welcome to themerica™ :: an MFA design thesis by dave gottwald :: academy of art university

there’s a great new article over at the wall street journal about the resurgence of tiki culture in bar circles across the country. the piece was timed to promote the 8th annual bay area tiki crawl, which took place this past weekend.

organized by the online community at tiki central, the tiki crawl includes many landmark tiki bar/restaurants in and around san francisco, including trad’r sam (the richmond), the tonga room (in the basement of the fairmont hotel on nob hill), trader vic’s in palo alto and emeryville, conga lounge and the kona club (oakland) and the legendary forbidden island (alameda).

i have visited quite a few tiki bars in my travel research on themerica. aside from the above bay area meccas, my tiki destinations over the past two years have included two trader vic’s locations in dubai (an older one and a newer one), tokyo, las vegas, beverly hills (since closed) and san francisco (since closed); thatch (portland, oregon), the tiki ti (los angeles), kon tiki (tuscon, arizona), and ohana at walt disney world’s polynesian resort.

tiki culture is important because it represents one of the largest and long-lived thematic design trends outside of the amusement park and casino industries. belonging to the ‘tropical paradise’ archetype, tiki is a bizarre amalgam of half-baked western ideas about polynesian culture—with a liberal dose of very strong rum thrown into the mix. as such, it’s completely “made in america.”

the tiki trend in restaurants and bars grew out of interest in the south pacific after world war II, and reached a zenith in the 1960s following hawaiian statehood before hitting a decline worse than crash of disco music.

in the mid-nineties, there was a rivival in 50s and 60s “swinger”culture, including sinatra and his rat pack, the martini, swing and big band music, and everything vegas; a renewed interest in the near-forgotten tiki gods came right along with it. after lulling for a while, lust for rum-soaked bowls of exotic juices (often aflame) sipped under bamboo huts is once again on the rise.

what’s interesting is that, even though the entire tiki style is inauthentic with regards to the cultural source material, the theme still retains its own internal aesthetic criteria. the wall street journal article provides a solid perspective on ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ tiki along these lines:

“anything sleek and postmodern—say, a steel-and-glass totem—is bad tiki. anything you can find in the luau section of your local party store—think cheap plastic leis and cardboard cutout hula girls—is bad tiki. i’m also of the opinion that “camp” makes for bad tiki. ours is an irony-soaked culture, and camp is just a gaudy variety of the old, knowing wink-and-a-nod. campy tiki provides no escape at all.”

here are some pictures from my tiki travels, with a few notes on tiki thematic design.

trader vic’s – dubai, UAE (souk madinat). there are two vic’s in dubai, this is the newer location, so it’s a bit less traditionally themed (read: good tiki) and more on the upscale side. beautiful location overlooking the water canals of the madinat jumeriah beach resort. many of the latest trader vics locations resemble this one; it’s the current ‘format’—more elegant than gaudy.

trader vic’s – tokyo, japan. this vic’s is in a large hotel highrise, and doesn’t appear to be very busy. the interior is gorgeously detailed and very much done in the older style of trader vics.

a key component of any thematic environment is lighting, and tiki bars are no different. at trader vics, these usually fall into three categories; lanterns, which give a nautical feeling…

glass bulbs, which are designed after japanese fishing floats, and lamps fashioned out of blowfish. the tokyo vic’s has a bit of each.

ohana at walt disney world’s polynesian resort – orlando, florida. a key distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ tiki is the TIPSY factor (tikis per sqaure yard). the larger the statues are, and the more of them are packed into the environment, the more traditionally themed (and thus better) the tiki bar is considered to be.

thatch – portland, oregon. another essential element of the tiki theme is relative darkness; in a tiki bar, it is always perpetually night. granted, most bars are dimmly lit, but the night-time vibe in these environments is accentuated by the types of light you would normally find outside.

trader vic’s – las vegas, nevada. many would consider this newest trader vics to be decidedly ‘bad’ tiki—it’s more glass, steel, and polish than bamboo and lava rock. this is an intentional shift away from the perceived ‘dorkiness’ of the tiki theme, and an attempt to draw a more flashy and trendy nightclub vegas crowd.

the tiki ti – los angeles, california. one of the oldest and most respected tiki bars in the united states, it is a top draw for the LA bar crowd. “the ti” contains all the elements of a classic (read: good) tiki bar; tons of knick-knacks, a very high TIPSY factor, strong drinks, appropriate lighting, a thatched roof, and a history stretching back to the golden age of tiki.

