’s concept of tourist gaze (1992; Urry and Larsen, 2011) considers tourist space as an arena where vision, mobility and media come together to produce highly scripted ‘ways of seeing’. Klingmann’s (2010) notion of brandscapes shows how architects encode commercial narratives in the built form, turning destinations into immersive ‘experiential logos’ that circulate globally through images. Specht’s seminal work on architectural tourism (2014) delves further in this topic of architecture serving as a powerful and enduring tool in tourism marketing. The literature on city, nation, and destination branding is abundant in considerations of what places and their built structures mean for the soft power and generally image of their respective destinations and nations - seen in case studies from Morgan et al., (2007), Aronczyk (2014) to Ermann and Hermanik (2018), to name a few. Salazar’s work on tourism imaginaries particularly highlights the circulation of tropes - such as ’tropical paradise’, alpine environment, desert authenticity - that guide tourism stakeholders long before ground is broken or place is visited. These imaginaries renegotiate political and social realities. Digital platforms have now intensified this so we see a number of works on the way overall spatial structure of tourism hotspots is changing cities (Fan and Zhang’s case study of Beijing, 2022), on the way buildings ‘perform’ on these platforms (Alaily-Mattar et al., 2024; Lindsay and Sawyer, 2025), on effects of historical visual mapping and the outsiders gaze (Ogden, 2021), on the way photography and social media change meanings and perception of heritage and built structures (Lopez-Chao and Lopez-Pena, 2020; Wagiri et al, 2024) or - on the way these structures are built with share-ability in mind a priori. At this point in time, ‘instagrammable’ aesthetic of spaces is often criticised for fuelling or contributing to overtourism.

On the ground, tourism has generated an extraordinary repertoire of purpose-built forms or in other ways affected creation of spectacular structures. McNeill’s (2009) account of architecture and urban form shows how signature museums, airports and towers function as instant attractions, reshaping entire city economies. Knox (2011), Shaw (2015), Scerri et al. (2019) and Gravari-Barbas (2020) interrogate global as well as context specific cases of starchitecture - what it means for the city, its residents, but also what it means for tourism, and for their intersection. On the other end and regionally, we find tropical mega-resorts, modular villas in landscaped enclosures, ryokan traditions merged with modernity to fit the requirements of Western travellers, mid-century synthesis of vernacular chalet and aerodynamic concrete (De Rossi, 2006; Bolzoni, 2001), eco-luxury lodges in protected wilderness, and many others built specifically for the tourist and often existing in a form of enclave. Studies of all-inclusive beach resorts, for example, document spatial segregation that incentivises tourist spending inside gated compounds, raising concerns over equity, equality and land-use. In any case, from early and seasonal mass tourism models to today’s digitally optimised installations, architecture for tourism remains a testing ground for both style experimentation and a crucial apparatus for organising labour, capital and ecological mark on the planet.

This special issue of Via Tourism Review seeks to capture these connections - that do not always follow functional thought - between tourism and architecture. It particularly looks to explore the architecture and urban planning created by and for tourism and invites reflection on how tourism-driven architecture embodies and challenges the spatial, material and symbolic systems of our time (MacLaren, 2004; MacLaren, 2005).

We invite articles that address several themes:

  • The invention of tourist architecture in the early days of tourism: architectural typologies, architects, iconic projects, etc (grand hotels, picturesque movement, etc.).

  • The evolution of architectural typologies for tourism (hotels, resorts, seaside facilities, mountain developments);

  • Specific tourism products and architectural typologies (social tourism, luxury tourism, mass tourism resorts, extreme regions, etc.);

  • Theming and simulacra (theme parks, fauxheritage, nostalgia, fantasy architecture, etc.);

  • Instagrammability, virtual platforms and augmented reality

  • Sustainability and environmental critique (carbon footprint, water and land use, green certifications, ecotourism, etc.);

  • Architects, practitioners and designers specialising in construction of architecture specifically for tourist activities;

  • Architecture, tourism, and questions of sustainability (impact on indigenous landscapes and appropriations);

  • Heritagisation of tourism architecture and its afterlives (abandonment, preservation, adaptive reuse, ruin aesthetics, etc.);

  • Starchitecture as a catalyst for tourism;

  • Transport infrastructure built specifically for tourism or with tourist gaze in mind;

  • Regionalism, specific architectural typologies (jungle lodges, bungalows in the tropics, chalets in winter resorts, ryokans, etc).

  • Placemaking;

  • Posttourism and decline (ghost resorts, declining spa towns, etc.).

Based on a hypothesis that tourism has produced an extraordinary number of specialised sites since its beginnings, this special issue seeks to grasp its contribution to the history of architecture, still insufficiently explored, in its entirety as well as its position today, from demolition to conservation, including the unavoidable questions of environmental and climate impacts.

We hope to receive contributions from architects, urban planners, geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and colleagues from all other disciplines interested in the relationship between architecture and tourism. We encourage contributions that adopt a range of methodologies from archival research and celebration of forgotten typologies, over theoretical explorations, architectural analysis, cultural critique, or ethnographic insight, inter alia.

