A controversial new airport is not the biggest threat to Peru's Sacred Valley, home to Machu Picchu, says Peruvian architect Jean Pierre Crousse.
Construction of Chinchero Airport started two weeks ago on a site overlooking the historic Sacred Valley of the Incas, sparking protests from conservationists.
But Crousse, co-founder of Lima firm Barclay & Crousse, told Dezeen that the damage is already done and protesters are too late.
"The recent movement against the construction of the airport has valid arguments in abstract terms, but it comes at least four years too late, when the process is practically irreversible," he explained.
"Absence of a holistic vision is far more harmful"
Crousse claims that the UNESCO World Heritage Site ? a masterpiece of the Inca Empire, built in the 15th century ? has already been reduced to nothing more than a tourist spectacle. He said that a new airport is the least of his worries. "The museumification process of a living cultural landscape and the consequences of the loss of ancestral knowledge in managing water, agriculture, sustainable production and occupation of the land, as a consequence of profit-guided, short-term decisions, as well as the absence of a holistic vision, is far more harmful than the airport alone, which is only a logic outcome of this misunderstanding," he said.
Chinchero Airport is being built between Cusco town and Incan citadel Machu Pichu. First proposed by the government in the 19...