On Architecture, Entertainment, and Discomfort
Interactive Tree, Changi Airport, Singapore.
Photo: Scott A. Lukas
In popular architecture and entertainment space, the concept of comfort has maintained a most curious foundation. Since the 13th century, the meaning of “comfort” shifted from connoting “feeling of relief in affliction or sorrow” and solace or consolation to “enjoyment resulting from satisfaction of bodily wants and freedom from anxiety.”[1] Within the popular entertainment spaces of theme parks, themed casinos, cruise ships, and lifestyle stores, the most common understandings of these spaces suggest they are designed in large part – perhaps entirely – for the achievement of comfort in the visitors or guests who visit them.[2] While definitions of what is comfortable vary from person to person and from culture to culture, architects and entertainment space designers have generally focused their designs on results that will enhance the pleasure, enjoyment, and positive feelings of guests.
Very few entertainment spaces have been able to shift the focus of the guest’s experience or purpose from foundations of comfort to those of discomfort. In the 1990s, The Walt Disney Company planned to build an American history-focused theme park known as Disney’s America. Notably, the park would have included rides and attractions that focused on dark and disturbing history, including the Civil War. The concept was abandoned by Disney, in no small part due to opposition from historians and public planners, some of whom did not appreciate disturbing topics like slavery being considered in theme parks.[3]
One theme park that did materialize and which focused on disturbing historical and cultural contexts was the art and performance installation Dismaland, located near Somerset, England. The theme park was the creation of famous artist and provocateur Banksy, and while it existed for a mere 36 days, it represented an overturning of the typical pleasure- and comfort-based foundations of the theme park. In the place of happy ride attendants and greeters, were disinterested, surly, even smoking park attendants, some of whom reportedly told guests to “end joy” the attractions. The happy contexts of Disney rides such as “It’s a Small World” were supplanted with attractions that focused on environmental decline, inequality, and the global refugee crisis. Dismaland’s political motives were to unsettle the idea that one should seek comfort in a theme park or, more generally perhaps, the idea that one should seek comfort – at all – in everyday life.[4] Philosophers including Nietzsche and environmental and political activists would remind us that our everyday lives (including many moments of comfort) are built on the suffering of others – whether visible or not – and on economic and environmental impacts and externalities that could make our collective entertainment worlds of comfort seem problematic.
In 2020, the global pandemic COVID-19 resulted in dramatic transformations in the worlds of architecture and entertainment. In addition to the challenging medical and economic conditions brought on by the pandemic are notable transformations in work, leisure, education, and many other everyday domains. Unprecedented closures of the popular architectural spaces of the Las Vegas Strip, Disney theme parks, and many others as a result of the pandemic have reminded many that our everyday pleasures that are realized in the realms of themed casinos and theme parks may be secondary to our basic safety and bodily needs. At the same time, the relegation of people to home spaces of quarantine has reminded many of the need of entertainment in such perilous and depressing times. While the cruise ship industry has been put on hold due to COVID-19, enterprising social media creators from many of the major cruise ship corporations have created at-home virtual cruises that include itineraries, virtual media, and in-home activities that mimic real-life cruises prior to the pandemic.[5]
While virtual cruises may only be temporary solutions to quarantined guests who are unable to experience the pleasures of travel during a pandemic, we can imagine that when the theme parks, casinos, and cruise ships re-open or resume operations, the ways in which they deliver the pleasures of entertainment will be radically different than before. In the wake of COVID-19, we may imagine three contexts of the potential transformations of popular architecture and entertainment space in ways that challenge the idea that our entertainment spaces should be conditioned solely by the idea of comfort.
