Editors’ Choice

2019 Skyscraper Competition
Umut Baykan, Do?u?can Aladag

United Kingdom

Tourism is a socio-economic phenomenon. It enables people to encounter new experiences all around the world. Contributing significantly to the global economy, it benefits local employment figures whilst providing opportunities for cultural exchange. The number of tourists has risen dramatically since 1950: from 25 million to 1.2 billion in 2017. Movement of so many people at seasonally determined periods of time creates massive demand for accommodation. This demand presents a problem across urban and environmental scales.
For the majority of touristic destinations, demand spikes in certain parts of the year. Traditionally, the model has been to build hospitality facilities such as hotels to meet this demand. As a result, they account for a disproportionate percentage of the built environment. Since these facilities are vacant of people and purpose outside of peak season, they are routinely shut down in order to limit maintenance and resourcing costs. Unfortunately, for settlements that are reinvented as tourist destinations, the impact is significant and detrimental. The local economy becomes fragile, the cultural life is undermined, all to the point whereby towns become more like ghost-towns when the tourist season is over. Profit becomes a higher priority than the conservation of local beauty for developers. This attitude is unsustainable, as the quality of the landscape is o...