From heterotopia to alloútopia: more-than-human geographies of Singapore’s underwater Equarius Hotel

Abstract

There are eight underwater hotels in the world. Drawing from our on-site observations and reflections, in this paper we discuss how one of them, Singapore’s Equarius Hotel, may at first be understood as a heterotopia – a concept coined by Michel Foucault to denote a fully realized utopia. However, we will argue that our original concept of alloútopia (from the Greek alloú, for elsewhere, and topia, for place) is better suited to make sense of the more-than-human dynamics shaping underwater hotel rooms and the human-animal encounters taking place therein. We develop our original concept by drawing from contemporary geographical literature on heterotopias, and more-than-human geographies of aquatic animal encounters. We further outline the usefulness of the concept for a variety of applications across tourist geographies and more-than-human geographies.