Architecture of Experience

I started on the journey of writing this article after the millennium as a conversation piece over coffee with other colleagues at an "Airport city" conference. But this subject matter had been on my mind for a long time. And now, I've found that my thoughts and expectations have only been solidified through the years by the conferences I've attended focusing on future based subjects and experiences like, "The Future of Themed Entertainment Forum" at IAAPA. In addition, the destinations and events that I have traveled to and observed have served as confirmations for these early projections on designing future experiences. Then there are a number of books that have recently been published concerning the subject matter of theoretical designing for the guest experience, based on futures not so very far far away, that have further confirmed and solidified those very early thoughts.

I have attended a forum classes at Harvard University on "Experience Architecture" that touched on this very subject inspiring me to commit myself to creating this article through time. The main focus of this particular discussion was on the trend shift in designing for the future residing in how we will live, work, and play in this next century with shape, form, and function. Its being recognized that the subject matter we were discussing then is now a universal concept, and I believe it will have a global impact in this next millennium. Designing guest experiences and live-work-play communities have literally sparked a revival that has taken the experience of architecture and the architecture of the experience to the next level. From the building of "hyper tech" to the renovation of decaying historic sites and districts architects have renewed their interest in creating new developmental processes in the way we presently design and how it will relate to the communities in a not so distant future.

This process starts with a spark of an idea or concept: a dream, or vision of what we expect or conceive and imagine the future experiences of tomorrow to be. The function of the "ideal" community of tomorrow that was envisioned in the early 20th century is now catching up with us. The shape that our community has taken is not what we expected. The questions now are how can we be asked to surf through past concepts in designing for the future when what presently can be conveyed as the architecture for future experience is dated? The answer has always been to take the best elements that define that era, to bring them up to date with the present trends, and to creatively meet those demands with this new blend, this new hybrid design

In the past, there were the old masters of art and architecture. From the city of Babylon with the ziggurats, and the pyramids of Egypt, to the city of Rome, with its giant cathedrals and monuments that Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo designed in the renaissance, to Antoni Gaudi Art Nouveau architecture in Barcelona Spain there have been countless examples for us to be inspired by in the future of designing experiences and destinations.

We explore the future of experiential design by learning from the past and creating for the present. By referring to the past of where we have been and what was best accomplished as touchstones in design throughout the eras we are able to use this knowledge to accomplish future designs with more unique and bold concepts than ever before.

Today there are forums, conventions and exhibits, and lectures and tours assessing future concepts of how we will interact with the environments we will live, work, and play in. These forums discuss the designing of work place environs, shopping malls and retail stores, restaurants, museums, zoos, theme parks, theaters, hospitality resorts, public buildings, common areas, whole cityscape and urban development parks, apartment complexes, condos and the layouts of neighborhoods.

Some have inaugurated programs from inception to embrace the ideal of the mutual enrichment of the arts through a collaboration to unite every segment of the experiential marketplace involving architects, engineers, designers and artists of all areas of professional walks of life. The words applied that describe them as one entity and what they do are, “designers of experience”, “story interpreting designers”, and other creative titles. Places like Harvard University School of Design at Cambridge Mass, The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum NY and the Urban Land Institute, GA Tech are reestablishing their core to meet these concepts.

Then there are places to find them congregating and brainstorming through new forums such as the EXP-3 conventions, “Where experience intersects place”. This emphasis on the interrelationship of the applied arts is represented through debates, sketch scenarios or charettes. Also through exhibitions showcasing the work of talent. In the past, another example was a series of avant-garde installations in the 60’s called "Environments," that reasserted engagement with planning and building.

These exhibitions fueled books on collaboration of artists and architects for multidisciplinary designing. Other places can be the college forums where the future designers of tomorrow will set sail from to design the future. They are armed with their studies and the wisdom of professionals who show them the way. I also give lectures for graduating seniors of various educational institutions on applied designing.

