Theming the Future.

Wired News is reporting that Disney is hard at work on a new 'House of the Future' for tomorrowland, scheduled to open in May. The original House of the Future, a plastic pod looking like something out of The Jetsons, was torn down in 1967. Wrecking balls reportedly bounced off the structure, which then had to be disassembled by hand. This new collaboration with Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and others raises an interesting question about theming the future. Tomorrowland, with its original 1955 opening day projection of the future in the year of the return of Hailey's Comet, 1986, has always been problematic for Disney. The trouble with projecting the future is two-fold: either you're horribly wrong, or you're so close to target that your representation becomes dated almost immediately after ground is broken. The troubles of Tomorrowland are somewhere in the middle. In an attempt to keep pace the original Anaheim model has been updated three times; in 1959, 1967 and 1998. As architecture critic Beth Dunlop notes in her seminal volume, Building a Dream: The Art of Disney Architecture, "Walt Disney himself was known to refer to [that area of the park] as Todayland."

A large problem with theming the future is that theming is closely tied to nostalgia, and how can you feel nostalgic about what hasn't happened yet? Theming also is tied closely to control, and unlike the Wild West or a Tropical Paradise, you can't control what the future will look like.

In response to the design challenges of re-imagining Tomorrowland for European audiences at Disneyland Paris in the late 1980s, the folks at Disney hit upon a solution. Called "Discoveryland," this would be a tribute to future visions of the past. Recalls project lead Tony Baxter, “We conjured Discoveryland as homage to the moment in time when the dream of exploring space flourished...We’re not trying to say that this is the future, but that this is a dream.” Fellow imagineer Tim Delaney put it this way: “we decided to bring together different visions [that] allowed us to create a history of science fiction that evokes a truly timeless world.” Disney had hit gold; they could re-introduce nostalgia and control, and develop a land with the same quaint ‘years gone by’ charm of the rest of the park.

Although Discoveryland was conceived and built from scratch, the new philosophy quickly spread throughout the other parks, and the Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World received a similar makeover in 1994. Billed as “the future that never was is finally here” the design draws inspiration from the buck rogers era of American science fiction, rather than on the victorian visionaries of Discoveryland. Disneyland’s 1998 Tomorrowland reboot, although far more superficial than Orlando’s, touches on the same theme of a ‘retro future,’ and the recent Tomorrowland at Hong kong Disneyland follows suit. The only Tomorrowland to remain trapped in 1967 is in Japan. When Tokyo Disneyland was conceived in the early 1980s, the existing Walt Disney World configuration was lifted almost directly. The Japanese actually find their own quaint nostalgia in this white concrete 1960s corporate utopian vision of the future, so it’s unlikely to be remodeled any time soon.

But with a return of the house of the future to Anaheim, Disney is once again braving the rocky seas of prognostication. How long will it be before this new model becomes outdated? The last one took ten years to grow stale...Perhaps in this internet and cell phone age, Disney will be working on version 2.0 In time for the holidays.

Dubai Is "Disneyland on Crack."

So, I'm gearing up to attend the 14th annual DUBAI ENTERTAINMENT, ARTS & LEISURE EXPO (DEAL) at the dubai world trade center in April. And I've been doing some research on all the crazy things being planned for this thematic urban brandscape of the future. New to the list is the world's largest arch bridge, 6th crossing, which will span a mile over Dubai Creek when it is completed in 2012. Read more about it where I did, at Kitsune Noir. My favorite part of the post is where he calls Dubai "a grown up Disneyland on crack," and it's certainly not the first time the comparison has been made. However, if I were to suggest to an architect, or an interior designer, or even a graphic designer that these are two examples of the same phenomenon, thematic design, I might get some funny looks. One is Mickey Mouse and one is all high-gloss, right? I don't think it's that simple, frankly. There is a connection, a lineage, between Disneyland and Dubai, and you can trace it through Orlando and Las Vegas, through Jon Jerde and Gensler. It's a story of illusion and simulation, of placemaking and entertainment, of nostalgia and postmodernism.

It's a story that's an underrated part of twentieth century design history. And fleshing it out, tracing the steps, noting the growth and mutations of the format and the subtle variations across the globe; this is in large measure what Themerica is all about.

Will Disney Keep Us Amused?

That's the title of a recent New York Times article highlighting the big changes that have been budgeted ($1.1 billion over five years) for Disney's California Adventure park (DCA), which sits adjacent to the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California. DCA has had troubles from the start, and as of last year the park hosted a paltry 6 million guests compared to its next door neighbor's typical 15 million-plus draw. If you ask the average visitor, or the Disney fan, you're going to hear that it comes down to the theming. The narrative quality of DCA is loose and uninspired, and most of all, that park tends to lack the nostalgic flair that has been Disney's design trademark since 1955.

