Leisure City
The research on Leisure City had its starting point in a very simple observation that Leisure plays an ever increasing role in what we, architects, do without us, architects, realising it.
What we make today for leisure is not anymore just the resorts, spa’s and holiday homes, not anymore just football fields in the neighbourhoods, not anymore just spaces, originally designated for leisure. But places of relaxation in the offices, coffee corners at municipalities, lounge areas at universities. We, as professionals, become increasingly dependant on leisure as an integral part of any assignment. At the same time it becomes very difficult to distinguish leisure activity from work. Do we work or have leisure when we write email on the sofa? What is it being in headphones while commuting to work? What is it reading your text book in a cafe?
Eluding our attention leisure keeps on extending its territory, it occupies more and more time and, eventually, its global revenue is rising.
Leisure and its effect on space and the profession has been tackled within sequence of studios and projects.
The graduation studio ‘The Death of Leisure City’ tackled mass leisure and dealt with the capacity of the territories to contain an increasing amounts of it. Several models of XL resorts were developed as a critique and alternative of the massive Benidorm like developments.
The research Planet Leisure was looking into a possibility to give existing leisure a dimension, measure it in time and space and bind it to the territory. The production resulted in a catalog of Leisure activities (drawn in CAD) covering complete set of scales from headphones to a continent, where a complete length of European leisure seafront was put on the map.
The whole project will result in a publication and the exhibition Absolute Leisure. The world full of fun.