for further reading on the history and legacy of tiki culture, be sure to check out sven a. kirsten’s the book of tiki and tiki modern, both available from taschen books.

for my information design class, spring 2008, i wrote a seventy-page booklet comparing las vegas and dubai. i looked not only at theming, but at climate, geography, development models and overall growth patterns. i sought to convey that the two cities are far more similar than the casual observer might first think.

although i was fresh off the plane back from dubai when i produced this piece, i had yet to conduct my research trip to las vegas; as such my observations were limited to what i had already read, and the handful of times i had informally visited before. now that i’m back from las vegas, i thought i would revisit some of this material.

in the booklet i designed diagrams to show how vegas has grown over the years.

i also developed a thematic blueprint of the current strip, detailing all the major resorts.

here is a statistical breakdown of the 1990s vegas building boom, comparing dubai’s extraordinary growth during the same period—one of the many such charts in the booklet.

one of the more challenging aspects of the project was illustrating a series of maps to show dubai in 1990, 2007, and its projected state in 2015. i based them on materials obtained in dubai, as well as archived satellite photos.

here are some excerpts from the text, or you can download the entire booklet [PDF].

it all began with the sand.

the most remarkable feature of the desert, from a development standpoint, is not the lack of water, nor the scorching heat, nor the difficulty in raising crops and animals. it’s the emptiness. deserts are the stuff of dreams (or more often, mirages) because they represent a blank slate. for those that wish to build proverbial castles in the sand, there is an awful lot to work with. when i began asking people casually about las vegas and dubai, the general assumption was that any similarity between the two was superficial at best. sure, they’re both hot. they’re home to megaresorts and ridiculous amounts of money being both earned and spent. everyone speaks broken english, to some degree. and as a visitor, you’re surrounded by fantasy.

vegas themes because she wants you to forget; dubai is desperate for you to remember her.

both dubai and las vegas before it are global capitals of thematic design. arguably the first themed casino on the las vegas strip was the el rancho, designed by wayne mcallister, which opened in 1941. early theming in las vegas drew upon the romance of the old west and mexicana, but as the town grew and changed, so did the design approach. in the 1950s, hotel casinos referencing the desert and “arabian fantasies” became more popular, but the largest step forward in the evolution of the megaresort was caesar’s palace (1966). for the first time, architecture was combined with costume, interiors with food, and sights with smell is to create a truly holistic experience.

the 1990s brought the “disneyization” of the strip, as casino owners sought to attract the kind of mass family audience that would typically vacation in orlando with mickey instead. resorts such as treasure island (pirates) and excalibur (medieval arthurian fantasy) emphasized children’s entertainment along with the slots and dad’s craps tables. the building boom brought more and more elaborate recreations, such as the exquisite venetian (1999), but now theming—as it as been traditionally practiced—is in something of decline on the strip.

las vegas is once again returning to its roots as “sin city” and playing up the image of a hard-drinking, hard-gambling, sexy-as-hell vacation destination for adults only. treasure island is now the TI, and features more tramps in g-strings than swashbucklers with eye patches. vegas is also cashing in on its own classic mythology—the era of the rat pack, the black suit and the dry martini—and is consciously theming and branding both hotels and residential complexes as swinging bachelor pads.

the larger themed resorts on the strip are sure to stay, but the future expansion of thematic design in las vegas remains uncertain. this is hardly the case in dubai, however, where theming is just beginning to spread its wings, and beautifully. whereas las vegas seeks to take people away to never-never land with its designs, dubai very deliberately is trying to remind visitors where they are. there is a certain insecurity to this practice—where the newest luxury resorts are all styled to resemble the older part of the city razed at mid-century—so too, perhaps, a kind of guilt.

dubai is eager to provide the future for the gulf states of the region, but to do so it must have a past. instead of english castles or spanish galleons, theming provides the suggestion (and deception) that dubai has a rich past as a center of trade, arabic culture, and above all, islam. mecca or damascus, certainly. even riyadh. but dubai? hardly.

some conclusions.

i started this project with the premise that by comparing what’s happened to las vegas over the last century to dubai in the present tense, we might better chart dubai’s future. instead, my research tended to suggest the opposite—that it is las vegas who can learn from dubai.