Collaboration is not a new venture but a reestablished one. This emphasis on the interrelationship of the arts is still represented in the Architectural Leagues in painting, sculpture, landscape architecture and other design arts in such programs as the 1986 "Chair Fair" exhibition of 400 chairs by artists, furniture designers, and architects, and the 1988 exhibition "The Inhabited Landscape," on contemporary landscape design. Themed events, with participants from around the country and abroad, are organized on topics such as "Architecture and the Global Culture," "The Technological Imagination," Computers, and the New Complexity," “New Urbanism Today”," and "Sacred Space," on architecture for worship and contemplation.

As we go from the past yesterdays to the future tomorrows in concept and design, we want to establish an anchor or platform to begin from starting at a point in time. From 1890-1914, The Guilded Age and Progressive movement was the sketchbook of what the future might be headed to. By 1895 the Niagara Falls Power Company began generating alternating current (AC) from three 5000-horsepower generators. The Niagara Falls project ushered in the second phase of the Industrial Revolution and shaped and determined the way power would be produced and delivered from then on.

In 1897 streetcars appeared in Cedar falls. In 1898 photographs are taken with artificial light. In 1899 the loud speaker is invented. In 1900 Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959) establishes a studio in Oak Park, IL for designing "prairie style" architecture. In 1901 December 5, Walter Elias Disney--Walt Disney was born in Chicago. 1903 Henry Ford founds the Ford Motor Company. In that December on the 17th, The Wright Brothers build a 750-pound machine with a 12-horse-power motor in which, at Kitty Hawk, first Orville and then Wilbur made the first powered airplane flights in history (first heavier than air flight). 1905 Albert Einstein writes his paper on the Special Theory of Relativity.

There were the turn of the century dreamers that are key to remember like Jules Verne who brought up time travel and past, present and future concepts and questions that never age. There was a small film made in the mid twenties called Melies Trip To The Moon, which later became a reality. In 1921 the word "robot" enters the language and in 1929 stock market crashes. In 1930 AT&T tries the picture telephone in which is not accepted at the time.

The Wall Street Crash in October 1929 became “the great divide" between the 1920s and the 1930s in lifestyles. The distinct moods of the two decades heavily affected the arts of both. It also had become a divide between American modernist designs. In retrospect, the designs of the l920s are best remembered for angular designs, an emerging machine visual look with an avoidance of both ornament and organic forms. The '20s were characterized by a blend of two stylistic influences. The exotic materials and voluptuous interiors were found in those "tall buildings that scraped the sky." They were an influence deriving from France's Art Déco elite, and the functional geometry of Zigzag Modern that was quickly absorbed from such art movements as French Cubism, Russian Constructivism, Italian Futurism, Dutch de stijl and German Bauhaus.


In 1925 the Paris Art Deco Exposition (from which Art Deco derives its name and was formally introduced) opened to the world. The French high style had pinnacled in the luxurious furnishings of the magnificent decorations that created a tremendous influence on American interiors. These influences found “ultimate expression” in the extravagant spaces of Radio City Music Hall designed by Donald Deskey. The rich decorations of the skyscraper and high-rise apartments provided opportunity in commissions for America's new breed of designers. Paul Frankl developed a complete line of Skyscraper furniture.The skyscraper inspired an angular, setback style generally described as Zigzag Modern that expressed the 1920's unbridled entrepreneurship, and it was inappropriate to the sober economic mood that followed the Crash in 1929. Both strains of the exotic materials and voluptuous interiors found in the 1920’s gave way to the ushering in of the '30s where aerodynamic forms, synthetic materials and the sleek finishes of futuristic elements came to the forefront of the vision and popular desire blended with speed. It was the advent of the Streamlined Modern.


There were prevailing and heightened impressions of escape from the pre-World War I constraints in design. The 30’s were the dawn of a new era in lifestyles. Before WW1 and the depression, trains were fascinating as a mode of transportation in luxury. After the war, automobiles were a dime a dozen. American manufacturers turned to design as an important solution. The designer's attempt to modernize products as a means of boosting sales led to the pursuit of a new style, one which evolved from the preceding fashionable Art Deco style of the 20’s. A dependable new image was needed to fuse industry into one and to thrust it out of economic stagnation. The image that answered this need was the streamlined form.

