The main reason why everyone comes to DisneySea is the “Mysterious Island” with its two blockbuster rides, the 20,000 leagues under the sea and the Journey to the centre of the earth, both extremely well themed. Don’t expect however huge thrills in DisneySea, Japanese taste for adventure and exotism seems to be limited to experiences that still feel very safe. And like for the new Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride at Universal Studios Orlando, theme park imagineers need to resolve the consumer’s dilemma stretched between a desire for adventure and a reluctance for extreme situations.

The little Mermaid section is also very well designed with one of the best themed shop of the park. As Seth Godin puts it, “The product is nothing but a souvenir of your trip to the store, and a reminder of the way you felt when you bought it.”

Various other examples of themes in rides of DisneySea, always perfectly executed!

Shows are also impressive. Even though the stories are always more or less the same. Read my analysis of the heterotopia of Disney World if you are interested to know why.

The Hermitage is a massive residential property under construction in Kowloon (Hong Kong). I was living just next to its location, so I could see the progress of its development and I was very intrigued by the inside. Few weeks ago, I was walking in the adjacent Olympian shopping mall and I discovered that The Hermitage opened its showroom to the public. It went beyond all my expectations and was by far the craziest thing I have seen during my stay in Hong Kong, The showroom is completely out of reality, immersing visitors into a manufactured ‘dream’-like experience.

People from Hong Kong and Asia more generally associate romantic western imagery with luxury. The Hermitage gives them all that on steroids. The showroom is entirely in marble, fake gold, crystals and mirrors. Space is very expensive in Hong Kong and most of the apartments on sale are actually very small, but no trick is spared to make the flats look bigger: lights, mirrors, smaller than usual furniture. The Hermitage showroom plays a soundtrack which is a condensed version of cheesy opera music, at the moment when the princess falls in love with the prince. They also made a dream like movie introducing the property; again everything is in gold.

Associations with symbols of prestige are heavily used to promote the apartments. Real Rolls-Royces from Europe are on display in the showroom and in the huge ads flooding the Hong Kong subway. But the most surprising is the collection of authentic Russian golden accessories displayed in introduction to one of the showroom. Models of high end apartments made of crystal-like material are then presented in the same fashion than the golden artefacts, in case someone didn’t appreciate well enough there intrinsic value. Videos mix images of the property and the original Hermitage in St Petersburg, making it somehow confusing, but the point is of course not to make it all rational, we are in a dream. The property is not so central in Hong Kong but the issue has been cleverly resolved by introducing the concept of ‘golden circle’ which happens to enclose the Hermitage property and the most famous central landmarks, a wonderful marketing imagery.

Tens of clerks and estate agents stand in the many showrooms, all very polite and nice. One was explaining to a potential buyer that the Hermitage is also the biggest museum in Paris, not so right, but who cares anyway.

The showroom itself is not even in The Hermitage building, it is just a temporary site reproducing with some liberty the final product, and you can even visit reproductions of the lifts! When you visit the fake flats all decorated in a very heavy romantic style, red sections are displayed on the floor to indicate space that will actually not be part of the asset on sale, so potential buyers still get the correct information, but from a manufactured dream that can completely submerge them. It is a fake of a fake to use postmodernist terminology. I would recommend anyone to visit the showroom, you will have a great time and it is even better than Hong Kong Disneyland or casinos from Macau!

Here are few pictures of the Tree of Prosperity at the Wynn casino of Macau. It is a very impressive piece of technology, but more interestingly, it merges various purposes and cultural influences into one big display. It mixes Western and Chinese astrological symbols, a tree made of gold and many visual effects in a show designed to ‘thrill and excite’ the visitors of the casino. Many people come in to see the tree, which is already a big success. But the tree does more than simply attracting visitors, they throw money to the golden tree in the hope it will make them luckier in their gambling, which validates its symbolical value. It is interesting because the show is a big patchwork of symbols, some traditional, some invented, and they manifestly deliver all together a message that the audience can understand. A simple hole could have achieved the same function of course, and people would have also thrown money in it. But the massive scale of the tree of prosperity is also designed to showcase the power of gold and money, to make people desire prosperity beyond what is ordinary. If not, the Wynn casino would have no point. The tree works exactly like a religious temple dedicated to prosperity and luck. It seems all natural and appropriate inside the casino; this is why the tree is worshipped. What I like is that it doesn’t lie about anything. The message is bold and universal. I’m sure that gamblers appreciate this way to wish them good luck during their visit to the Wynn casino.

A giant futuristic screen opens on the ceiling.

The screens open and a giant chandelier appears above.

A tree made of gold then appears from below the ground.

The whole forms a moving sculpture dedicated to prosperity.

By the way, this is the sign outside of the Wynn casino and hotel. It mixes Chinese, American and French elements, and is situated on a former Portuguese territory. What a world!

The park was definitely lacking a level of details in the execution of the themed areas. The budget was too tight it seems. It was nowhere more apparent than on Main Street USA and the Disney castle. The buildings were smaller than in other Disney parks and didn’t have enough details; some looked as cheap as in second class parks.

However, the excitement of the crowd was visible. That along with the Disney train similar to the one of Disney Tokyo and the soundtrack at the entrance gate was enough to put me into the ‘Disney’ mood.