las vegas and dubai are not only sisters; they’re members of the global workforce. las vegas is the gal that’s been at the firm for god knows how long. she’s a bit rougher around the edges, knows how to work just hard enough not to get fired, has the best water cooler gossip, and knows where all the bodies are buried. she’s a bit insecure about her age, las vegas has a proven track record, but dubai is better prepared for the growth of the future. and slaps on a little too much makeup to cover for it. she’s constantly reevaluating her look to the delight of her co-workers, but still, they know it’s just an act put on for their amusement.

dubai on the other hand, is just coming to apply, and she’s at the interview. it’s a big position she’s applying for—entertainment and commercial center of the entire middle east. understandably, she’s a bit nervous. of course, one rarely lies outright when applying for a job—but, invariably, the resume is puffed up, the very best outfit is worn; the warmest smile, the firmest handshake. and that is exactly how dubai presents herself. herself-conscious theming of the past is like adding flourish to previous job titles, inventing qualifications. if honest, she would have to sheepishly glance down at the floor, and admit that despite the glitz, the glamour, and yes, all this money, she was the kid in school least likely to succeed. a trust fund baby, always hiding behind the confident shadow of her older and more responsible brother, abu dhabi. not a center of islam, not an influential trade nexus, but instead a backwater bedouin settlement on the creek, home to pearl divers and small-time merchants. and like her, we prefer the embellishment.

as has been widely reported in the disney fan community, from mice age to boing boing to re-imagineering, the pleasure island entertainment district at walt disney world, florida, is closing this fall for a complete overhaul. disney will be introducing outside-franchise restaurants and bars,  as per the agreement the company already has with the likes of rainforest cafe and planet hollywood. this means that the half dozen or so uniquely themed bars and nightclubs on the “island” will be closing their doors forever on september 27, 2008.

this is a shame, because as a thematic entertainment and dining venue, pleasure island has no equal. unlike jon jerde’s universal citywalk (which has a similar commercial presence), the area was designed with an extremely elaborate backstory; a testament to the thoroughness of the disney design process. the tale is reproduced here from since the world began: walt disney world’s first 25 years by jeff kurtti. the following concept art and text are © disney enterprises.

in the late 19th century, an adventuresome pittsburgh entrepreneur, merriweather adam pleasure, moved to the island and founded a canvas manufacturing and sail fabricating industry. the florida climate favored his business, and though the merchant sailing industry was in its twilight, pleasure yachting discovered his superior product and his success was made.

the earliest buildings on the island were a wood-burning power generating plant (collapsed and rebuilt in concrete in 1934), the textile mill where high-grade canvas duck was woven, the circular fabrication building where sail making was done, and the owner’s residence. during the first world war, the manufacture of military tents required several additions to the mill and fabrication buildings. after the war, the pleasure craft industry expanded and boathouses for yacht outfitting were added. before the catastrophic decline of the st. john’s aquifer in 1928, yachting clientele were accommodated in a salubrious club. pleasure commissioned the building after becoming acquainted with the work of the messrs. sir edwin lutyens, charles macintosh and eliel saarinen during a visit to the paris ecole des beaux arts.

demand for the outfitting of luxury watercraft ebbed during the depression, and although financially unscathed in the market crash of 1929, the founder of pleasure canvas and sailmaking, inc., left the business in the hands of his two sons and embarked on a late-in-life adventure to the far reaches of the earth. aware of the westering circumnavigations of irving johnson and the youthful crews of his “yankee clipper,” merriweather pleasure commissioned the yacht ”domino” (named for his then-favorite pastime), which brilliantly foresaw the awesome j-boat formula. with his daughter merriam and her second husband, he embarked on a series of eastward ’round-the-world voyages. they returned from their many expeditions with a vast treasure of adventure and discovery. the trophies eventually overwhelmed pleasure’s comfortable bermuda-style house, and he built a warehouse to store and catalog them.

in 1937, pleasure hit upon a novel advancement in amphibious aviation, and became consumed with the development of a secret device. he worked feverishly with a small staff of experts in a mysterious metal building he constructed just offshore in lake buena vista.

the ”domino” was presumably lost with merriweather, merriam, and all hands, having been reported pitch poled in a howling summer storm while attempting a circumnavigation of antarctica in december 1941.

