Lava Field II: Master Planning
This is part two of an ongoing series discussing the proposed Lava Field themed area. In the previous article, we explored the premise and inspirations for the Lava Field, which will lead to this article's concrete discussion of the themed area's master planning, and the park's central beacon: The Lava Field Geothermal Power Plant.
The Entrance: Lava Excursion Trek
The entrance to the Lava Field is no ordinary park entrance. Before guests can arrive at the various rides and attractions, they will 'hike' through a winding scenic path.
I call this part of the park the 'Lava Excursion Trek', and it serves multiple purposes:
1. Enforcing the Discovery Experience. The fact that guests must hike over a hill before arriving at the Lava Field creates the illusion that they have 'discovered' the Lava Field. I think this adventure and exploration spirit is central to the experience. The paths are designed to be winding and spatially disorienting such that, after hiking through them, the guests feel like they have left the 'real world' and arrived somewhere exotic.
2. Travelling Back in Time. Even though the paths are spatially disorienting, it is designed such that as guests walk forward (in space), they are actually travelling backward (in time) as they experience sequentially the ecological transformation after a massive volcanic eruption.
Guests start off from the far right of the diagram above, where they find themselves in a fully grown forests before hiking on an inclined path into an area with just shade-intolerant trees and plants. Strolling further, they will enter a region with just herbaceous plants and shrubs. Making a right turn, guests are now submerged into an area of barren land. Then, through a short tunnel, guests will emerge into a volcano mouth from beneath, before spiralling up into the Lava Field park.
In a way, the hiking experience above is a transformation just like a fade-in-and-out edit in a movie. It is a transformation from a world with flourishing plants and trees, back in time, into a world moments after a devastating eruption. Ultimately, this is part of the storytelling aspect of the park where the storyline is part of the architectural space. It is educational, but in a very subtle way.
3. Echoing the Central Theme. The path of the Lava Field Excursion Trek is not winding randomly. Instead, its geometry is inspired by the three human emotional response centred around Lava Field as explained previously:
Since the Lava Field Excursion Trek is a geometric manifestation of the central theme of the Lava Field, in a sense, it can be considered as the introduction chapter for the area. As guests stroll through the area, they are subconsciously and visually introduced to the core idea of Lava Field.
The geometries of the paths were further inspired by the various sights around Iceland and the beautiful spiral staircase at the Vatican City.
4. Grand Cinematic Introduction. In many ways, themeparks are like movies. however, instead of moving the camera around, we move people and their sight-lines around. Just as camera movements in movies direct attention and focus, morphs atmosphere and evoke emotions, so can a well-designed path. In this case, the Lava Excursion Trek attempts to build up guests' anticipation and prepare them for the grand cinematic introduction of the park.
It should be noted that guests cannot see the Lava Field park and the geothermal power plant building from the entrance as the park is elevated by a height equivalent to about 2 stories (due to technical reason discussed later). As such, this creates the perfect opportunity to introduce a grand cinematic reveal of the Lava Field as guests hike up the spiraling path. As they turn around the corner after a the hike up the trek, they will see the entire Lava Field area gradually unfolding in front of their eyes. This panoramic view is also a great photo opportunity for guests.
Last but not the least, I'd like to note that the Lava Excursion Trek is completely accessible with wheel chair as it only consists of small inclinations. Due to reasons mentioned above, the trek is integral to the Lava Field experience and I'd anticipate all guests to walk through this path to enter the park. However, just in case some guests have physical mobility difficulties or other emergency reasons, there is an underground flat path that bypasses the winding trek and has an elevator.
After the guests have exited the Lava Excursion Trek, they will find themselves crossing a bridge, which I call the "Continental Crossing". It is themed as a fault line between two tectonic plates, inspired by a similar attraction in Iceland where people can literally walk across a bridge between the N. American plate and the Eurasian plate. The Continental Crossing bridge in Lava Field goes over the track of the Lava Field Expedition attraction, which we will explore later.
The Lava Field Master Plan
Once the guests have climbed over the Lava Excursion trek, the entire Lava Field panorama will unfold in front of their eyes. It is worth to take a moment to explain the layout of the park.
