EcoTourism proposal wins international design competition

Chris Ryan and VEIL ‘alumni’ Michael Trudgeon (Crowd Productions) have been successful in being selected as one of three winners in an international design competition for a new sustainable wild-life park and interpretation centre in the North of the Netherlands.

The three winning teams (the others being a Dutch Landscape design practice and a UK Architectural practice) will meet to integrate their work in a three day design workshop in the Netherlands in early September. The Ryan-Trudgeon design submission was based around an analysis of a life-cycle approach to eco-tourism (treated as a service-product) in which the material is ‘experience’ – giving an experience pathway that starts with anticipation (the equivalent to material processing and manufacturing) then moves to destination (the usual ‘use-phase’ focus for eco-design) and then to memory (the equivalent to end-of-life phase).

The work builds on some of the project that formed the pre-cursor to VEIL – EcoSense – and integrates intelligent use of information technology. It is hoped that an information package about the winning entry will be available from the VEIL site in the next months.