with the outbreak of world war II, henry and stewart pleasure’s sail and canvas business boomed, so much so that they added several large prefabricated steel buildings to house their expanded operations. the success continued after the war into the 1950s, sail making and chandlery being augmented by a flying boat service, until stewart’s poor business decisions and henry’s lavish lifestyle forced pleasure canvas and sailmaking, inc., into bankruptcy in 1955. as a note of finality, hurricane connie inflicted near-total destruction two weeks before the creditors’ sale, ripping the roof and siding off the 1937 amphibian building and leaving the island an unsaleable shambles.

wow. that’s quite a detailed story to support the design of a small collection of bars and dance clubs—and that’s what makes pleasure island such a, well, pleasure. each and every square foot is designed to support this backstory, from the architectural mishmash to the layers of aging and weathering, from the wayfinding and graphics to the period-accurate typography. the crown jewel of this impressive district is the adventurers club—which is the primary reason the disney fan community is up in arms over the dismantling of pleasure island.

the theme and setting of the adventurers club is new year’s eve, 1937. the club is a society of explorers and eccentrics from all over the world who have welcomed you, the guest, to partake in their songs and celebrations (replete with humor). they implore you to cheer along with the rallying cry “kongaloosh!”—the name of the bar’s signature drink. the bar and theater are jam packed with ephemera, antiques and oddities from around the world, presumably collected by the club’s globe-trotting members.

the concept behind the adventurers club is “part thematic design, part live theater, part piano bar, part improv club, and part grandpa’s pool room (if gramps was teddy roosevelt and wildly eccectic)” in the words of my good friend (and fellow theming enthusiast) brad beacom. brad accompanied me on my research trip to walt disney world last fall—including two stops at the adventurers club. he sums up the experience nicely:

“the adventurers club is completely unique—there is really nothing else like it. the level of detail is astounding (par for the course in disney’s world) and as a guest you are experiencing the design in a format that allows for infinite contemplation and investigation. unlike a ride-thru attraction, such as pirates of the caribbean or the haunted mansion, you play a far more active role in exploring the thematic environment and interacting with both live actors and audio-animatronic elements.

it’s a shame that disney is removing this extremely unique thematic experience. a petition has been established to save the adventurers club, and it garnered nearly 3,000 signatures in the first 72 hours it was online, proving that the attraction has made a lasting impression on many visitors to walt disney world.

i’m off for dubai next week to attend the 14th annual DUBAI ENTERTAINMENT, ARTS & LEISURE EXPO (DEAL) at the dubai world trade center, which is pretty much a trade show for theme park developers. dubailand, if you haven’t heard about it yet, is a multi-phase development project that, when completed, will be larger than walt disney world. twice the size of manhattan—larger than the city of san francisco. the wikipedia entry has some pretty good information on the project. the area is planned like a full-scale city, with multi-use residential, shopping, commercial and entertainment districts. six flags, paramount (now cedar fair), universal studios and dreamworks have all signed on to design and develop parks, with dubai holding, the parent developer, picking up the construction costs. there are four initial stages planned, with full project completion due sometime between 2015 and 2018.

i’ll have five nights and six days to take in the city. apart from attending the conference and meeting some folks involved in the theming industry, there are several venues i plan to visit and photograph, and—wi-fi willing—i’ll be able to post some observations every night. internet in dubai can be spotty, i’m told (due to proxy servers censoring sexual and political content). after meeting with my thesis advisor this past week, we roughed out a plan of attack for my visit. the theming conference runs for three days, and i’ll have a day and two nights in the city before that begins. i will probably start by checking out some of the more famed themed shopping districts, like the ibn battuta mall (their website is currently undergoing maintenence, but the mall’s wikipedia entry is pretty good). ibn battuta is divided into six elaborately themed geographical areas; china, india, egypt, tunisia, andalusia and persia. interestingly, the mall has an educational agenda for visiting westerners as well—intricate museum-quality historical displays on each culture are peppered throughout.

after attending the conference, i’ll have a few more days left to poke around. i think it’s wisest to save the major theme parks until after the conn, because anyone i talk to will probably inform my observations for the better. i’ll be hopping on the slopes at ski dubai, which claims to be the largest indoor skiing facility in the world. the massive structure is part of the mall of the emirates, one of the world’s largest shopping complexes. i also plan to go to the wild wadi water park, at which the theme is the voyages of sinbad the sailor—exquisite artificial rockwork and landscaping abound.

