Simulacra architecture in relation to tourism: Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow and Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona

Abstract

ABSTRACTAn increasing global competition between cities encourages many of them to find ways to promote and develop a unique identity and increase their attractiveness as a tourist destination. Some cities may develop and promote an emblematic architect and his or her architectural heritage/legacy, like the examples of Glasgow and Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Barcelona and Antonio Gaudi. Furthermore, this article will focus on the way tourism can lead local actors in cities to go even further and to continue to build their architecture, even after the death of the architects. A phenomenon appears where architecture is posthumously continuing to be built, leading to the production and creation of simulacra and facsimiles (for example of Mackintosh architecture in Glasgow and Gaudi architecture in Barcelona) for tourist, commercial and heritage reasons. This article aims to present and discuss how architectural heritage can be produced and transformed ‘for’ and ‘by’ tourism, a fascinating change in these cities which has also been the subject of criticism and leads to many questions.