FEATURE ARTICLE News from the Presidio: Carmen Aguilar In this final article from the series on the Rockwell Design team, we talk with Carmen Aguilar, Principal, Interior Design of the Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio. When did you first hear about this project? How did you choose your design team? Can you give us an example? Were there other designers involved? What is the most challenging aspect of the interior design? Can you give us an example of artifacts in Gallery Nine? When did you first hear about this project? Carmen: I first heard about the Museum from Barry and David and they said that we were starting to work on the Museum and I was involved from the beginning. My role as the principal in charge of the project is to manage the team through all the phases of the project, set the team in place and make sure that they meet all the deadlines and deliverables, as well as make sure that we are keeping the design level to the highest level possible and direct client contact. How did you choose your design team? Carmen: Well, we started off…starting with a very sort of traditional team that had people in it that designed museums as well as mixing it with architects and interior designers and the team evolved as the project evolved. So, as the project started, we realized that the most important thing about the project was for people to understand Walt's life story so we actually added people to the team that had a literary writing background that could really interview all of the incredible advisers that this project brought to the table and really synthesized the stories together so that they were cohesive and clear to the visitor that's going to come to the Museum and see this and not be a Disney expert, or and be a Disney expert, so that we have a level of story here that answers to many of the different visitors that we're going to have. Can you give us an example? Carmen: Well, we added, for instance, Lauren Adams to our team who has a literary writing background, and she is a design strategist. She spent about six months with Ray Chung in 2006 just distilling the story and meeting with all the advisors and listening to all the wonderful stories that Diane had to tell us. And in the second part of 2006, we added more people to the team to help us actually locate all those story points in the galleries and where they would live, and what artifacts we had to that. And then, in 2007, as that was finalized we started more on the concentration of what the design looked like, and what the galleries looked like and we added to that team an exhibit designer, Aaron Maestri, whose focus was looking at the artifacts and how best to display the artifacts within the cases and how best to depict all those story points that we had worked on previously. Were there other designers involved? Carmen: On top of that, to add another layer, we added our graphics group to the team in 2007 which started working on all of the graphic design that's going to be in the Museum; how quotes are going to be shown, how the text panels are going to be designed and finishing that design till the end of the year. And now, starting in 2008, we are now focusing more on the construction of the Museum; the interiors have been developed enough so they are starting fabrication on all of those items and we are working on all of the exhibit components and the bill-ability of those. What is the most challenging aspect of the interior design? Carmen: We started off, everyone started with Gallery Nine. It was an idea that came from Bruce Gordon to display Gallery Nine in a sort of physical way because it's a time when Walt is exploring three-dimensional design and Disneyland and all of the other Master Plan projects that he was developing during that time. Everyone was really skeptical of it and that it wouldn't work, that it wouldn't be wide enough and we did mock-ups. We actually wound up building the ramp, the full-size ramp in a warehouse in San Francisco so all of us could see that it would work and that we would have enough space to display all of the artifacts. So Gallery Nine for me is going to be a really interesting gallery for people to experience. Can you give us an example of artifacts in Gallery Nine? Carmen: Well the Lilly Belle, it's the start of Gallery Nine which talks about Walt's interest in trains and his hobby and how the hobby led to his exploration and design of Disneyland, and the Lilly Belle is going to wrap around the ramp. It's actually going to be suspended from the structure behind the ramp. It's going to be on a trestle and behind it it's going to have all the drawings from pictures of the house where the train, with pictures of Walt and it'll have videos of Walt on the train. It'll be really wonderful.