ABSTRACT

Tourism is one of the largest branches of economic activity worldwide and is growing
rapidly, particularly in developing countries and emerging economies. Being a service
industry it is labor intensive. It involves a wide range of occupations and for more than
one-third of these countries it represents the single most important source of income.

Wonchi is one of amazing lakes of Oromia that found in South west showa Zone 152 km
from Addis Ababa and 38km from Woliso Town. Its one of largest tourist attraction
center in Africa with 560 hector lake, hot and mineral spring and beautiful islands.

In spite of the its potential benefits, the site has been unable to expand the types of its
recreational services beyond limited activities due to lack of improvement in
infrastructure and lack of sustainable income from internal sources. Besides, the
unsustainable practices followed by local community leads to an excessive depletion
and conversion of natural resources in the area.

So that it needs special design that will integrate nature and feature of the surrounding
landscape, decrease unemployment rate and benefit surrounding people, Tourist
accommodation and place to stay leads to invest money, Use and utilize surrounding
natural resources and conserve natural gift of the environment.

To address the above objectives most effectively, methodological triangulation

involving both qualitative and quantitative approaches was pursued within the Wonchi
Crater Lake case study context. Questionnaire, interview, informal discussion and field
observation were used as data collection instruments. Also I used different presentation,
modeling and animation software such as ArchiCAD, AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop,
Adobe Illustrator, Lumion rendering, e-draw mind and etc to facilitate the study.

To address the objective the study approaches two specific aspects that are related to
each other, eco-tourism and sustainable architecture. Eco-tourism is about the care for
nature, trying to conserve our environment, with as minimal impact to our surroundings
as possible. Sustainable architecture tries to minimize the negative environmental
impact on the environment by buildings by enhancing efficiency and careful use of
materials, energy, and space efficiency.

The main contribution of this study is the validation of the ecotourism and sustainable
architecture used in order to propose planning, improving this region as a tourist
destination as a whole, in terms of the structure of the features it has in developing
economy and sustaining the Physical environment and using all its benefits. These study
included suitable accommodation type to be constructed in the area with
sustainability and the bearing capacity of the soil, designed activities for staying tourist
by using the wonchi land and water features of as a potential, land use with different
zoning to apply in the future, as a sustainable site planning.

Key words: Eco-tecture, Ecology, Ecotourism, Sustainability,