Architecture and toursim: Prelude to Nandana

Abstract

Tourism is what helps people to escape from their monotonous lives and perform activities that involve leisure, business and various other reasons. Globally, travel and tourism's direct contribution to GDP was approximately 2.9 trillion U.S. dollars in 2019. It drastically dropped in year 2020 because of the sudden COVID outburst all over the world. It led to domestic and international flights to shut down which effected the tourism industry tremendously. Out of the 2.9 trillion Pakistan only contributed 948 million US dollars in travel and tourism. Although, Pakistan is a big opportunity for tourism just like any other European country. It offers not only beauty of nature but a diversity of cultures. It was observed through various interviews and questionnaires that the reason tourists visited Pakistan the most was due to its Heritage and Cultural sites. Therefore, the purpose of my thesis is to search for factors that affect the Heritage tourism in Pakistan negatively and proposing an architectural design strategy to provide solution to the contributing factors. This will promote a healthy image of Pakistan in the tourism sector, in return boost economy, provide more job opportunities for the local population and promote our rich heritage and culture locally as well as internationally. It will also help explore more tourist activities and sites that have never been heard of but hold a very significant role in the history. The proposed thesis statement is to present an architectural narrative that reflects upon the idea of heritage preservation into a catalyst that acts as social and individual change. How will it bring a social change? The narrative itself will help elevate the significance of the site through architectural means. The structure itself will become part of the historical context. How will it reflect upon an individual change? The space will help explore the history into a larger lens which will cause a person to dig in within themselves. It will help a person relate more to its route and explore its loss of identity.