A Contemplation on the Ideal Built Environment of Ethical Tourism

This thesis gives an overview and seeks to establish a framework for creating the built environments that would support an ethical and environmentally aware global counterculture in travel and tourism. It seeks to advocate for the use of natural building techniques, responsive architecture, and sustainability in hospitality design and demonstrates the positive impact that these strategies might have on the visitor as well as the host community. Such reciprocal benefits are achieved by encouraging respectful, ecologically, and culturally sustainable design of global hospitality facilities, while the visitor is immersed in contextually-conscious spaces and environments. This approach is illustrated in several global terroir-driven vineyard case-studies. A new design and development methodology is outlined, stemming from Goethean science and its emphasis on the relationship between people and environment, a methodology that involves reciprocity, wonderment, and gratitude. The thesis maintains that if a hospitality environment is developed as holistically as possible, the spirit of the place visited will be amplified to the extent that visitors will feel that un-namable sense of energy that comes from a deeper, almost spiritual, connection. In its detailed approach, this thesis examines the environmental design theories of Christopher Day. Additionally, the architectural theories of Christopher Alexander in his work 'The Timeless Way of Building', as they appear and have been adapted in built projects, and in the promise they hold for future of hospitality design, are reviewed. Overall, this thesis investigates the potential of the built environments of an alternative tourism. Responding to the evolving definitions of personal luxury and motivations for travel, this thesis is inspired by the notion that people are affected physically, mentally, and spiritually by the built environment that surrounds them. In its conclusion, this thesis outlines potential guidelines for the future of hospitality design and the interpretation of place as fundamental to the integrity of a destination and infinitely rewarding for the visitors that go there