Culture Consumption and the Construction of the Sense of Architecture—the Development and Commercialization of Taiwan’s Architecture Tourism

The study focused on the popularizing trend of architecture tourism in Taiwan during recent years. Firstly, the study tried to build the basic picture of the historical contexts of architecture tourism, including the process of development, the operating mechanism, the strategy of marketing, and its social influence. Comparing with typical types of tourism, architecture tourism distinctively showed the characters of “learning” and “leisure”. More specifically, architecture tourisms in earlier times emphasized on “learning”. Thus, the core of the tourist activity lied on architecture-touring and space-experiencing. Along with the popularization of architecture tourisms recent years, people’s focus has leaned to “leisure”, which means they would enjoy the entertainment and relaxation from the tourism, and secondly learn about architectures. In other words, people are trying to find the balance between “learning” and “leisure” in architecture tourisms, so they can amplify their benefits through this activity. This study organizes the basic workbook of architecture tourisms, including the introduction of main characters, their duties, and types of activities, through textual analysis, in-depth interview, and field study. Then try to analyze the roles, logics of thinking, and duties of the main actors in architecture tourisms. Besides, educational benefits of architecture tourisms are worthy for attention. Except from the great deal of architecture knowledge, space-experiencing, environment education, aesthetic attainment, and experiences escaping from daily lives in architecture tourisms can bring us unlimited inspirations and rewards. The worthiest thing in architecture tourisms is the slow and profound process of subconscious transferring. By attending to architecture tourisms, a seed, which implies a keen observation of space and environment, will be buried in tourists’ minds, and it grows throughout the daily awareness. The main goal of architecture tourisms is to build a better living space and social environment by educating better people.