Terms and formats of contributions

Abstracts should not exceed 500 words and can be submitted by email to the following addresses: maria.gravaribarbas@univparis1.fr and M.Jovic2@westminster.ac.uk copy to viatourismreview@univparis1.fr; by September 30th 2025.

They can be written in French, English, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese or Italian.

For accepted abstract proposals, the full paper (40,000 characters maximum) deadline is January 30th 2026.

Bibliographie

AlailyMattar, N., Baptist, V., Legner, L., Arvanitakis, D. and Thierstein, A., 2024. Visuality peaks, function lasts: an empirical investigation into the performance of iconic architecture on Instagram. ArchnetIJAR, [online aheadofprint]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/ARCH0220240072 [Accessed 27 May 2025].

Aronczyk, M., 2013. Branding the nation: The global business of national identity. Oxford University Press.

Beaudet, G., 1996. Un bref regard sur l’architecture de la villégiature et du tourisme. Téoros, 15(1), pp.39–42.

Boissonnas, E., 1994. Flaine, la création. Paris: Linteau.

Bolzoni, L., 2001. Architettura moderna nelle Alpi italiane dal 1900 alla fine degli anni Cinquanta. Turin: Priuli et Verlucca.

Charles, A., 2002. La Baule et ses villas, le concept balnéaire. Paris: Massin.

Deng, N., Zhong, L.N. and Li, H., 2018. Perception of travel destination image based on Usergenerated photograph metadata: the case of Beijing. Tourism Tribune, 33(1), pp.52–53.

De Rossi, A., 2006. Modern Alpine Architecture in Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta. Turin: Allemandi.

Fan, L. and Zhang, D., 2022. Study on the hotspots of urban tourism spaces based on InstagramWorthy locations data: Taking Beijing as an example. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 50(7), pp.1822–1837.

GravariBarbas, M., 2020. Star architecture and the boundaries of tourism: The case of Paris. In: About star architecture: Reflecting on cities in Europe, pp.203–226.

Gray, F., 2009. Designing the Seaside: Architecture, Society and Nature. London: Reaktion Books.

Klingmann, A., 2010. Brandscapes: Architecture in the experience economy. Mit Press.

Knox, P., 2011. Starchitects, starchitecture and the symbolic capital of world cities. In: B. Derudder et al., eds. International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.239–248.

Lasansky, M.D., 2004. The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy. Philadelphia: Penn State University Press.

Lindsay, G. and Sawyer, M., 2025. Architecture, tourism and smartphone photography in the Instagram era. ArchnetIJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research.

LópezChao, V. and LopezPena, V., 2020. Aesthetical appeal and dissemination of architectural heritage photographs in Instagram. Buildings, 10(12), p.225.

MacLaren, B., 2004. Architecture and Tourism: Perception, Performance and Place. Oxford: Berg.

McLaren, B., 2005. The architecture of tourism in Italian Libya: the creation of a Mediterranean identity. In: R.J. Craven, ed. Italian Colonialism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, pp.167–178.

McNeill, D., 2009. The Global Architect: Firms, Fame and Urban Form. London: Routledge.

Ogden, R., 2021. Instagram photography of Havana: Nostalgia, digital imperialism and the tourist gaze. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 98(1), pp.87–107.

PiconLefebvre, V., 2019. La Fabrique du bonheur. Marseille: Parenthèses.

Purwani, O., Dandy, A.T., Hardiana, A. and Hatmoko, A.U., 2022. Instagramable tourism and architectural reproducibility in Indonesia. In: M. Rustam, ed. Handbook of Research on Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities in Sustainable Architecture. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp.92–111.

Rouillard, D., 1984. Le Site balnéaire. Liège: Mardaga.

Salazar, N.B. and Graburn, N.H. eds., 2014. Tourism imaginaries: Anthropological approaches. Berghahn books.

Scerri, M., Edwards, D. and Foley, C., 2019. Design, architecture and the value to tourism. Tourism Economics, 25(5), pp.695–710.

Shaw, G.B., 2015. Tourism by design: Signature architecture and tourism. Tourism Review International, 19(4), pp.235–241.

Specht, J., 2014. Architectural Tourism: Building for Urban Travel Destinations. Cham: Springer.

Toulier, B., ed., 2016. Tous à la plage ! Villes balnéaires du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours. Paris: Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine.

Urry, J., 1992. The tourist gaze “revisited”. American behavioral scientist, 36(2), pp.172186.

Urry, J. and Larsen, J., 2011. The tourist gaze 3.0.

Véry, F., Saddy, P. and Henry Jacques Le Même, 1988. Architecte à Megève. Liège: Mardaga.

Wagiri, F., Wijaya, D.C. and Sitindjak, R.H.I., 2024. Embodied spaces in digital times: Exploring the role of Instagram in shaping temporal dimensions and perceptions of architecture. Architecture, 4(4), pp.948–973.

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