There were a minimum of attractions in Hong Kong Disneyland. I thought it would not be enough to entertain me for a whole day but their choice was actually quite good. The attractions were also slightly adapted to feature more Disney characters and to compensate the lack of classical rides such as Pinocchio.  It was very interesting to see how this Disney Park relies more than any others on symbolism, sometimes only materialized by very simple blocks of concrete. It is a very risky game though, and even if I think they managed to make this park work for now, they should be careful to invest enough if they want to preserve the ‘magic’ of their brand.

Three new massive sections were also under construction and will surely help raise the overall level of the park. Here is a picture from the Tarzan’s tree house of what I think will be the Grizzly trail.

Hong Kong Disneyland is the only one to tolerate natural intrusions in its landscape but I think that seeing the mounts behind the castle works quite well.

I loved the space mountain, the queue was very basic but it’s the first time I tried a revamped version of the ride. The soundtrack adds more to the experience than in any other rides, adding even maybe a little of derision to the theme of space invasion from the 60s. The tempo of the ride and of its special effects is absolutely perfect.

Tomorrowland

This was the advantage of having many Indian visitors to the park, good Indian vegetarian food! I also understood why they decided to build a second park in Shanghai. This one seems to be targeting people from Hong Kong, but also people from Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and other countries in the region. I guess that the one in Shanghai will target visitors from mainland China.

Adventureland

The jungle river cruise

Tarzan's tree house

“It’s a small world” has been relatively heavily adapted. As I mentioned earlier, they added many Disney characters in the ride, I guess to compensate the size of the park, and maybe even to ‘educate’ the audience. But I can’t stop wondering if it is not also because Disney characters have now succeeded to invade our “small world”. New sections have also been added I think, like the rainforest one, the general feeling is more oriented towards nature and environmental awareness.

This picture is a little blurry but I like it because it shows the many digital cameras. I know that Hong Kong Disneyland did not provide initially enough picture opportunities to the local audience, but they seem to have done a good job at improving that part. I don’t know why, but they put forward characters from Toy Story, Stitch and other more recent films here, probably the conclusion of some clever customer segmentation and marketing studies.

If you want to read more about the subject, check out my other posts on theme parks or my analysis on the heterotopia of Walt Disney World.

I did recently a study on verticality called ‘Welcome to Hong Kong’ that explores the imaginary of the lift in 3 vertical configurations: the lift as a ‘teletransporter’, as a ‘carriage’ and a ‘cable car’. The queuing experience and the lift itself at the SWFC are fascinating because they use extensively the lift as a symbol. According to my classification, it was treated both:

• As a high-tech ‘teletransporter’ that transports you into the future, a feeling induced by these visual 3D effects using stroboscopes for example.

• As a ‘cable car’ as I call it, that emphasizes the vertical movement and altitude. In this case, the number of meters above the ground was indicated in the lift. They also used a psychedelic visual effect simulating a kind of sci-fi tube in which the lift was moving up.

A model of London

The New London Architecture, at the Building centre, is an initiative that seeks to highlight the level of development either planned or currently underway in London.  ”Digital Cities, London’s future” was their latest exhibition. It highlights some of the resources and technologies which designers can use in the development of the city and explores areas of debate that arise alongside the opportunities of this new digital world.

The exhibition was packed with fascinating glimpses of the future.

Oxford Circus is one of the busiest spaces in London. It is negotiated by over 43,000 people and 2000 vehicles per hour (I like this use of ‘negotiated’). Any pedestrian having been there on a Saturday know it is a nightmare. People, barricades, cars, Tube entrances, everything stops you going where you want.  The solution of Atkins? Give back the freedom to move. This ambitious statement is in my opinion an excellent example of what experience design is about, brilliantly illustrated by Designhive. Some nice simulations from Aedas( I believe) were also demonstrating that a road can be shared in some cases by cars and pedestrians, without delimitations. Which is unconventional but at the same time very interesting to analyze.

Crown fountain in Chicago

There was also a presentation by UrbanBuzz on how media screens can be used in public spaces as a medium for communication. They took among other the example of the Crown fountain in Chicago, a video sculpture designed by the Catalan artist Jaume Plensa. Their point is that there are no clear guidelines on who can install big screens on the public space and how. “We will hold workshops to bring artists, planners and local policy makers together to debate and discuss the issues. We need to understand how screen technology can be implemented and to establish potential funding models.” I still wonder if the relative absence of rules and studies doesn’t benefit more to refreshing artistic approaches. Are there any mature media escaping the monopoly of advertisement?

The RUDI annual publication available for free at the exhibition is its perfect continuum, with inspiring articles in between urban design and digital technologies. Two disciplines I predict to be more and more interwoven as the Internet of Things is slowly emerging along with context aware technologies such as mobile geo-location.

The building centre has five galleries. I was much impressed by the way they were curated. I’m not sure if this is on purpose, but things were displayed in such a simple and unusual way. Some galleries looked like an architecture fair, with stands, one per company, showcasing materials, power point presentations and videos. Except that no sales representatives were there, only a desk at the end of a corridor representing all the featured fabricants.  The atmosphere was strange but I felt it was working pretty well. I could concentrate easily on what I saw. Next to those spaces were pictures of ambitious new buildings and various innovations. I liked this poster showing how much space a same number of people can take if they are driving cars, bicycles, if they are in a bus or simply walking. How things could be explained clearer than that? Here is the making-of video.

Room To Breathe

Those are just few examples of how urban design could be revolutionized in the coming years. What do you think could be the most exciting urban innovation of the future?