'Tourism is now the world’s biggest industry
and one of the most rapacious in terms of development, particularly
along coastlines. For many of the world’s poorer coastal areas,
tourism represents a crucial impulse for economic development, but
often at immense cost to the environment and local communities.
If we really cared about the planet we wouldn’t go anywhere,
but in our First World hunger for new experiences, few places are
off limits.
'As one of the world’s poorest countries and still recovering
from a devastation civil war, Mozambique is not an obvious tourist
destination. But paradisiacal landscape and climate still lure more
intrepid travellers. The trick is to make tourist a catalyst for
sustainable development and provide models that can be fruitfully
emulated as the country slowly recovers its economic and social
equilibrium. In the northern province of Cabo Delgado, British architects
Hugh Cullum and Richard Nightingale have just completed a new tourist
resort which attempts to minimize its impact on the local ecology
and have sustainable, long-term benefits for the local community.
Cullum and Nightingale have worked in Africa before, but the challenges
of designing the British Embassy in Nairobi (AR
July 1997) were somewhat different to this latest project.
'Set on a picture perfect tropical coastline of palm-fringed beaches,
Guludo eco-resort lies in the Quirimbas National Park, a maritime
and wildlife conservation area run as a collaborative project between
the World Wildlife Fund and the Mozambican government. The project
aims to promote the area’s sustainable development and involved
extensive consultations with the community. Development is encouraged
in various ways, initially through employing local labour for the
construction of the resort buildings and the use of locally sourced
materials. Local people will be trained to help run the resort and
part of its profits will be reinvested in community development
projects. The resort has a commitment to buy locally grown produce
and promote small-scale craft enterprises.
'Cullum and Nightingale reinterpret local vernacular traditions
by developing modest, low energy, low maintenance structures that
touch the ground lightly. The resort is conceived as small-scale
buildings strung out along a path in the manner of a traditional
village. At its heart is a central hub with facilities for eating,
cooking, lounging and teaching loosely arranged round a courtyard.
Guests are housed in 12 independent bandas facing the beach.
Each banda consists of a double room opening onto a shaded
verandah overlooking the sea, with washing facilities in an enclosed
courtyard to the rear. Staff are housed in a secondary cluster of
bandas set back from the beachfront.
'Drawing extensively on local materials and construction techniques,
building structures are generally timber framed with infill panels
of mud, masonry or woven matting. Roofs are thatched with grass
or makuti, coconut palm thatching panels. Non-ferrous jointing
methods include simple timber pegs and cord or rope bindings. Imported
components are kept to a minimum and wherever possible are long
life and locally maintainable. Energy use is carefully considered,
with fossils fuels minimized. The form of the architecture exploits
passive methods of cooling through shading, thermal mass, stack
effect ventilation and prevailing winds. Solar energy is used to
generate electricity through photovoltaic arrays, and to heat water
by direct radiation. Human waste is recycled in waterless lavatory
units to provide dry compost for fertilizer.
'With its array of sheltering thatched roofs, the little colony
evokes archetypes of the primitive hut or desert island shelter
(albeit reinterpreted for the modern tourist), but the buildings
have a scale, dignity and materiality appropriate to their setting.
If only everything built for tourists could be so physically and
culturally tactful.'
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