Reinvesting in the Virtual
Even before the global pandemic of COVID-19, many architects and spatial designers reimagined public space in ways that suggested a merging of the physicality of architecture with the virtuality of video games, social media, and computer-based technology. The Social Tree inside of Singapore’s Changi Airport, as one example, allows visitors to embed their social media posts in the interactive history of the tree. In the wake of COVID-19, many businesses and institutions (notably, education) have shifted their operations from physical spaces of stores and schools to virtual platforms and experiences. Online retail and entertainment prior to the pandemic, including that of Amazon and Netflix, has been often blamed for the decline of physical, brick-and-mortar versions of the virtual spaces. AREA15 and Kind Heaven are two future Las Vegas venues that will incorporate holograms and augmented reality technologies, immersive design, and visitor interaction approaches inspired by contemporary installation and conceptual art practices, suggesting the physical-virtual hybridity of future spaces. In addition, the values suggested by serious gaming – in which traditional video game technologies and their immersive potentials are re-focused on topics ranging from environmentalism to genocide, among other harrowing topics – are reminders of how virtual technologies may be leveraged to deal with pressing social issues, including pandemics.[6]
Reconsidering Dark Experiences
Serious gaming, as well as the growth of dark tourism, suggests that spaces of entertainment do not necessarily have to be focused on happy or comfortable contexts.[7] As Disney’s America and Dismaland illustrate, there is no guarantee that dark topics or contexts will be considered by the public to be acceptable material for consideration in theme parks or related spaces. As architects and spatial designers work on future projects in the aftermath of COVID-19, they will likely want to consult the rich material related to the presentation of dark topics common to the worlds of museum design and the pavilions of world’s expositions. One indirect value of the global pandemic is to challenge the idea that serious topics should only be considered in educational spaces like museums. Pressing crises of pandemics and those of other origins will likely necessitate a more global and connected engagement with the public, including connections in popular and entertainment spaces.
Remaking Architecture
While the causes of COVID-19 have not been identified as of 2020, a number of scientists have connected the pandemic to contexts of the Anthropocene, the era in which the primary impacts on the environment and climate are caused by humans.[8] The impacts of the virus on the future of architecture, city planning, and themed entertainment design are surely to be massive. Previous pandemics and health crises have influenced the architecture and city planning of the past, and it is likely that COVID-19 will impact the design and operation of spaces of the future, notably as concerns about social density and contagion continue.[9] LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) efforts in the United States could be expanded in terms of increasing the sustainability of constructing, and operating, buildings and public spaces. We may also imagine ways in which architecture may be redesigned in technological senses, perhaps expanding understandings of the public to more virtual realms. Architects and city planners will also likely play a vital role in the remaking of cities and public spaces that will result from unfortunate losses of business and closures of spaces as a result of the economic effects of the pandemic. Revitalization and remaking of such spaces will be important processes in the reimagining of our post-COVID-19 cities.
As Nietzsche has reminded us, the happiness that may result from feelings of comfort may not be desirable if that existential state leads us to ignoring the pressing, and uncomfortable, issues and conditions that are in front of us. The architecture and spatial design of themed and consumer spaces of the future have a vital role to play in imagining our shared and challenging futures.
NOTES:
1. Online Etymology Dictionary, www.etymonline.com
2. Scott A. Lukas, “Should Architecture Be Entertaining?” OAA Perspectives: The Journal of the Ontario Association of Architects, Fall 2016.
3. Scott A. Lukas, “Dark Theming Reconsidered,” in A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, edited by Scott A. Lukas, Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon: ETC Press, 2016, 225–235.
4. Scott A. Lukas, “A Consumer Public Sphere: Considering Activist and Environmental Narratives in the Contexts of Themed and Consumer Spaces,” forthcoming in Environmental Philosophy, Politics, and Policy, edited by J.D. Duerk, Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2021.
5. Jane Archer, “Cruise Lines Turn to Virtual Cruising to Give a Taste of Life on the High Seas,” The Telegraph, April 10, 2020.
6. Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, New York: Penguin, 2011.
7. Scott A. Lukas, “Controversial Topics: Pushing the Limits in Themed and Immersive Spaces” (Masterclass), Attractions Management 20 (Quarter 4, 2015): 50–54.
8. Scott A. Lukas, “Heritage as Remaking: Locating Heritage in the Contemporary World,” in The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Theory and Practice, edited by Neil Asher Silberman and Angela Labrador, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
9. Vanessa Chang, “The Post-Pandemic Style,” Slate, April 19, 2020.