Fifteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

In the project developed by the group of students of the Arctic Design School, Russia, the design exploration starts with a statement that the Russian North has potential to become a platform for diverse tourism development and, furthermore, to enable new kinds of tourist products and services in the forthcoming decades. Our research and design foci are on the Urals, i.e. a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia and forms a conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Apart from its image of a national storehouse of raw materials, this region is famous among commoners for its unique natural sites. However, as a tourist destination, the Urals pose a substantial problem: remote and difficult to access and set in fragile natural and cultural localities. Developing a contemporary tourism infrastructure with predetermined touristic routes and environmentally and ethically appropriate non-polluting vehicles can open up the region to people, and, at the same time, protect the fragile nature from uncontrollable invasions of massive tourism. The exploratory foundation of this project consists of the data from numerous field trips conducted by students and teachers of the Arctic Design School during the periods of early 1980s- late1990s and in 2006-2019. As a result, we propose a concept of a tourist lightweight cross-country vehicle for remote areas of the Ural region that would potentially give rise to the systemic development of the “appropriate tourism” in Russia.