Pirates of the Caribbean: local practice, Architects Cubed, discuss how tourism and Colonial pastiche are challenging development of an authentic architectural typology across much of the Caribbean.

With current forecasts by the World Travel and Tourism Council predicting a 4.6 per cent increase in business during 2006, tourism is clearly still on the move. All in, with related business, the industry contribution to global GDP is likely to reach an astonishing 10.3 per cent, underlining its significant impact on economic security, development and growth. In the tourism-centric economies of the Eastern Caribbean, in places such as Barbados, the impact of this statistic seems especially pronounced. Since the heyday of the sugar industry, when plantation economies dictated the growth of villages and shaped the landscape of the island, tourism has now taken over as the principal influence on construction, significantly limiting the development of any identifiable native architectural vocabulary.

Post-colonial Caribbean is a relatively new civilisation in terms of contemporary cultural identity, with a rich population mix made up of people from African, European, Amerindian, Indian, and Chinese descent. Rather than seeking inspiration from this melting pot of cultures, however, models for the development of tourism tend toward Eurocentric scenographic solutions. Such naive notions, set within the Caribbean landscape, lean toward an invented culture, manufactured for tourists' consumption, that is typically over-referenced with colonialism and loaded with dormant, but nevertheless very real associations with slavery and a particularly brutal past; an impulse that continues to push aside more fundamental planning issues and undermines the evolution of an authentic Caribbean architecture.

This trend is of particular concern in the context of the smaller or less developed islands in the Caribbean, where the impact of a single building can have a huge effect on the built environment. In Barbados, for instance, introspective world-class golf courses, gated communities and beach front condominiums, marketed to foreign investors, have done little more than to mimic each other to reinforce the spread of colonial pastiche. While across the Grenadine Island chain, the impact of this type of tourism is even more extreme, with Canauon, Mustique and Palm Island possessing very few indigenous buildings, as whole islands are leased to developers.

The Caribbean: a colonial Disneyland?

Ironically, despite the fact that authenticity is often cited throughout the world as the key quality of a tourist experience--with packages that let you see the 'real' people, eat the 'real' food and visit the 'real' places--there is a widely held desire to produce parodies that reflect the past, rather than accepting any obligation to create new realities based on authentic forms of contemporary architecture. A critical examination of earlier regional models, however, reveals an architectural tectonic far more closely linked with the evolution of modernism. In Barbados, technology and innovation have historically informed building solutions, from the elaborate homes of the plantocracy to the modest Chatel Houses for the labourers. In this, specific considerations--the tropical environment, local materials, and the inevitability of natural disasters--have all helped inform new architectural innovations, with Western architectural traditions 'creolised' with window hoods, jalousie windows, and verandas; making structure permeable to daylight and fresh air, while shielding rain and direct sunlight.

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The architects of today need to learn from this past, and along with developers should reflect on the principles that guided such innovations, rather than simply applying visual forms of historic precedent to their buildings. Within the modernist tradition, interpretation and reinvention [rather than imitation and application] should be used as a methodology to arrive at an appropriate contemporary model that responds to the current complexities of the region; a process that has been notably successful beyond the Caribbean, in regions like Australia, where architects [such as Glenn Murcutt] have responded well to similar design challenges while using non-traditional materials.

Controlling future investment

Seen as a huge promotional opportunity for this region, in 2007 the Caribbean will host the ICC cricket World Cup. To stage this event, construction aimed at tourism is currently at fever pitch, with stadiums, condominiums, hotels, and guest houses being built and/or refurbished throughout the region, and [somewhat disappointingly] many of the larger commissions have been awarded to architects who are not locally based.

Unlike the early twentieth century when architects lived locally, experiencing first hand the cultural and environmental constraints, globalisation and the speed of today's development has meant that this opportunity has been lost [with local practices failing to keep up with the change of pace]. Consequently, remote architects are parachuted in to produce designs with little or no experience of the context or culture of the regions, potentially producing an architecture that has little local relevance, and none of the qualities of contemporary Caribbean architecture.

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Education is of course a key to the promotion of a more authentic Caribbean architecture, and is fundamental in guarding against the threat of homogeneity in the face of globalisation. In response to this need The Caribbean School of Architecture was founded in Jamaica which, since its launch in the 1980s, has begun to provide the region with architects whose formation has evolved around local issues. The approach of the programme is structured to provide students with the tools to work in any environment and is supported by regional and international study tours, through which students are exposed to a multiplicity of cultures and urban contexts. Graduates of the school are currently working throughout the region and abroad, and it is with anticipation that we wait to see what impact this new wave of architects will have on their architectural landscape.

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While tourism may offer economic security and growth for the Caribbean, in responding to its demands, architects and developers need to promote even more sympathetic architectural responses, set within the environmental and cultural parameters specific to the region. These two dynamics must co-exist if we are to ensure the enhancement of the Caribbean's authenticity as a sustainable and distinctive tourist destination.

Shawna Beechley and Linda Moore are the co-founders of Architects Cubed Inc, Barbados. [e-mail] All photographs by Rob Gregory, except 8 by Mia Duguid and 10 by Linda Moore