Commentary: Parallel Realities: Star Architecture and Overtourism in the Age of the Internet

Abstract

This commentary deals with the origins and characteristics of star architects and star architectures at the end of the twentieth century. Star architecture and overtourism are two sides of one coin compulsively searching for global attention within the flat and indistinguishable spectrum of the World Wide Web. In the early twenty-first century, the destruction of the urban objects of desire through overtourism is seen as an analogy to the self-exhaustion produced by the search for ever more spectacular star architecture. In this way, parallel realities are constructed locally: star architecture and tourist destinations exist despite quotidian environments.