Immuna: Nanotourism – a continuation of Immuna: Land and Ocean – was a speculative research project investigating the potential of soft tourism in Immuna, a fishing village located on the coast of Ghana's Central Region that is suffering from environmental changes, unemployment and migration due to massive coastal erosion and challenges to the fishing industry. The previous mapping Immuna: Land and Ocean was conceptualized to address urgent coastal and environmental topics that served as a basis for not only understanding the given context and topic, but also took a deeper look into Immuna´s socio-economic situation. A year later, [A]FA continued working in Immuna.
As a starting point and based on the previous research, the team was asked to speculate on the potential of soft tourism. The concept of nanotourism, borrowed from Aljoša Dekleva and Tina Gregorič, guided individual projects that developed small-scale ideas for sustainable, community-led, and ecological alternatives to tourism in the fishing village. Four projects were developed in an intensive lab situation together with the architectural practice 3+3 in Accra led by Gideon Djakumah. Projects evolved in different directions, ranging from an app that connects travelers to Immuna’s kitchens and cooking women; to dispersed camping furniture that relates to the landscapes and celestial parameters of Immuna; an animated collage drawing describing Immuna’s spatial phenomenology; to a concept for a community-led computer lab inviting volunteers to live and work in the community. The onsite lab included a work-in-progress exhibition and tour of the projects, and 1:1 mockups that were displayed in a beach-side structure affected by coastal erosion, as well as other locations.