Hotel Architecture in Portugal

Abstract

Hotel Architecture in Portugal is a two-year project planned to be carried out in the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon. Its objectives are to investigate the development of hotel architecture in Portugal in the 20th century as well as to expose the issues that the development of this architectural typology will raised in the near future. The study focuses on the relationship between cultural, site-specific and even nation-identity concerns of production, especially from the architect-designer in one end of a spectrum and, at the other end, the dissemination of international models. A hypothetical polar dichotomy is thus established.

Relevance to architectural and urban issues will be treated as the main subject, relating iconography, formal language, functional organization, architectural morphology, site plan and location. The project intends to collect and compare alternatives to finally sort out the best practices from the architectural production. Being a work-in-progress, it is organizing a database of authors, dates, locations, alterations and contributors from other fields besides architecture. The analysis of individual architects and cases-studies of a number of hotels will help create the background to a possible framework of strategies dealing with the future. The relevance of this issue to the economic health of the country is evident, as well as to many other countries supporting a large tourism industry. As a result of this project’s investigations and in collaboration with colleagues, educational institutions, professional bodies and governmental agencies throughout the country, as well as with consultants in Europe, the USA and Latin America, it aims to develop national frameworks for the encouragement of the highest standards in understanding, assessing and designing leisure-related accommodations, namely hotels and their supporting facilities.