Brian McLaren

D. Medina Lasansky

Architecture and Tourism examines the relationship between tourism and the built environment and shows how photography, film, and souvenirs have been deployed to help mediate and mythologize specific sites. It also explores how tourist itineraries, behavior, and literature support larger cultural objectives. Drawing upon case studies in the United States, Cuba, Ghana, Greece, France, Italy, Libya, Mauritius and Spain, Architecture and Tourism explores the touristic experience, representation and meaning of place within distinct cultural contexts. From the former sites of the slave trade on the Ghanean coast to the urban renewal of Old Havana and the honeymoon resorts in the Poconos, this book provides provocative insights into the practice of tourism and the conception of place.

Perception, Performance and Place

Architecture and Tourism

Archi.Pop explores the relationship of architecture and design to popular culture through a variety of case studies including television, music, film, magazines and domestic interiors.

Mediating Architecture in Popular Culture

Archi.Pop

Tuscany is a landscape whose cultural construction is complicated and multi-layered. It is this very complexity that this book seeks to untangle. By revealing hidden histories, we learn how food, landscape and architecture are intertwined, as well as the extent to which Italian design and contemporary consumption patterns form a legacy that draws upon the Romantic longings of a century before. In the process, this book reveals the extent to which Tuscany has been constructed by Anglos — and what has been distorted, idealized and even overlooked in the process.

The Alternative Guide to Florence + Tuscany

Hidden Histories

Mussolini&’s bold claims upon the monuments and rhetoric of ancient Rome have been the subject of a number of recent books. D. Medina Lasansky shows us a much less familiar side of the cultural politics of Italian Fascism, tracing its wide-ranging efforts to adapt the nation&’s medieval and Renaissance heritage to satisfy the regime&’s programs of national regeneration. Anyone acquainted with the beauties of Tuscany will be surprised to learn that architects, planners, and administrators working within Fascist programs fabricated much of what today&’s tourists admire as authentic. Public squares, town halls, palaces, gardens, and civic rituals (including the famed Palio of Siena) were all &“restored&” to suit a vision of the past shaped by Fascist notions of virile power, social order, and national achievement in the arts. Ultimately, Lasansky forces readers to question long-standing assumptions about the Renaissance even as she expands the parameters of what constitutes Fascist culture. The arguments in The Renaissance Perfected are based in fresh archival evidence and a rich collection of illustrations, many reproduced for the first time, ranging from photographs and architectural drawings to tourist posters and film stills. Lasansky&’s groundbreaking book will be essential reading for students of medieval, Renaissance, and twentieth-century Italy as well as all those concerned with visual culture, architectural preservation, heritage studies, and tourism studies.

D. Medina Lasansky

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