Tenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Thematic design is a praxis employing architecture yet distinctly independent from it; a postmodern, interdisciplinary language for the planning and execution of built environment projects. This lexicon has its roots in film grammar, first expressed with the development of Disneyland park in the mid-1950s. Disneyland and its descendents have been discussed critically in the humanities and social sciences, but far less so in the design disciplines; through this lens, these spaces are influential for what they do rather than what they say. One key mechanic of these environments is the role played by multiplane camera technology in articulating immersion. As developed by the Disney organization for animation, this complex apparatus allowed numerous planes of artwork to be photographed simultaneously, addressing the problems of parallax and depth. A half century before CGI and VR made their debuts, the multiplane provided a technological simulation of a scripted online world. This paper outlines how animators, filmmakers, and art directors leveraged the effects of this early “online reality” device—characters inhabiting environments and moving through disparate planes—and fused these ideas into the built environment with the design of Disneyland. Through both exterior schema and the interior scenography of Dark Ride attractions, multiplane immersion forms the conceptual and structural antecedent to contemporary point-of-view online environments as visualized by game engine software. To that end this paper posits how image as place was radically transformed into image as space and then speculates what developments might be next for our environments, both constructed and online.