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Development Design: Hotels and Politics in the Hispanic Caribbean

Research Open House 2022

Erica Morawski
School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, History of Art and Design

This project argues that newly constructed hotels were driving innovation in the field of modern design and development from roughly 1900-1960.

map of the Caribbean locating hotels under study
Map of the Caribbean locating the five hotels under study in this research.

The study illustrates how hotels functioned as sites and symbols of development and tourism was seen as a means for prosperity and social reform, and in doing so highlights the tension between place, heritage, and identity in the context of the homogenizing forces of the global, international market.

image of Caribe Hilton in brochure.
Brochure for the Caribe Hilton (opened 1949) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Image source: Hospitality Industry Archives, Conrad Hilton College, University of Houston.

Development Design: Hotels and Politics in the Hispanic Caribbean reveals how hotel design came to represent ideas about development that variably coalesced and clashed with issues of sovereignty, national identity, and geopolitics.