Communication de Caterina Franco dans le cadre du colloque Touriscape 2 (https://www.touriscape.org/en/) le 5 et 6 novembre 2020
Abstract :
The proposed contribution deals with the production of a landscape operated by the development of tourist activity in the highlands of the French-Italian Alps. Objects of study are ski resorts planned and built at high altitude after the Second World War.
The work is carried out through the study of four cases: Pila and Sansicario, in the Italian Alps; Chamrousse and La Plagne in the French Alps. The main objective is to provide a new knowledge of the historical process of design and construction of alpine ski resorts, shifting from the analysis of tourist architecture as autonomous and decontextualized objects, towards the enquire of the transformations of a landscape. We rely on a method developed by environmental historians who consider the history of a territory as the result of interactions between human actions and natural elements, over a long period of time. We mobilise a corpus mainly constituted by documents belonging to different archival collections (local authorities, architects and urban planners, technicians), which we process by analysing textual, graphic and cartographic documents, as well as by redrawing and constructing timelines. In addition to give a contribution to the understanding of the history of tourist architecture in high mountain areas, the research also wants to contribute to the reflection on the future of ski resorts: understanding the history of a landscape could open the way to a consideration of it as a resource.
Keywords : Landscape, construction, tourist, infrastructure, French-Italian Alps, ski resorts, environmental history, Post-war architecture
Téléchargement des actes au format pdf : https://www.touriscape.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/TS2_Libro-de-Actos_-Proceedings-Book-1.pdf