Social experience infrastructure: an important element in the future experience design of recreational spaces?

Using the case of Kühlungsborn in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as an example of a resort in which social experience infrastructure plays a pivotal role in the ongoing success of attracting German tourists from especially Berlin, Hamburg and Hanover it is the aim of this article in a descriptive and explorative fashion to share with others thoughts and ideas concerning the development of new ways to construct/reconstruct recreational spaces with a better coherence with regard to designing experiences. This article claims that it is possible to design recreational spaces with good social experience infrastructure in order to create experience spaces for personal experiences (in line with Schultze’s social constructivist view of experiences) without completely adhering to the economic rationalist thoughts and guidelines of Pine & Gilmore that claim that experiences can be designed and controlled by experience designers. The notion of social experience infrastructure may be placed in the cross field between the social constructivist and the economic rationalist approach.