Summer Break           KnowledgeFarm will be "on vacation" from June 17 - August 20. Publication will resume on August 26, 2005. Over the coming summer weeks you will receive KF E-mail with photographs and short subject commentary.

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Enjoy your summer!

Eiffel Tower - Paris, July 2005

Mare Nostrum
by Christine de Baan
from
The Flood
The Catalogue of the 2nd International Architecture Biennale
Rotterdam, Netherlands - May 26 - June 26, 2005

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"At the start of the 21st century, tourism has grown into the world's biggest industry. Worldwide annual turnover amounts to US$500 billion, making tourism the leading export sector, greater even than cars, chemicals, oil and food. Tourism is also the world's biggest employer, providing more than 207 million jobs, directly and indirectly, around the globe. Tourism-related air travel has risen from 25 million international arrivals in the 1950's to almost 700 million in 2003, or almost 30-fold. By 2020 this volume is expected to double, and income from tourism will be four times higher than today."

"The Ancient Romans ruled the Mediterranean Sea, and expressed this by naming it Mare Nostrum - 'Our Sea'. Nowadays, coastlines all over the world are appropriated by travellers in search of sun, sea and entertainment. Loaded with money and free time, propelled onward by means of transport that are increasingly rapid and ever cheaper, constantly online via internet and mobile phone, the tourists are the new colonizers of faraway coasts. As they incessantly expand their dominion of leaisure, they are reducing the world's seas to a modern-day Mare Nostrum."