2023_Yash Mhatre — SEA Archives

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Spatiality of escape: tourism neighbourhood in Goa

Transience and Home
Yash Mhatre, 2023

What are the spatial cultures of escape in a tourist neighborhood? If tourism is indeed an escape from the routine of the everyday, then this question offers architects the opportunity to intervene into architectural discourse that oscillates between articulating the collective memory embedded in builtform, on the one hand, and functionality and efficiency of builtform oriented towards tourist inhabitation, on the other hand.

I chose to conduct this research in Fontainhas, a tourism neighborhood in Goa, where I worked as an intern in an architectural office for six months. The fieldwork for this research overlapped with my extended internship in April-May 2023. Often, after my office working hours and on weekends, I used to stroll in Fontainhas making acquaintances and striking conversations with tourists on the streets, and those in cafes, restaurants and bars. I noticed the emergence of a new form of tourism where tourists come for short term escapes to inhabit tourism neighborhoods in ways that exceed older forms of tourism associated with visiting historical and environmental artifacts. I engaged in taking field notes from several deep conservations with 10 tourist interlocutors, taking long strolls with them to places that they liked to visit, and even dining with them. I even met my interlocutors in follow-up online meetings to fill in the gaps. I produced short stories from these conversations and how instances and spatial experiences of escape were embedded in the thick descriptions. The narrative form of the research then explored the development of a method to draw out the experiences of escape.

This research advances three arguments. First, the emergence of a new form of tourism accompanies new forms of livelihood practices and as such the tourist interlocutors in this research spent between 4 days to 8 months escaping the everyday routines of their hometowns.

Second, the tourist interlocutors draw attention to intertwining of atmospheres and cultural practices that together constitute the spatial cultures of escape. For instance, atmospheres such as ‘gentle breeze on my face,’ ‘expanse of the sea,’ ‘play of shadows,’ ’escape in the crowd,’ ‘houses with rhythmic colors,’ ‘overhanging balconies’ and the cultural practices of loitering, performance, Intimate gatherings, wall paintings, community bars draw attention to the feelings of escape, rejuvenation, intrigue, euphoria, belonging and scale difference.
And third, these spatial cultures of escape offer the possibilities for drawing out the landscape as a set of eidetic operations in newer ways that could help architectural discourse to move beyond the focus on collective memory embedded in builtform and functionality and efficiency of builtform oriented towards tourist inhabitation.

Read also under ‘Screens and Projections’:

Choreography between body and space

Bodies in Space
Aparajita Bhowmick, 2020

Towards cellularization

Bodies in Space
Bindiya Waghela, 2020

Performative bodies and space

Bodies in Space
Khushi Bagrecha, 2023

Perception and interstices: spatial transformations in public spaces post disruption

Bodies in Space
Nishith Parulekar, 2023

Shared personals: manifestation of the personal into the shared

Bodies in Space
Raksha Srivastava, 2020

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