Emperor's Gate I: Theme Park & Baroque
Emperor's Gate is a facade concept for a mansion-type attraction at a theme park. This concept primarily explores the deep connection between baroque-style architecture and theme park place making, and ultimately how attraction architecture can create drama, anticipation and illusion.
This is part one of a two-part series on Emperor's Gate. In this section, I will give an overview, and in particular, the architectural motivations behind designing Emperor's Gate.
Before delving into the details of the design of Emperor's Gate, allow me to first guide you through a brief survey of the current state of mansion-type attractions. Please note that this article will only discuss the entrance building. The attraction and ride itself will be detailed in another article.
Mansion-Type Attraction
A mansion-type attraction is a ride that is themed to be housed within a mansion, house or castle. The most well-known kind is haunted house, where guests experience a series of interior sets that invoke fear and fright. These are usually accompanied by dramatic sound and visual effects, as well as costumed actors as part of the story. Mansion-type attraction has a wide variety, and can range from a simple walk-through experience to high-tech track-less ride system.
Why Mansion?
First, let's take a step back and ask ourselves why mansion is such a captivating idea for theme parks. Mansions appeared around 12th to 15th century in northern Europe when secular architecture started to emerge. Changes in medieval social and economical structures allowed notables to move from less comfortable castles~ to domestic residence.
Mansion, a new building type, represented a rather interesting departure from previous architecture, which had been dominated by churches, cathedrals and castles. Inhabited by wealthy and upper class people, these were still distant from everyday person's lives. As a result, mansions often invoke a sense of mystery, much like how princess and princes living in castles has always captured our imagination.
From a theme park architecture standpoint, mansion represents an infinite playground of possibility. Compared to, say, castles, they often have a much more personal touch. The scale of a mansion is also much more manageable in a theme park physically, enabling a more surreal experience, and not just designed to be looked at a distance like most castles in themeaprks. The wide variety of available styles, inspirations, plans and ornamentations for mansion also provide many exciting opportunities.
The State of Mansion-Type Attraction
The leader of mansion-type attraction definitely has to be Walt Disney Imagineering, who has created 5 of these attractions around the world to date.
The classic Haunted Mansion opened at Disneyland in 1969, which has been subsequently iterated in Orlando (1971) and Tokyo (1983). These were followed by Phantom Manor in Paris (1992) and Mystic Manor in Hong Kong (2013). The first four of these surround the theme of ghosts and departed spirits, albeit the most common motifs in mansion attractions. The last of these, Mystic Manor, took a different direction, and tells a cheerful story about an enchanted music box. If you have never experienced any of the ride above, I encourage you to take a look at a few attraction ride-through videos on YouTube.
[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsQtKkRE8ss&w=854&h=480]
Mansion-Typed Attraction and Architecture
The legendary attention to detail that Disney parks are famous for is abundantly clear amongst these mansions. No single mansion is identical to any other. The architecture of the attraction facade has always been meticulously designed to echo the story told within, and reflect the grand landscape within which it towers.
The architecture of an attraction is important, as it not only communicates the nature of the ride, but also morphs anticipation and expectation of the guests. A good attraction architecture is like a good movie title or a trailer. It subtly lures visitors, while not giving away too much about the attraction itself. Furthermore, the building itself naturally becomes the identifying icon of the ride, and serves as the photo opportunity spot. As such, its architecture cannot be overlooked.
Back to Disney's mansion design. We can see a wide array of architectural styles. These were not chosen randomly by any means. For example, Phantom Manor is evocative of a Second Empire style, which reflects neatly with the western landscape that it surmounts. On the other hand, Mystic Manor pertains a rather playful Victorian style, which echoes with the persona of the fictitious owner of the house, Lord Henry Mystic.
Emperor's Gate Architecture
The Emperor's Gate is a proposed facade architecture for a mansion-type attraction that is distinctively different from any other similar attractions in Disney, or probably any other themeparks around the world.
Overview & Layout
The building facade has been designed in a French/British baroque style. Besides its signature baroque flare which will be detailed later, it has been designed for an urban setting. This is very different from many Disney's mansions, which were set in rainforest (Mystic Manor), open wild west (Phantom Manor) and rustic rural (Disneyland) etc.
Emperor's Gate urban setting has been inspired by mansions built within London in the 19th century. The limited land available within the city forced wealthy people to build upward. As a result, Emperor's Gate was designed with a small physical footprint, and has more levels than a usual mansion in rural areas.
The bird's eye view of Emperor's Gate has been sketched above. As expected, the ride itself is housed in the show building behind, out of sight from the guests. The entrance of the ride is from the side, not through the gate at the front. There are two reasons for this. First, historically, many urban manors in London has entrance from the shorter side of the building; Second, and more importantly, this frees up the main view of the mansion from crowds and lines, affording a better photo opportunities for guests
Theme Park & Baroque
Why was Emperor's Gate designed in Baroque style? In short, I found it to be an interesting experimentation to blend Baroque architecture within a themepark setting. Frankly, it is more of an intellectual and philosophical experimentation more than a pure aesthetic one.
Baroque style (and Rococo style, as a matter of fact) was the emerging architectural style in the 17th century in Italy, and was spread worldwide thereafter. The manifestation of Baroque style differs from place to place, but its signature is the creation of illusion and drama. This was achieved using bold and powerful massing, sweeping curves and dramatic manipulation of light and shade.
As such, there exists an interesting parallel between baroque architecture and theme park. Ultimately, theme park architecture strives towards the same goal of creating illusion and drama. And the manipulation of light, shade and space to direct attention and sight is apparent in both cases.
For instance, the Baroque style Sta. Maria della Vittoria in Rome uses architectural column and light to frame sculptures and evoke supernatural visions. Similarly, Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Orlando uses a narrowing street to frame the central architectural piece. The fake railway bridge overhead manipulates sight line and shadow, creating drama & anticipation, much like Sta. Maria della Vittoria.
Another characteristic feature of Baroque architecture is the blurring boundary between architecture, painting and sculpture. This synthesis of various forms of arts with architecture has been also been manifested within the themepark environment. After all, themepark itself is an amalgamation of architectural spaces, stories, musics and technologies to create immersive experience.
For example, the Baroque styled Sant'Ignazio Church in Rome seamlessly blends artistic painting and sculpture with the architectural nave. Through optical illusion, a dynamic space is created. Similarly, the Cinderella castle at Magic Kingdom in WDW is also a seamless blend of sculpture and architecture. The use of forced perspective creates an optical illusion such that the castle appears higher than it physically is.
Ultimately, Baroque style has been summed up as the idea of a 'total work of art', which, in a sense, is surprisingly similar to the idea of theme park: a creation of immersive environments and experiences.
As such, Baroque style architecture and theme park setting are extremely compatible on an ideological level. This is why I have chosen Emperor's Gate to be in baroque style, and have considered it as an interesting experimentation of the deep connection between Baroque and themepark.
In the next section, we will discuss Emperor's Gate specifically.