The cases described and analysed in this volume represent a whole range of ‘copies,’ that is the relationship between the buildings observed and some real or mythical original. Tourist photography, for instance, is a combination of recording the iconic distinctive features 2 of the environment or destination, as well ‘the familiar out there’ in the family or group photo, kinen shashin 3 and of course, ‘selfies’.Īrchitecture: degrees of familiarity and strangeness The point here is that the tourists’ conscious focus might be on obvious novelty or distinctions – of climate, food, leisure style, most of their orientations, like architectural simulations, remain within the realm of the familiar. Few change their basic identity or sexual orientation, gender, name, religion, or their orientation to home and alterity, with the exception of Cohen’s ‘existentials’ who may become self-exiles or migrants ( 1979). from a strict to a loose schedule, from formal to informal kinds of dress, or from sexual restraint to promiscuity. Leach, 1961) then most tourists remain within a basically similar life style, and rarely choose to ‘invert’ more than a few factors, e.g. 22–23) pointed in the Introduction to the Annals of Tourism Research special issue on Anthropology, if tourism is considered a kind of ritual inversion (cf. Since then there has emerged a wide range of kinds of tourists (Cohen, 1979 Graburn, 2017 Smith, 1977), among whom the vast majority are only seeking selected and temporary elements of otherness. Even within this purview they might find simulacra, in the many Roman copies of Greek originals, not only in architecture, but in culture and literature. Thus the tourists were looking for experiences and landscapes that were different from home, yet familiar through the tourist imaginary built upon their classical education. This was a qualified alterity: the visitors, with guides or tutors, were visiting related civilizations, but ones strongly connected to their classical Romans and Greek cultural ancestors, as rediscovered during the Renaissance 1 – which was itself an almost global effort to reconnect with historical and archaeological alterity and hence to build or consolidate identities. Tourism, in the European world, started in the seventeenth century with the Grand Tour, in which the upper class (youth) of Northern Europe spent months or a year traveling and visiting more southerly regions and the Mediterranean. Tourists are also looking for a balance of novelty and similarity, of alterity and familiarity. We can see the direct parallels with tourist motivations. A focus on simulacra concentrates more on the micro-interplay between copies and changes, or more generally, familiarity and alterity.

Copplestone & Seton, 1963 Renault & Lazé, 2006) or volumes concerned with particular cultural regions, temporal periods or artistic styles, focus on both continuity and creativity. Serious works on the history of architecture, as a whole (e.g. This topic is therefore highly compatible with, derivative or even part of the history of architecture. It may even happen that the original did not actually exist. In some cases, we know little or nothing of the first in the series. The case studies presented examine and analyze different kinds of architectural copies, with varying relations to originals, even if the originals are themselves copies of previous originals. Thus, it is concerned with various forms of likeness or similarity, but not identity. It rests squarely on the notion of simulation and the more specialized word simulacra. The topic of this collection of papers builds on the articulation between simulacra, architecture and tourism.

Simulacra, architecture and tourism: a system analysis

Simulacra definition