Well the new plans that Disney has unveiled for DCA demonstrate the power of thematic design, and its strong connection to nostalgic representation. Jim Hill Media reported last fall that one of the major sites for redevelopment is the entrance corridor. At most Disney parks, the entrance mimics in someway the original Main Street U.S.A. treatment at Disneyland. A long, highly-detailed retail block establishes a setting in the past, and draws visitors into another world. This new sense of time and place slows people down as the enter the park, and prepares them to suspend disbelief.

DCA, however, has no such corridor. Instead, a compressed and poppy-postmodern entrance plaza features a cartoonish replica of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. I think the imagineers (Disney's term for creative developers) wanted to make it feel like visitors were jumping into one of those loud and colorful postcards shouting "California." However, the effect falls flat, and as a result people tend to dart right through rather than slow down and take it in. So as they explore deeper into the park, they haven't yet decompressed and shut reality out, the way Main Street U.S.A. allows visitors the time to do.

in response, Disney is completely rebuilding the entrance to the park, removing the Golden Gate and all the bright, post-modern, Michael Graves-ish iconography. In its place will be a nostalgic recreation of southern California, the sort of Hollywood that Walt Disney himself would have seen when he arrived from the Midwest in 1923.

This decision raises a very interesting point. What exactly is the connection between thematic design and historical representation? Indeed, Anna Klingmann in Brandscapes, asks towards the end of the book, "Can the concept of theming find its application without resorting to preexisting images, references, and narratives?"

I would argue that it can, that theming doesn't have to be nostalgic, yet it works best when it relies on historical and cultural cues. These cues make for designs that transport the visitor to another time and place. Spaces that completely remove the visitor from everyday life. Walt Disney knew this from the beginning, and it's ironic that the company he founded is just now beginning to re-learn it.

Visceral Reality.

I've been thinking a lot lately about Jon Jerde and his renowned global architecture firm, The Jerde Partnership. If you're not familiar with these folks, they've designed many thematic environments, from Horton Plaza and Universal CityWalk in southern California, to the Fremont Street Experience and the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. The guy's done work all over the country, and worldwide. Jerde's portfolio extends well beyond entertainment projects. Yet it is his work in this area and his philosophy with regards to the process of 'placemaking' that have distinguished the partnership in the architectural community. On my vector between pure simulation and pure brand, Jerde stands smack in the middle—where theming and brandscape overlap.

Jon Jerde describes his firm's approach in the introduction to The Jerde Partnership International: Visceral Reality. Jerde contends that modernism alienated us from our relationship with the spaces we create and inhabit. Before industrialization, mass production, and the modernist movement, people had a more intimate connection to their man-made environments. "The cohesive, experiential fabric of the older order had been destroyed...architectural works that have in the past contributed to an isolated, combative world are no longer viable. Our new age requires inclusivity and connectivity as design premises." The mission of the Jerde Partnership is focused not on the perfection of the object, but on the "transformation of the subject," to quote Anna Klingmann.

"We are instead dedicated to the experiential over the ideological, driven by intuition rather than cognition" Jerde states. "We put people in a popular and collective environment in which they can be most truly and happily alive."

Jon Jerde's place in THEMERICA™ is a middle ground between the intensely scripted simulations of the Disney parks, and the empty logo-neering of Niketown. Acknowledging that the market has been a traditional place of community gathering ever since the rise of townships and cities, he champions retail spaces "designed for citizens, not just consumers."

Spectacle. Theming as Backlash.

I read some interesting quotes in Spectacle by Bruce Mau and David Rockwell recently. Spectacle is the latest offering in lush volumes from the design mind of Bruce Mau—a rich photographic journey through a variety of celebrations, festivals and amusements from around the globe. I took particular interest in the chapter on Las Vegas, and an interview with cultural critic Dave Hickey entitled "real fakery." Hickey is surprised that the visual excess of Las Vegas—what he calls the "great American backlash"—is not widely admired and respected outside of Sin City. "A great many Americans are addicted to solemnity" he says. "I think the Disney thing works and I think Vegas works because they fulfill a basic human need. They wouldn't be working so well if they didn't...the sheer puritanical ugliness amidst which Americans dwell so happily...I've never been able to figure it out."

This echoes the sentiments of famed architect Robert Venturi, who observed once that "Disney is nearer to what people really want than anything architects have ever given them."

The Dave Hickey interview really got me thinking about theming as backlash. did modernism—with its stolid insistence on function and efficiency—deprive us of the sugar? Of the good stuff? Have we been on this architectural diet for so long, that Walt Disney World and Las Vegas and the like are a metaphor for ordering seconds at desert time? Maybe so.

Brandscapes.

