The Architects Collaborative in Cyprus: Archaeo-Tourism and Landscape Configurations

The Amathus Beach Hotel was the first project for The Architects Collaborative in Cyprus, which it undertook in collaboration with local Greek Cypriot architectural firm Colakides & Associates. Completed in 1973, the project was embarked on at a time when the newly independent Republic of Cyprus sought to modernize and build the nation by expanding its tourism industry. The northeastern coast of Cyprus had seen phenomenal development since the mid-1960s, but the southwestern coast of the island was lagging behind. The southwestern city of Limassol saw the Amathus Beach Hotel as a vehicle for catching up with its northeastern counterpart. The hotel did indeed put Limassol on the international tourism map, while the configurations of its site sparked a reconsideration of the relationship between landscape and archaeology that was tied to a rethinking of regionalist trajectories by global modernism in the 1970s. The upshot of this rethinking was new alignments between corporate capital and tourism.