As mentioned previously, there are three main anchor attractions in Lava Field. I have ultimately opted to put all three at the back of the park and adopt a rather linear guest flow layout.
The Lava Excursion Trek sits at the front of the park, which is then followed by the Continental Crossing. After the crossing, guests can either choose to go around the geyser pool via left or right, before merging at the Geothermal Power Plant, which doubles as the central architectural icon for the area. From there, guests can split and go to the three attractions. Note that I have intentionally left a gap at the top of the park for potential expansion in the future. As seen on the drafts on the above, I have tried many different possible layouts for Lava Field before arriving at the final layout we see now.
The geometry of the Lava Field park is very much defined by the arched roller ride attraction, which we will detail later. For now, we should only note that the ride includes five arching track sections that shoot the roller coaster vehicle high up into the sky and back down. These arches all converge at the centre where the ride vehicles will emerge in synchronous every 15-30 seconds. This, of course, is an attempt to simulate a volcanic eruption. Not only does the trajectory or the roller coaster track resembles that of exploding lava out of a volcano mouth, having 5 roller coaster vehicles swooshing by generates noise, wind and vibrations that the guests can feel. This converging effect goes back to the central aim of Lava Field, which is an attempt to re-create the multi-sensory experience of a volcano. On top of that, having kinetic vehicles moving across the sky of Lava Field constantly provide a source of excitement and energy to the park.
These arched ride tracks very much define the layout of the Lava Field park and form part of the landscape composition of the park. Indeed, any good composition (film, photography etc.) often has a layered structure that includes foreground, mid-ground and background to convey a sense of depth. Lava Field is no different, and the arched ride tracks form part of the visual framing of the park when viewed form the Continental Crossing.
Having mentioned the Geothermal Power Plant as the background layer of the park, this is a natural point to discuss about the this structure in detail.
This visual architectural landmark is crucial on multiple levels. First, a single towering power plant serves as the visual anchor for guests to navigate the area. Second, by placing this iconic tower at the back of the area, it visually draws people to walk through the entire park from end-to-end, thus encouraging a healthy people flow around the park. This is exactly the same reason why Disney's castle is always placed at the end of the Main Street to encourage people stroll forward and not congregate around the entrance area.
However, most importantly, the geothermal power plant serves as the icon for the park that people can identify with. This is true for just about every themed area around the world. If you think about Tomorrowland, you will imagine Space Mountain; if you think about EPOCT, you imagine Spaceship Earth; if you think about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, you imagine the Hogwarts Castle. Indeed, an iconic architecture often becomes an important visual identity for the park.
The Architecture of the Geothermal Power Plant
Since the Geothermal Power Plant is the centre piece of Lava Field, it is worth spending a section discussing its architectural design.
The design of this structure is partly inspired by a peculiar formation in the Krafla Area of Iceland that I believe used to be a small volcano mouth.
However, more importantly is that the structure itself embodies the message of Lava Field, which is man v.s. nature. The artificial steel structure is intertwined with raw rocks and lava. The arched bridge and ordered steel frame contradict markedly with the jagged and crude rock-work. These playful amalgamations of artificiality and organic materials lead to the structure's distinctive facade.
The shape of the power plant and the rock-work mutually echo. The geometry of the power plant has been morphed from the rocks, which serves as a symbolic reminder of man taking inspiration from mother nature. In the mean time, the man-made structure towers over the rocks, representing human's ability to conquer mother nature. These seemingly contradicting ideas are ultimately harmoniously unified as a whole in the design of this geothermal power plant.
Lastly, I should remark that the geothermal power plant structure relies heavily on forced perspective to give the impression that it is higher and more daunting than it actually is. This is done by progressively shrinking the size of the structure moving up. As there is no other point of reference for scale when an observer view the tower from the ground level, our common sense that further object should be smaller would lead us to perceive the height of the tower to be higher than it is. This forced perspective trick is also used in the rock-work on the left of the bridge, where the top of the hill is actually a separate, smaller layer behind the main rock.
In the next section, we will finally explore the rides and attractions offered at Lava Field.