Landscapes of Tourism in Cyprus and Bali

Hosted at Mesarch Lab, UCy, this collaborative project is developed in partnership with researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) involving experts of modernism of Asia and Southeast Asia. Cyprus/Bali-Scapes project will perform rigorous archival research on the history and politics that surround the design, construction, and reception of built interventions such as hotels, resorts, and other tourist infrastructures in periods of political transitions – the transitions from British colonial rule to independence in Cyprus during the early 1960s to the 1970s, and the transition from Sukarno to Suharto in Indonesia during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This project’s key objective is to produce new historical knowledge on the connections of modern architecture and tourism in Cyprus and Bali, Indonesia that can inform the history and theory of modern architecture. By offering a critical architectural history of tourism in Cyprus and Bali at the time of postcolonial modernization, geopolitical tensions, and local ethnic antagonisms, this project’s additional objectives is to inform the domains of architectural design/planning. Specifically, it aims to bridge the gap between the critical historical perspectives on tourism and its politics, and spatial and design practices and revamp the systems of assessing the social and political complexities behind the design of hotels, resorts, and other tourist infrastructures, that irreversibly shape coasts, city-scapes, public space, and the very nature of civic life.