In the 1930s, Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition in l933-34 had the greatest significant impact on design awareness and had the greatest mass appeal of the four American expositions that were held. It drew almost 50 million visitors to the 424-acre plot of reclaimed land on the edge of Lake Michigan. The excitement and euphoria surrounding the event provided a huge profit during the depth of the depression. It also gave a glimpse of hope into a utopian futuristic lifestyle. On May 25, 1934 the Pioneer Zephyr three-car train of stainless steel sleek style design rolled into its display at the Century of Progress Exhibition at The Chicago Worlds Fair, and saved the train ride to the future by innovation in design, speed and style. Based on proven aerodynamic principles, it came to symbolize industrial progress. The optimum streamline form was expressed in the shape of the parabolic curve or the teardrop; this provided an image of energy-efficient “fluid” motion into the future.


Products were cased in sleek, aerodynamic bodies, symbolic of the 1930s fascination with speed and efficiency. Saving energy and functionality were secondary considerations as the style came to represent the personification of the product and the hope that it held for the future. The new breed of industrial designers in the l930s was more open to the suggestions of science and practical technologies, but they were less controlled by aesthetic traditions. However, they became detailed with tempering logical engineering with the quest for the perfected form in design.

Streamlined Modern also has roots within science fiction, We see this reflected in STARWARS Episode ll from George Lucas at the very beginning with the " intro fly in" scene into a city not unlike what one would have been seen in the 30's streamline commercial and architectural look. Utopian visions were driven by a mass of illustrators in magazine art, comic books and Hollywood film sets. Even now we see Edgar Rice Burroughs - John Carter of Mars (collection) influencing future dreams. Buck Rogers began in 1930 and Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon appeared 1934. In H.G. Wells' 1936 film version of Things to Come, montage and photography were combined with state-of-the-art modern-futuristic model sets. The futuristic cities painted for Amazing Stories reflect the advanced designs of Buckminister Fuller, Walter Dorwin Teague and other pioneering designers of the 30’s. In this period of twenty years, from 1920 to 1940, The United states produced a body of design work extraordinary for its combined enterprising collective effort and ingenuity. They are some of the finest designs produced in the 20th century.

On September 30th 1935 Hoover Dam (that had been started in the 20's) was completed with mix of a Art Deco and Streamline style.Then the steady movement of design of the 30’s was interrupted by World War ll in the 40's, which took up most of the attention of all efforts to the war machine, and, thus elaborate architecture such as Art deco and Streamline came to a screeching halt and submitted to conservation and functionality in design.

However, the concepts and the future life styles of tomorrow still flourished and were still fueled in comics, cars, appliances and music into the 50’s. Then the space-race was on. Jettson’s future concept in design with Googie architecture and Pop art roared onto the scene! On July 21,1954, Walt Disney broke ground for Disneyland. And as NASA looked to the skies, the U.S. Nautilus secretly traveled under the North Pole in 1959. There is an exhibit that is traveling across the U.S. on a 5 year mission called, “Yesterday’s Tomorrows” that explains how "Ideal" American communities envisioned in the early 20th century reflected hopes, excitement, and fears about the reality of an increasingly urban society. This exhibit features visionary concepts of the future and other artifacts out of the 50’s space cadet trends. It is unique and informative about the nuclear families lifestyles.It presents future concepts of how the designers of the turn of the century and beyond envisioned our future lifestyles to be.

In the 60’s we celebrated the future in the “sheen age” movement of silver fabrics and “futura minimalism” in styles of furniture and architecture that reflected the space age. In 1967 the geodesic dome appeared at the World Expo. There are the trends of architecture, transportation design and industrial design in contemporary futura and minimalism with an echo of glass. Now we see a retrofitting of design from the age of industrialization past WW1 that sparks our imaginations of visions of tomorrow are reflected in the industrial design starting in 2004-5 cars and SUV’s that are going back to streamline style. The same thing is happening with the Sheen Age with that contemporary twist.