i listened to an interesting interview the other day on npr, available here, with a new york times travel writer who recently did a “36 hours in” feature on dubai. one of her most insightful comments was that as she walked through the marketplace stalls selling knock-off designer goods, the vendors were shouting “genuine fakes!” she felt this summed up the entire city, and i couldn’t agree more. dubai is where theming intersects with lifestyle, where brandscape meets simulation. it’s the future of thematic design—as much a departure from disneyland as a descendant.

i was very surprised to learn that the author of the famed oz books, l. frank baum, began his career in theatrical production and retail marketing. the same year that he published the wonderful world of oz, 1900, baum wrote the art of decorating show windows and dry goods interiors. according to woody register (see my last post on his fred thompson biopic) it was “the first book on the subject, and one widely valued among urban retailers.”

at first, this seems trivial—a man leaves the worlds of entertainment and commerce to write children’s books. yet stage production, retail decor and fantasy narratives all intersect at a versatile device in the thematic designer’s toolbox—something i’ve been calling the prop vignette. i’m choosing to use the term vignette in the literary sense, as in brief scene centered around one moment. baum seems to have been the first to write about their appeal and use in drawing consumers into retail space; he essentially invented something we take for granted today (especially at christmas time)—the department store window diorama. the fact that baum was a natural-born storyteller says much about his ability to design and decorate consumer spaces. as woody register put it, “the integration of his imagination into the urban marketplace and the new art of displaying goods cannot be separated from his literary fairy tales.”

as i have come to define them, prop vignettes are like theatrical stage sets in miniature, and they are used to establish “soft” narrative (atmospheric storytelling). usually consisting of a tightly arranged composition of static elements, prop vignettes literally ‘set the stage’ for thematic environments. they establish mood and convey meaning at a level of detail that architecture alone cannot—in this regard they belong more to the tradition of interior design. a classic example is the stack of barrels framed by a ladder or the mining equipment, ore cars and rusted gears and metalwork commonly found at venues in the wild west theme. the examples pictured here are all from my recent trip to disneyland paris, and represent typical such displays.

the two most common settings for prop vignettes are in themed restaurants and in the cues of amusement park attractions, particularly those designed by disney. this is actually quite interesting—both areas entail substantial waiting at times. this leads me to believe that designers actively employ them to give guests and consumers something to look at while they are idle; the atmospheric qualities of prop vignettes are best admired at length. more on this later, but suffice to say that this design technique is instrumental in developing successful thematic environments.

i’ve just finished woody register’s the kid of coney island, an excellent historical biopic of fred thompson, the visionary behind luna park. opening at coney island in 1903, thompson’s brainchild was arguably the first twentieth century american thematic environment. i discovered in register’s incredible read that thompson actually coined the term “amusement architecture” as the title of an article he wrote for architectural review 16 in july, 1909. i was able to find the entire piece at archive.org, in which thompson admonishes ‘traditional schooled architecture’ and makes the case that those without formal training are better suited to designing thematic spaces. “the schemes of such a man must be fantastical, even sometimes to an extreme,” he wrote, “for his is more the undertaking of an artist with imagination than of a craftsman whose efficiency is restricted by his subservience to a triangle and a t-square” (emphasis is mine).

the extent of thompson’s architectural education was off-an-on again work in his teens at his uncle’s firm in nashville, tennessee. he never mastered formal skills, and later tried a year of illustration classes at the cincinnati art academy, but grew restless and left. he always referred to himself as a “showman” or an entertainer—never an artist or an architect—yet a generation before walt disney, he began the tradition of illustrators and designers developing spaces and thus challenging the primacy of the architect.

“theatrically speaking, architecture is nothing more nor less than scenery,” thompson declared to his readers (emphasis mine). he scolded “carefully trained architects who endeavor to make triangles and t-squares do the work of brains and imagination” for not being able to conceptualize entertainment venues for the consuming public. “straight lines are as hard and serious as baccalaureate sermons…buildings can laugh quite as loudly as human beings…and a beautiful but excited sky-line (sic) is more important in an exposition [than formality].”

the groundwork for departing from architectural formalism was laid by fred thompson at luna park. his unwillingness to confine his work to the “triangle and t-square” and his emphasis on an imaginative, illustrative approach to conceptualizing environments is the cornerstone of thematic design as it is now practiced. thompson’s methodology is the missing link between the tivoli gardens and world’s fairs of the nineteeth century (the latter of which thompson won an award for architectural design) and the work of the disney organization, which injected the experience and personnel of hollywood movie magic—the language of cinematics.

a classmate sent me an interesting article the other day, from his alma mater’s magazine at washington state university, called meditations on a strip mall. the author david wang, professor of architecture at WSU’s spokane interdisciplinary design institute, makes some interesting observations about the often arbitrary theming of strip malls in his home of eastern Washington.