As part of my duties on the board of AIGA San Francisco, I was involved with the production of Compostmodern 08, a sustainability conference put on by AIGA and my graduate program director Phil Hamlett at the Center for Sustainable Design on January 19th. During the day's events, in which I coordinated A/V speaker presentations, I saw Jacinta McCann, architect with edaw, give a talk about the firm's latest work around the world. This talk prompted my purchase of Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy by Anna Klingmann at the Compostmodern bookstore run by Stacy's of San Francisco. Brandscapes is an incredibly valuable work. While researching THEMERICA™, one of my more formidable tasks has been to define what I term 'theming' in relation to other forms of commercial and entertainment architecture. Where does branding end and theming begin? Where do they intersect? What is the design criteria? Klingmann is a scholar who is interested in how architecture has evolved from modernism at the height of the twentieth century, to post-modernism and beyond at the dawn of the 21st. She discusses commercial spaces in the context of the 'experience economy'—the current state of the service sector that is fundamentally about not what the consumer buys, but how they feel.

Klingmann's central contention—boiled down—is that architecture has evolved from the modernist ideal, "the perfection of the object" to "the transformation of the subject." I had hinted at this kind of development in my original thesis proposal, but I did not have the language to flesh it out in my head, exactly. Reading Brandscapes—the name Klingmann gives to this new form of architecture—has set my thinking in a particular direction now.

I am coming to see thematic environments and branded spaces as two distinct spheres that overlap. A vector runs between two extremes; on the far end of the thematic spectrum is pure simulation; a replica of a historical and/or cultural reference. The narrative elements in such an extreme are completely external. On the far end of the branded spaces is pure brand. The narrative is completely internal (what Alan Bryman calls "self-reflexive theming") and refers only to the iconography of the brand. This gradient is what divides the Ghost Town of Knott's Berry Farm or the jungles of Rain Forest Cafe from the Niketowns and McDonald's of the world. everything else, from works of the Jon Jerde Partnership such as Universal CityWalk and Horton Plaza, lies in between somewhere.

Travel Plans for Spring 2008.

I've booked travel for this upcoming term. Spring break, March 16–22, I will be at the Disneyland Paris Resort in Marne-la-Vallée, France, for five nights. I've visited France before, so I'm familiar with French culture and language. As a result, I want this particular trip to be a very 'insular' experience. That is, no Paris. no France. Only THEMERICA™. I will fly in and then board a shuttle bus directly to the resort. I will spend all my time immersed in the thematic environments of Disney's European enclave. Absolutely no native flavor—nothing distinctly French. This decision, which has struck many of my peers as patently insane, is completely intentional. I want to isolate myself from what could be a nice French vacation—let's be clear—I'm going to visit THEMERICA™

April 17–24 I will be in Dubai City, United Arab Emirates. The reasons for visiting Dubai are two-fold. First, I will be attending the 14th annual DUBAI ENTERTAINMENT, ARTS & LEISURE EXPO (DEAL) at the Dubai World Trade Center. This is a gathering of major players in the global theming industry; architects, designers, and marketers. Second, Dubai represents the future of thematic design, brandscapes, and the experience economy in the 21st century. Encompassing everything from the world's largest indoor ski mountain to completely simulated city districts, Dubai is Las Vegas combined with Walt Disney Disney World and Manhattan's Times Square—writ large. A city cut from whole cloth, rising from the desert heat like a mirage. I plan on visiting such thematic environments as the Wild Wadi Water Park and Global Village.

The Unreal America.

So, last week I attended AIGA's Studio Tour for Chronicle Books here in San Francisco. Their new office building, which they've been in for several months now, was incredible. I met many creative professionals that night, including one Brett MacFadden, Senior Designer. Brett has worked with Academy of Art MFA students as a directed study advisor before, so it was great to finally meet him. Anyways, Mr. MacFadden took an interest in my topic during the course of our conversation, and recommended a book to me — The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion by Ada Louise Huxtable. I flipped through the book ever so briefly after it arrived from amazon.com, and it's a goldmine. Covering issues like historical representation through vernacular architecture and structural simulacrum (real fake versus fake fake), Huxtable's book has provided a very thorough analysis of some of the issues that THEMERICA™ will touch upon. I will be sure to add this author to the list of scholars and professionals I plan on interviewing later on in the project.

Walt Disney World Research Trip Booked for October.

I'm off to Orlando from October 16th through the 25th. Fortunately, a good friend has to attend a professional conference at a local hotel. So while he is busy with his business during the day, I can be busy with mine. Then at night, a chance to relax and discuss Walt Disney World (WDW). WDW is crucial to understanding the global spread of thematic design, because the private resort is the result of combining the visual vocabulary developed at the original Disneyland with very extensive and systematic urban planning. The plan is to stay a full week with a pass that allows entry to any of WDW's four major theme parks:

  • THE MAGIC KINGDOM (a second-generation design of Disneyland)
  • EPCOT (a combination of a world's fair take on modernism and a permanent cultural exposition)
  • DISNEY / MGM STUDIOS (a celebration of Hollywood's Golden Age and the art of movie making and animation)
  • DISNEY'S ANIMAL KINGDOM (a unique amalgam of a theme park, zoo, and wildlife preserve)

There are two major themed water parks as well, BLIZZARD BEACH (a melting ski resort) and TYPHOON LAGOON (a tropical paradise), but I think my time is better spent at the four primary examples listed above.