During all of this, the world’s fairs were proving grounds to the future in the exhibits on transportation and lifestyles of the future and brought this to the populous through exhibits that where able to pull the past and the future to the present and feed the hunger of a better tomorrow in “edutainment”. With the promise in them of a utopian lifestyle, the world’s fairs and exhibitions shown became a springboard for future concepts as supply and demand changed during and out of the depression and beyond. World Fairs and Expos have a vast influence and reflect the future of what is to come. And are seen as influences in movies like IronMan where there is the Stark Expo. Walt Disney was influenced and utilized it to design and perfect the system of "Audio-Animatronics"at the 1964 Worlds fair where the longest lines were.

The world’s fairs had a unique way of presently looking backward and peering into the window of the future in designing for form and function. There are agencies today that are hired to conduct studies to find solutions on designing future environments. These studies and observations are usually conducted for brands that need strategies for supply and demand markets. Now their services are used for multidisciplinary designing.
The world fairs were world showcases that modeled the apex of style to be lived in, worked in, and entertained in. This involved every thing from structure design to exterior streetscapes and facades to the interior marketplaces. In large common or atrium areas and entertainment venues to more challenging smaller spaces such as office workspaces and living spaces. The ideas of tomorrow’s lifestyles are defined in the designing of these spaces.

This involves not only form and function of structure but the look and feel of the grounds keeping in gardening and cleanliness, and graphic directional's that are themed along with each area according to "flow" in the architecture and what would function in them such as furnishings, appliances, lighting. It's that kind of place that can provide a feeling of a speedy, safe and comfortable social atmosphere that is pleasant and sometimes educational with theme and a touch of innovation with automation that appeals to all the scenes. Disney created a kind of "permenant Worlds Fair" with these qualities in his themed parks as Epcot. And he had a vision of a future city. It was "The city of Tomorrow" or Progress city.

It was when I was visiting at Disney World in 1972, that we stayed in the futuristic designed Hilton that reminded me of the space station Hilton in the Sci-fi movie 2001. Visiting the Carousel of Progress in Tomorrow land and later visiting Epcot in 1982, reminded me of the movie Logan’s Run in city architecture. I got the early understanding and hope of " futurama concepts in architecture, pavilions, common areas, escalators, monorails, industrial design of transportation and appliances in retail design, urban future living and landscape design, signage, graphics and attraction design"! Epcot is Disney's permanent worlds fair and shows us a version of what tomorrow could be like. Based on the New York City’s 1964 World’s Fair exhibit, the carousel of Progress was a look back at the lifestyles of the past to the future living.

It was in Dec of 1998 I attended an exhibition in New York at the Cooper – Hewitt National Design Museum, (a Smithsonian Institution) which was on The Architecture of Reassurance – Designing The Disney Theme Parks. There I viewed the early concepts of Imagineering at Disneyland, Main street U.S.A., Tomorrow land, simulations, theme park architecture in the real world. Do you want to know where the experience of architecture was mastered in storyline and architecture? Designing out from the worlds fairs and movie magic arose a creative team that started it all. They are called Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI). Designing the guest's experience is what the Imagineer's came to call "the art of the show". This term is used at every level from the smallest detail of visual storytelling with color with in the overall concept design to the elements and the function of props.

It was at a state fair in 1969 I saw that infamous self move-along Hoover Vacuum cleaner! And, it was at an Auto-trade show I saw that flying saucer car with the bubble windshield bigger than the Bat mobile’s! I have only seen the pictures of the General Motor’s Futurama at the 1939 New York’s World of Tomorrow. There they exhibited new line products and materials such as plexiglass, fluorescent lighting, television and innovations of future cities and personal robots.

I like the concept of he car of the future with luxury and futuristic style that hovers with anti gravity feed or giant fans! I still want the dick Tracy watch and the jet pack! Remember that AT&T picture phone that didn’t make it in the 30’s? It has landed on our cell phones that carry live feed pictures. But now it is a reality with the world wide web. People who communicate in business meetings and brands that sell products over web are now global venues. And major brands are looking into the web as a resource to expand their domains and pre-cast their products like a movie trailer.

