Gateway to the Northern Isles: Growing Tourism in Shetland Through the Lenses of Landscape

Abstract

This thesis identifies and seeks to utilize the inherent potential in the Shetland Islands for sustainably growing the tourism industry. It proposes the development of an architecture for observation as a means of reshaping existing tourism typologies. The heightened observational experience generates new emphasis and understanding, elevating the experience for existing tourists while attracting new demographics of tourists to the islands. The creation of these destinations seeks not only to reframe these tourist events but through the development of a series of waypoints, also seeks to disperse the tourist population throughout the islands both preserving Shetland’s unique wilderness and reconnecting the northern islands. The heightened phenomenological experience of existing tourism typologies is facilitated by the interaction between the architecture and the landscape. This system of movement and discovery invokes the phenomenological while simultaneously providing refuge and connectedness to the island.