Tourism and modern architecture in a “Green Hell”: Hotel Amazonas (1947–1952)

Abstract

The investigation focuses on the relationship between tourism as a modernization strategy towards the integration of the Amazon within Brazil and modern principles adopted in the Hotel Amazonas in Manaus, analyzing how the pioneering project, designed by architect Paulo Antunes Ribeiro, aligned the economic, political and symbolic dimensions of the agents involved in the process. There is a growing need for the historical re-evaluation, the documentation and an emergency conservation of the building, which was an icon of tourist development and modernization of Brazil and the Amazon.