Our past visions are slowly catching up. Just like the Melies trip to the moon movie was caught up to on July 20, 1969, with NASA and Neil Armstrong. I watched this on a birthday. Museums and science centers further inspired and motivated me to have a belief in the directions of designing for the future experience and has catapulted me to being a “hybrid” designer that is in a multi-disciplinary field. I would also like to recognize before we "shift gears", some of the most influential creators to me as we move forward. They are Antoni Gaudi, Frank loyd Wright, Frank Gehry and especially Walt Disney.

There is a template for these quasi-cities. It is the Walt Disney theme park form and function which has forever changed our image of what urban life should be due to Main street USA. The suburban market Disney crafted is a simulated vision of the world which was both idealized and stripped bare of any significant risk, conflict or controversy. In Florida, California, France, Tokyo or soon to be China, Disneyland visitors need not worry about tripping over garbage, being accosted by panhandlers and being mugged in the middle of the day. In adapting the Disney blueprint to the contemporary ‘theme park city’, architects, planners and developers have borrowed two key Disney strategies.

To package the new entertainment destinations, they have embraced an architectural style which is designed to create an aura of fantasy, delight and well-being among onlookers. The retail establishments in fantasy cities are uniform and harmonious, suggesting meaningfulness and contentment. As reassuring as it may be Disney architecture is a fusion of consumerism and entertainment. There are other locations and brand identities that use this concept such as ‘The Showcase Mall’ in Las Vegas and “The Fashion Show”. These are non-gambling entertainment complexes on the famous ‘Strip’ that have a more futuristic in design than Main street USA. But the same since of security in the experience is there.

Theme parks are said to be one of the best contemporary examples of ‘large-scale urban control zones’. Visitors’ movements are discreetly but firmly directed by a combination of recorded voices, robots in human form and employees. To ensure that guests are directed towards specific locations and to hide other unsuitably locations. Disney uses a combination of technology (monorails and other transportation systems) and physical barriers such as pools, fountains and flower gardens. Control systems in theme parks act to ensure that guests follow an itinerary laid out by the park’s designers.

In Manhattan, Disney has sanitized, revitalized and retailed Times Square! Now uniformed public-safety officers employed by the Times Square Business Improvement District make visits to the 45 locations of a computerized surveillance system. The same entertainment-safety approach is spreading to other areas too.

New Urban redevelopments adopted this same model. In designing Boston’s Faneuil Hall, the prototypical ‘festival marketplace’, developer James Rouse sent his project manager to Disney World to learn the methods of maintenance and security. I wish New Orleans would do this at Burbon Street! Today I am now seeing the kind of place I’m writing about as in the start of "live, work and play” city environments that have popped up in the U.S. There are other concepts called “Airport Cities” and “New Urbanism”. These new city concepts are formed out of the demand from our life styles of need in convenience and safety. Brand markets have picked up on this too. And, has already reflected this movement in apartment and condo communities that involve urban master planning and space design in public and private uses combined.

This is now seen in every major mall across America. Urban shopping malls devote a major portion of its space to entertainment such as Potomac Mills had done that invited you to experience "Shoppertainmentsm". In this retail mecca you can enjoy over 220 stores that have themed facades and MillsTV, an in-mall television station broadcasting exciting details on brand names. When it's time for a break, take in a movie at one of 15 AMC Theatres with an exterior designed like Egyptian temples and security guards sit behind a glass wall in Central Dispatch monitoring banks of closed-circuit televisions and computers which reach into every corner of the mall that is reminiscent of casino's.