I have been to WDW several times as a child, and as recent as 2004 for pleasure, but this will be my first field study work for the THEMERICA™ project, including photography, dictation and written notes. All eyes and ears open, continuing my exploration of the language of thematic design.

First Disneyland Resort Trip Booked August 27–29.

So I'm all set for my first of many "serious" visits to one of the most popular amusement destinations in the world—Disneyland in Anaheim, California. I grew up a short drive away, so I have been to Disneyland many, many times. But with the exception of the single visit I did for my design study on the park for Visual Communications class in the Fall of 2006, I have yet to do serious, detailed field research there. I think I'm going to plan on three days, with a pass that will allow me access to both the original park (1955) and its new (2001) neighbor, Disney's California Adventure (DCA). DCA has been heavily criticized by both the fan community and the press as an inferior themed experience. I am thus especially interested in how the two parks compare as design examples. What works and what doesn't? How have the methodologies and the visual techniques changed in the nearly fifty years between the two parks' developments?

I will have a photographer friend with me for at least one of these days, to professionally document the parks. I will be taking my own pictures as well. I think jotting notes is a good idea but I've considered (at the suggestion of a classmate) buying a small digital audio recorder so I can capture my ideas and associations in rapid fashion. I need to compile a punch list for my photographer so that her time will be well spent.

I plan on returning to Disneyland periodically throughout the development of THEMERICA™, since it is not only a primary mecca for theming, but a very short flight away and surrounded by scores of friends and family to stay with.

Current Reading in the Social Sciences.

It's been nearly three weeks since the last post. I've been busy reading and annotating, along with making plans for the rest of the content on this site. Also booking travel. Currently, I am knee-deep in the second edition (2001) of Mark Gottdiener's The Theming of America. I had read the first edition of this excellent book (1998), which tackles theming from a sociological perspective, while doing preliminary research on Disneyland last fall for my Visual Communications class. The second edition is more refined and includes updates as to the development of Las Vegas. Gottdiener is concerned with the transition from traditional theming in classical cultures, to the decline of symbolic form during the rise of industrial capitalism, to the resurgence of theming as means to solve the realization of capital. He is interested also in twentieth century theming as essentially a knee-jerk reaction to modernism in architecture and urban planning, in which traditional symbols were stripped away for efficiency and pure function before form. Gottdiener calls this new postmodern theming the "vengeful return" of the primacy of the symbolism and sign value.

Also on the nightstand is Dream Worlds: Architecture and Entertainment, a German book by journalist and design instructor Oliver Herwig. This text deals with theming only in an adjunct sense; Herwig traces architectural forms in entertainment venues (what he and others have called "architainment") throughout Western history. Thematic design is but a small part of his sampling, yet many of the sites visited are primary examples.

I recently finished The Disneyization of Society by Alan Bryman. This tremendously insightful read shed light on many aspects of theming I had not considered directly. Building on George Ritzer's original classic The McDonaldization of Society, as well as Mark Gottdiener's history and classifications of theming, Bryman mentions that the current critique of disney revolves around the company's cultural exports. He notes that this reductionist sanitizing of source material, stories and characters is often called Disneyfication. The author then argues that the global spread of the processes by which Disney manages and operates their theme parks have been the company's true lasting impact. Bryman distinguishes his critique by calling it Disneyization. Theming is but one of the characteristics he describes.

The American Amusement Park by Dale Samuelson with Wendy Yegoiants was a text I read a few weeks back, and it gives a good general outline of the development of amusement venues, fairs, expositions and finally theme parks. Something interesting I picked up from this was that many original coney island parks—all of which were gone by the end of World War II—utilized very early postmodern theming.

What I have found is that most of my reading has been in the social sciences, where theming has been discussed meaningfully and extensively. This information, put into proper context, will allow me to conduct my field research into the visual vocabulary of theming as a design language and movement.

Welcome to THEMERICA™!

Welcome to the blog for THEMERICA™. My name is Dave Gottwald, and I will be using this space to document, annotate and otherwise comment on my MFA thesis at the Academy of Art University as it unfolds and develops over the next year and a half. This blog will serve as a repository of articles and things of interest I find on my topic, as well as ‘notes from the field’ as I embark on research trips that will take me from Walt Disney World to Europe to Asia to Dubai.