Development Design: Hotels and Politics in the Hispanic Caribbean

Underneath picturesque views of palm trees, fruity cocktails in hotel lounges, and day trips to preserved colonial zones lies a history of tourism design that intersects with larger projects of development and national and cultural identity formation. Locating modernity and coloniality as the key framework within which tourism development takes place, Development Design focuses on hotel design and its relation to larger urban and rural landscapes to uncover the way these seemingly carefree spaces are bound to local politics and international relations. Focusing on three sites in the Hispanic Caribbean--San Juan, Ciudad Trujillo, and Havana--Morawski traces different attitudes and approaches to tourism and its material design through five hotels that serve as case studies. Through examination of wicker chairs and lobby interiors, architecture and landscaping, public works and urban planning, Development Design illustrates the integral role hotel design played in negotiated and contested histories of development in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.

Erica Morawski is Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Her research and writing center on the history of design in the Americas, with a particular focus on the Caribbean and Latin America. She is dedicated to investigating how design mediates relationships between state and populace through approaches that seek to privilege underrepresented histories. Focusing primarily on the Hispanic Caribbean within a global context, her work traverses the nature of these relationships across different scales, from a designed object to larger national or international frameworks of trade, manufacture, and knowledge systems. She is a member of the Society of Architectural Historians, Design History Society, and Vernacular Architecture Forum.