“New Urbanism” was not a new concept but a new look on spreading the super-city planning and development concepts of yesteryear to fit the lifestyles of the modern era. A place like this has opened in Atlanta Ga named Atlantic Station. This concept has a modern twist of turn of the century designing. It is a total “live, work, play” concept with street scapes and shopping districts that uses the multi level strategy and is the new upscale shopping area of Atlanta. These urban projects are being marketed as the heroes of declining downtown cores and of stagnant suburban shopping centers

The Aquarium combined with the World of Coca Cola is being redeveloped more in Atlanta. The world of coke has a "urban cultural" and retail venue in Las Vegas too that has sculptured giant bottles made by artist from 14 different countries from all around the world. An "urban cultural" approach is very much the concept used in newer museums and science & Children’s learning centers today. It very well could transform into that city of tomorrow in parking our new floating cars as we zoom from city to city in our lifetime. And last but not least there is the question of how to depose of the waste or recycle. Maybe, as at Disney it all is an underground system of structure to keep it all unseen or hidden as in Metropolis or like in Back To The Future (the movie) and use it all as fuel. We will figure it out.

The strategies for that community will be for both communitarianism and individualism. “Image” will be apart of social reality and although utopia only exist in our hopes, urban chaos would turn into urban ‘flow” through planning and design. Today, these planned communities “live, work, play” environs like Celebration Station (Disney) is harmoniously integrating to echo the communitarian utopian dreams of the 19th century. Or could this atmosphere be like a "Metropolis", like that of Fritz Lang's Metropolis? Not likely, since the established concept is one of old town U.S.A. community living.

Metropolis also is not a new word. Just years before the movie Metropolis was made, there was King Camp Gillette. “In his utopian tract of 1894, Gillette outlined his vision of a collection of 40,000 skyscrapers clustered together in one grand "Metropolis" located near Niagara Falls. Surrounded with glass atriums, the steel-framed buildings would house most North Americans. Within a few years, however, Gillette's outlandish utopian vision was overshadowed by another project that brought him fame and wealth - The invention of the safety razor.

Then there is the connection to Superman and Metropolis, Batman and Gotham City that represents a type of New York City. There a river runs though it becoming giant waterfalls at the cities edge that runs though a generating power plant. Is it homage to the future visions of the past? But that’s another story.

Lang's early architectural and art training is evident in his visual approach to Metropolis. He developed narrative and created an atmosphere through expressionistic, symbolic sets and lighting, as well as through his editing. The story takes place in 2026, one hundred years from when the movie was made. The city of Metropolis is a crowded one where people are either of the privileged elite, or of the repressed, impoverished masses.

This futuristic world plays and delights in the gardens and stadiums. The scene that illustrates this shows an orange stadium with blue sky drifting by as the privileged class enjoys a life in the comfort of tall buildings with giant panoramic view windows that are polarized for the time of day. Lang visually shows how cold, crowded, busy and yet beautiful Metropolis is.

Futuristic paintings and models of the city show the unique architecture as well. Suspended streets, and zigzagged buildings, only begin to exemplify the bustling city. It is obvious how influential the concept of Metropolis has been on architecture, books from Arthur C. Clark and in films with movies like Stanley kubrick’s Space Oddesy 2001 that where eye openers! I love the space orbiting Hilton! Others include Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Luc Besson's 5th Element, Cameron’s Terminator trilogy, Spielburg movies as Minority Report and the reversal of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind that is WAR OF THE WORLDS 2005 not to far off from ID4. There is George Lucus and Star Wars Episodes1, 2 and 3 "Revenge of the Sith" where we see the futura of a city planet complete with streamline or Art Deco futura mixed with Eco-Tech in a style of blended architecture out of historic 30's and the systems of transportation style in design are the cinematic rave and in a revival at this time due to new digital media techniques.
Iain McCaig was the concept designer for the newer Starwars trilogies.

Other Honorable mentions are in the style of future concept designing, Syd Meads designing has influenced a wide range of industrial designing of transportation, zoos to future cities. His influences can be seen in many films as Star Trek, Blade Runner, Tron and Tron sequel as well as two Japanese film projects, The New Yamato and Crises 2050. He has designed much in transportation and industrial design and architectures too.. Another influence is Hayao Miyazaki animation film director from Japan as well as others who explore the new futures of "Yesterday's Tomorrows". I had lived there for two years while in the Marines.