“the everyday buildings we build around us want to be anything but everyday. they want to be stage sets of somewhere else. and their proliferation seems to suggest that everywhere we americans go, we want to be somewhere else,” wang writes. this is a primary characteristic of thematic design, and one of the criteria i use to distinguish thematic environments from branded spaces and other forms of entertainment architecture—the ability to transport the visitor to another time and place. niketown may feel like nike, but it doesn’t take its audience away from the city and year that it sits in. i would use the same criteria to call rain forest cafe, but not hard rock cafe, thematic design. both project themes in a sociological sense, but only one is theming in terms of design language.

“why has architecture become an exercise in stage set building?” wang asks. his answers echo my own sentiments when he talks about industrialization and modernism as stripping space of the symbolic purpose it once had in human society. he calls classical spaces “transcendental,” and then argues that the industrial revolution pushed us to crave the “natural.” whereas in the twentieth and now twenty-first century, our reaction to modernism has made us crave the “virtual.” hence the explosion of—in wang’s strip mall examples, nonsensical—theming in every aspect of american society.

what wang doesn’t address—and i will with themerica—is not necessarily why architecture become an exercise in stage set building, but how. it’s been a long road since walt disney’s rejection of the luckman & pereira masterplan for disneyland in 1953 (hiring hollywood art directors to do it instead)—and themerica will chart that road.

cracked.com recently featured a most excellent list of the nine most baffling theme parks in the world. there are some real strange ones here, like grutas park. this lithuanian theme park remembers soviet russia, where “monumental sculptures are positioned in a 2 km-long exposition, where guard towers, fragments of concentration camps and other details resemble siberia.” as the grutas wikipedia entry notes, “the park is rich in irony and is intended to amuse as much as to inform, but it awakens many painful memories; its establishment faced some fierce opposition, and its existence is still controversial.” no kidding. as a history buff i would probably find the place fascinating, but i can imagine being a young lithuanian going with grandma and grandpa and having a very different experience.

there are other equally bizzare entries, from south korea’s jeju loveland (where the theme is sex) to bon bon land in denmark. here all the rides and attractions are themed around toilet humor. there are literally stylized depictions of cartoon animal feces and vomit. um, no thanks.

the entry on the list that got my design mind thinking is beijing shijingshan amusement park. since 1986, this large amusement park has been charming guests with some very familar landmarks, including that famous fantasyland castle, a sphere resembling EPCOT’s spaceship earth, and costume characters from a wide variety of media properties. apparently, the completely bootlegged park escaped the attention of the west for many years, until it was featured on japanese television a few years back. that exposure, and the opening of hong kong disneyland in the fall of 2005 has led the park’s lawyers to begin negotiations with disney over their blatent copyright violations. the matter is especially sensitive because hong kong disneyland is an official partnership with that city’s government—and by extension—the government of china.

the commentary on the beijing shijingshan park so far is on its weirdness, or as an example of china’s rampant disregard for western intellectual property. yet when i read about it, my very first thought was “what would baudrillard think of all this?” jean baudrillard, who just passed away last year, was a french cultural theorist. his work simulacra and simulation touches on thematic design in that—like umberto eco—he discusses unreality. baudrillard outlined a progression of simulacra:

• the era of the original
• the counterfeit
• the produced, mechanical copy
• the simulated “third order of simulacra” in which the copy has replaced the original

disneyland’s main street u.s.a. is an ideal example of the third order. no town in america at the turn of the century looked and felt anything like disney’s version—it’s more of a montage of visual cues intended to make us remember what we we know, or what we think we remember, about that period. and in that sense, it’s a perfect copy. a perfect copy of an original that doesn’t exist.

so if you build a theme park that is a copy of something that was a copy of something that didn’t exist in the first place, where does that leave you? in terms of baudrillard, quite confused. in terms of disney’s lawyers, in trouble.

i just picked up a new read, the themed space: locating culture, nation, and self. the volume is collection of essays by scholars of a variety of backgrounds from around the world, edited by scott a. lukas of lake tahoe college. most of the content comes from the social sciences, and there is a solid glossary of terms used throughout the book. reading it has raised in important issue for this project—given the wide body of work on theming from a sociological / anthropological perspective, how will the vocabulary and criteria differ from a design-centric discussion of theming? for example, someone in the social sciences might consider particular ‘themes’ that i would dismiss, or group spaces in with thematic environments that i reason—from a design perspective—don’t really belong.

