Designing Tropical Retreats - A holistic Approach

With an increase in global mobility, travel is no longer seen as a luxury and has grown to become easily available and accessible to a larger part of the population. Numbers recorded 25 million tourist arrivals in 1950 (globally). In 2018 this number read 1.4 billion international arrivals per year. This is a 56-fold increase.

As one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, tourism is an increasingly important source of employment for many countries. Employing over 200 million people worldwide, it is one of the top three contributors to economic development, and a primary source of foreign exchange, employment, and cash.

Seen in fair light for a long time, only the positive economic impact of travel had been in focus. However as the number of tourists rose dramatically and Mass Tourism became a global phenomenon, in the 70’s and the 80’s a combined consciousness regarding the interrelationship between the economic, social, and environmental impact of the tourism industry came into being. 

Global impacts of climate change, coastal urbanization, biodiversity loss, fossil fuel consumption, disease transmission, and cultural commoditization, were and still are among the more contentious tourism issues in media.

Looking for pristine scenery and exotic cultures, the number of tourists wanting to explore protected areas and rural communities are continuing to rise. Tropical regions record the biggest growth. As extremely important habitats these regions often are the last refuge to many endangered species. The tiniest bit of uncontrolled disturbance can have potentially disastrous consequences.

Hence, even though nature-based ecotourism seems like it might have a lower impact than typical mass tourism, the ground reality is that its reach has a stronger hold, and most can be seen even beyond the ecological including the socio-economic sector as well.  

However, 60% of global travelers are willing to go out of their way With an increase in global mobility, travel is no longer seen as a luxury and has grown to become easily available and accessible to a larger part of the population. Numbers recorded 25 million tourist arrivals in 1950 (globally). In 2018 this number read 1.4 billion international arrivals per year. This is a 56-fold increase.

As one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, tourism is an increasingly important source of employment for many countries. Employing over 200 million people worldwide, it is one of the top three contributors to economic development, and a primary source of foreign exchange, employment, and cash.

Seen in fair light for a long time, only the positive economic impact of travel had been in focus. However as the number of tourists rose dramatically and Mass Tourism became a global phenomenon, in the 70's and the 80’s a combined consciousness regarding the interrelationship between the economic, social, and environmental impact of the tourism industry came into being. 

Global impacts of climate change, coastal urbanization, biodiversity loss, fossil fuel consumption, disease transmission, and cultural commoditization, were and still are among the more contentious tourism issues in media.

Looking for pristine scenery and exotic cultures, the number of tourists wanting to explore protected areas and rural communities are continuing to rise. Tropical regions record the biggest growth. As extremely important habitats these regions often are the last refuge to many endangered species. The tiniest bit of uncontrolled disturbance can have potentially disastrous consequences.

Hence, even though nature-based ecotourism seems like it might have a lower impact than typical mass tourism, the ground reality is that its reach has a stronger hold, and most can be seen even beyond the ecological including the socio-economic sector as well.  

However, 60% of global travelers are willing to go out of their way to reduce their impact.to reduce their impact.

 

The Challenge here was to develop a solution for a tropical Eco- Resort, with the ultimate goal of restricting the impact of the built form to an absolute minimum.

 

The jury for the competition consisted of esteemed designers, professionals, and academicians from around the world. The Lead Jurors for the competitions were as follows: 

Liu Meng, Founding Partner, Atelier Right Hub, China

Lyndon Neri, Founding Partner, Neri&Hu, China

Gong Jian, Founding Partner, Atelier Right Hub, China

Some of the Best of competition projects are:

 

Winning Project: GAINING LAND_eco-tourism, china

By: Elena Huening & Fanny Mayer

Description: Considering that one of the main aims of eco-tourism is sustainability, we thought further into the future and envisioned a hotel that can easily adapt to the rising sea level caused by global warming. We propose a floating Eco-Lodge. The whole supply structure is based on synchronized natural cycles and is completely self-sufficient.

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People Choice: ECO RESORT

By: Vanshika Speedy, Rahul Raj, Vedika Arora & Satya Sai Sanathan

Description: AVISA - A DREAM BY THE SEA

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Editor’s Choice: Riverine Eco Retreat

By: Asha Singhal, Amartya Studio, Dias Scaria & Sahil Saini 

Description: This tropical retreat is an exploration of possibilities where people live in harmony with nature. By learning from nature in place and the indigenous wisdom, our design emerges from and honors native context, becoming part of it, like trees in a forest, leaving a more regenerative footprint.

 

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Discover the design brief here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/footprints/info/about 

Discover the full results here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/footprints/entries 

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