“What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we open doors, we go down staircases, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed in order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why?”
Georges Perec 1973
Tourism is a globally growing phenomenon. We set out to investigate holiday Denmark and the behaviour of tourists, more specifically we went out to investigate places where tourism has become a destination of its own. Hence we packed a suitcase and set the holiday compass for Lalandia - a holiday center, aqua dome and amusement park in the Danish island Lolland.
Inspired by design anthropological methods we went to do field studies and interventions in Lalandia, Rødby. To help us grasp the notion of tourism and tourism places we consulted John Urry and his reflection upon a growing tourist industry and Marc Auge who claimed the term non-place in the 1990's.
We set ourselves the task of using a critical design approach and with Lalandia as our field of study and as an exemplification of a non-place to design a suggestion for an alternative tourist experience situated somewhere between the place specific and a non-place.
From analysis of our field studies and through brainstorming and concept development we created a series of models in order to explore different design suggestions.
The project resulted in a series of four suitcases, similar on the outside, but unfolded they become four different stools, each represententing a different holiday experience - be, hide, place and non-place.
The project is carried out in collaboration with Kirstine Elmhøj Hansen