An integrated project of an accommodation system for a responsible tourism near Inle Lake in Myanmar

The thesis is part of an international cooperation project called EPIC and is the result of a collaboration with the architecture firm ARCò. In this paper, a territorial and architectural design intervention was developed for a complex of low environmental impact accommodation facilities in the Inle Lake region in Myanmar.

To reduce the congestion of tourists on Inle Lake, a distribution of tourist flows has been planned over a rural area to the south on Lake Samka. The EPIC project is therefore part of this territorial planning, based on principles of sustainability and on CBT (Community Based Tourism), encouraging the participation of local communities. In this way, their needs emerged which we have translated into an architectural project of a complex of accommodation facilities consisting of: a dormitory, a community kitchen and a toilet. Starting from the needs of the local communities, the buildings were designed to maintain respect for the type of housing, the construction system and local materials. By using bamboo as the main building material, low costs and minimum environmental impact were guaranteed. Bamboo is in fact highly renewable and easily available in Myanmar, is known by local artisans and is a versatile and easily workable material that has excellent characteristics of mechanical strength, lightness and flexibility. In order to respond effectively to the problem of high humidity and overheating due to the local monsoon-like tropical climate, solar studies and exposure to the main winds were carried out which allowed to develop a project based on passive systems of natural ventilation and shading which guarantee optimal levels of quality of the internal environments. Lastly, the thesis also aimed to produce a self-construction manual, which not only promotes the understanding of all the construction sequences of the buildings, but allows local communities to independently build the required structures. Currently the planned structures are under construction and are followed on the field by the Icei association and the Arcò studio.