<em>The Tower as a Metaphor and Concept</em>:<em>Overcoming the Material through the Virtual - Future Realms of Tourist Experience</em>

Abstract: The tower as an architectonic object is not only about scale, it is also about concept.In 1933, at the national showcase for the modernistic movement in Aalborg, Denmark the exhibition tower became a manifest and a landmark. The tower was inspired by the Russian constructivist Vladimir Tatlin´s "Monument to the Third International" from 1919, which in turn was a response to the Eiffel Tower being build in Paris in 1989. The Eiffel Tower is the iconic symbol of Paris and the new industrial spirit in Europe at the time. Almost all tourists love to buy tiny models of the Eiffel tower when in Paris, The Big Ben when in London or The Statue of Liberty when visiting New York. And now that the experience economy is growing, it becomes important to reinvent our cities and turn them into new desirable objects for future explorations. And how do we do that? This paper will explore some important aspects of the origin and the future of the iconic tower through a series of experimental and intuitive sketch loops that run through both the analogue and virtual world. The first part will look into the history of these illusive, illuminated towers of "Luna city", "Las Vegas" and "Disneyworld" - a world of illusion, simulation and experience described and analyzed by the two French philosophers Baudrilliard and Foucault. The second part will look into the new virtual and actual worlds of architects such as Marcos Novak, Usman Haque, OMA and Kas Oosterhuis, who create mobile, interactive, sensitive architectural objects for the future that can interact with the environment as well as the users. The third part will look into the intuitive sketch process and the "flow of becoming" based on a series of loops from the analogue to the virtual. This journey through the mind and work of the architect and artist generates a plethora of emotions, experiences and narratives. The loops were used as introduction to an experimental workshop in "experience design" SCI-FI Scenarios at the Department of Architecture &amp; Design at Aalborg University in 2007. The intention of the workshop was to show how art can help produce propositions concerning the architectural design process in the architectural profession. The last part of this paper will be an analytical and methodological attempt to interpret, in accordance with the hermeneutic tradition, what really happens during the sketch process and the workshop. These findings unfold a series of possible tools, methodologies and future scenarios to reinvent, rethink and recreate the city of Aalborg and other cities to make them into new desirable objects for future explorations. Finally, the paper will discuss Michael Tosti and Lise Kofoed's paper "Analog - Digital - Hybrid: Gaming in a learning environment" that is an evaluation of the Sci-fi workshop seen from the outside. Keywords: Tower, icon, experience design, interaction design, virtual and actual, past and future.