Embodied houses and the initiation of hospitality experiences in the Zuiderzee Museum

Abstract

It can be argued that many potentialities within society are left unused by organising hospitality venues according to modern planning practices. These planning practices regard the setting as a rational space which is predictable and manageable. By applying modern management principles to spaces of hospitality an important function of spaces of hospitality can easily be overlooked and that is that spaces of hospitality can be regarded as spaces which provide ‘difference’ for both host and guest. This difference in spaces of hospitality entails that hospitality space gives an opportunity to experiment with different futures, or in other words with different becomings. This article focuses on hospitality in an open air museum, the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen, The Netherlands. This is the hospitality offered by the volunteers who ‘inhabit’ the houses. The author researches the museum space through the concept of urban vitalis (Pløger, 2006)¹ in conjunction with the concepts of flow and flux to address the nature of the hospitality experience. Outcomes indicate that by ‘inhabiting’ houses, new hospitality experiences are initiated.

Keywords:

• hospitality
• Macdonaldisation
• sociological experimentation
• urban vitalis
• Zuiderzee Museum