Remember that traveling exhibit called “Yesterday’s Tomorrows” about past visions of future lifestyles? There is a movie called "Robots" directed by Chris Wedge that has used the past visual concepts of the future of robot designing in the 30's. They have created a mechanical city and a charactered robot society that is animated in 3D that rivals the animation of The Incredibles. Some character designs have the armature of C3PO in STARWARS, Spielburg's A.I. and the Lost In Space costumes that take us back to the central robot in Lang's Metropolis. They have humanoid faces stylized out of the 30's blended with driod bodies not unlike HAJIME SORAYAMA's art of sexy cyborg robots.

And there is the move John Carter that has a past-present design to the sets and the storyline even though it is science fiction . This was based upon the book A Princess of Mars. The city-state of Zodanga and the city of Helium in the movie set and scene design reminds one of a Metropolis designed as a future city adapted to the remote desert regions of Mars.

Other influences in architecture can be seen at the future city design and planning National Engineers Week Future City Competition that began in 1992. The Future City program takes place in more than 30 regions of the United States and there are trial programs in several countries. The competition is sponsored by the National Engineers Week Committee that was founded in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers to increase public awareness and appreciation of the engineering profession and of technology. A consortium of engineering associations and major US industries are involved.

There is a consortium of companies led by Canada’s Reichmann family (late of the controversial Canary Wharf project in London’s East End) that have opened the doors to ‘Destination Technodome’. The $450 million indoor entertainment and sports complex is placed on the site of a former air force base in northern Toronto. It includes a year-round 150-metre ski hill, a whitewater rafting course, mountain-climbing walls, a Hollywood-inspired theme park, a fabricated tropical rainforest a replica of Bourbon Street New Orleans and a 30-screen multiplex cinema. There is my wish come true for Burbon Street New Orleans!

Destination Technodome is one of a new breed of entertainment centers intended to anchor the ‘fantasy cities’ of the future where tourism, entertainment and retail development are to be collogued together in to a ‘themed’ environment. Developments like Destination Technodome are deemed ‘urbanoid environments’ They are said to have “a unique “genuine feeling” atmosphereand fantasy. However something is not quite right”.

Like the movie West World the environment is too scripted to perfect. Almost paralleling a theme in the movie The Matrix. In that environment the former faux world that people were living in was to perfect because the thing that was missing was a sense of the free choice and natural human flow, diversity and traditional lifestyle. I believe that human culture is more powerful than we suspect. And ushers in it’s own flow in where ever we live.

As in all trends such as movies, fashion and architecture, there is a consistency to go back and revise designs with present techniques to bring more clarity to the story line. Designs for the future can be generated using these techniques too. What was recollected as the best of a generation’s style combined with new a concept or idea can assist in designing and telling a new story from the past or future. It becomes a “Back-Story” or a pre-show in design that gives weight and truth for the present adventure. This too can be used in the architecture of experience designing. An example of this type of designing is presented to us in the movie The 5th Element. On board the Luxury cruse liner that is a space ship of our future, we see that the interior architecture experience is the future meets Art Nouveau in shape, form and function.

The object to designing themed experiences is to capture a moment in time to "create a guest experience that becomes a truth for the guest" - a quote from -YAMA MOTO-MOSS. No matter what the subject is. All of it is about the guest and their memory of the experience and what it means to them. This understanding can enable visualization in the design for future guest experiences too. There is no dearth of opinions to be expressed on the subject of architecture and experience. We can, however, see some absolutes. We can look back on transitory fads and fashions, and can discern from them the truly great ideas used in form and function. We can see where they worked and where they did not.

Then we use those answers to enable us, to guide and catapult us, to innovations in future concept planning and designing. We strive for originality and meaning in design. The world of tomorrow is a vision that grows and slowly becomes reality. The concept of where things are going in designing the future of how we will live, work and play in this next century is the main focus in this particular discussion and around the world.

"The freedom science and fantasy lend to a visual director or designer is limited only by the imagination."

This article is dedicated to my fellow designers and creators of unique experiences.

Best regards,

Matthew L. McCoy
Experiential Designer