a good example of this is what sociologist mark gottdiener at university of buffalo calls “representing the unrepresentable.” in his seminal book, the theming of america, gottdiener outlines several archetype themes—those that occur over and over again in our culture, such as the “wild west” or “tropical paradise.” along with these he counts abstract spaces that tell a story not as a literal narrative, but more as a metaphor; among his examples are maya lin’s vietnam wall and the jewish museum berlin. by the standards gottdiener uses as a sociologist, both places do convey themes—mourning, loss, redemption, remembrance, etc. yet i don’t consider either site to be a thematic environment, or to be an example of thematic design.

as i get deeper and deeper into my criteria and terminology for the design language of theming, i think it is quite important to make these distinctions. theming is obviously thought of in a much broader sense in the social sciences, and it is by no means a universally described phenomenon. what constitutes a theme and a thematic environment is bound to vary widely—even between creative professionals. an architect, an environmental graphics designer, and an urban planner may not be able to agree on what is and is not theming. one of the goals of this thesis is to clarify thematic design as a movement with its own language, and provide designers with a framework for identifying, evaluating, and appreciating theming.

my good friend (and fellow theming enthusiast) brad beacom sent me an article from the venerable mouse planet the other day about how the disney parks handle the cues for various attractions. the author lists a variety of techniques that disney employs at its parks to alleviate not only actual wait times for attractions, but the perception of waiting. he points to a few basic principles about waiting in line, chief of which is “unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.” the idea is that by designing the cue area to be an integral part of an attraction’s storyline, patrons feel like they’re “part of the attraction rather than waiting for the attraction.” one might think that disney has always done this, but in fact the first attraction to have an integrated, themed cue area was big thunder mountain, which opened at anaheim’s disneyland in 1979. since then, all major disney attractions feature a storyline tightly woven throughout the cue, unifying the attraction with the accompanying wait into a seamless—and pleasant—experience.

an excellent example of this unified cue design is disneyland’s indiana jones adventure. themed after george lucas and steven speilberg’s popular film character, this wild exploration of an ancient indian temple begins not as riders board, but at the moment they line up well outside the structure. the story of how indiana jones’ expedition came to find the temple and the role guests play in “finding indy” is told entirely through the line, so that once the actually physical ride gets underway, guests already have been briefed on an extensive backstory. the narrative is sometimes overt, yet sometimes very, very subtle; cryptic messages are carved along the way in a custom alphabet, and guests were given a ‘decoder’ card to read them when the attraction first opened.

if the indiana jones adventure cue represents the evolution of this type of thematic design, then expedition everest, at disney’s animal kingdom (walt disney world, orlando, florida) may well be the state of the art. when i visited and first rode this thrilling, themed outdoor roller coaster in october of last year, i was astounded. of course, lines are always longer at the latest and greatest attractions, and expedition everest is barely a couple of years old. disney knows this, so they planned an extensive and lengthy cue area.

the back story of expedition everest is that a old railroad line has been converted into a tour company to take explorers into the mountains of the himalayas. the recent disappearances of visitors suggests that the yeti (”abominable snowman”) may be responsible. this entire narrative is conveyed through the designed spaces that the cue weaves through—first nepalese temples, then the tour company storerooms and finally a yeti museum. the resulting effect is spectacular. once i boarded the train, i felt a number of things just from having gone through the cue. firstly, the wait didn’t seem as long as i thought it was going to be. secondly, i was completely immersed in the setting of the attraction—i was in nepal. the heat and humidity of central florida was but a distant memory. thirdly, i also knew, with fair certainty, why i was in nepal, and what was in store for me. lastly, knowing all this, i was greatly anticipating my encounter with the yeti.

expedition everest clearly demonstrates that thematic design as it applies to amusement park cues is about four key things:

• occupying and entertaining (thus lessening the perceived wait time)
• acting as a transition zone that helps to immerse guests and suspend their disbeliefs
• establishing a back story for the attraction
• building anticipation and/or suspense

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 60s 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 projectionism. 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.

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.

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.

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” he 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.”

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 disneyworld and las vegas and the like are a metaphor for ordering seconds at desert time? maybe so.

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.