FEATURE EXHIBIT: NEWS FROM THE PRESIDIO A Conversation with David Rockwell The first in a series about the design of the Presidio Museum interior The following is the first part of a conversation with David Rockwell, founder and CEO of the Rockwell Group, which is responsible for the interior design of the Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio. Recent projects by the Rockwell Group include the groundbreaking Mohegan Sun casinos; set designs for the Broadway musical "Hairspray;" the Chambers (New York) and W (New York) hotels; the Kodak Theatre (Los Angeles) and dozens of restaurants. Among other awards, David Rockwell was honored with the Presidential Design Award for the Grand Central Terminal renovation in New York City. Q: How did you get involved with this project? Q: What made the Rockwell Group the right choice? Q: What was it like working with the Disney family? Q: Two years from now, what will the Museum experience be like? Q: What did you learn about Walt Disney that you didn't know before? Q: How are you using technology in the Museum in the service of the story? Q: Will that seem different to people than other museums they've been in? Q: How did you get involved with this project? DAVID: Well, like most good things it sort of seems like we've been working on this project forever and I guess the reason that's the case for me is Walt Disney and his work, and his thinking, and his artistry have affected so many points in my career. When the project first came up, it was an RFP (Request for Proposal) so they were looking for qualifications from a number of design firms. And I had always been really interested in finding ways to use design to step outside the box and not do the things we had done before and I had always been interested in designing a major museum and we had done pieces of museums before. And this just, when I heard about it, seemed like it was worth putting every ounce of effort I could into rallying our collective ability to tell stories to jump onto this project. Q: What made the Rockwell Group the right choice? DAVID: I think so much of being on the right project at the right time is about collaboration. And I find creatively we do our best work when it's the first in the category. There's something about not knowing the answer before you begin work that's not only thrilling for us but so, as it turns out, so imbedded in what was significant about Walt Disney as an artist. As we started to find out more about the project, we made our first presentation to Diane Miller, Walt's daughter, and Ron Miller, who had led the Company for many years. We presented all kinds of strategies and thinking but the one thing that we made in our model shop that I saw really ignited their interest was a collage piece. It was a little piece of wood that I collaged together with images of some of Walt's artwork so you could see the work in relation to other work and it started to talk about the layering and the depth of it. And that was an "aha" moment for them and for us. Q: What was it like working with the Disney family? DAVID: I've got to say I am rarely intimidated by a client's previous accomplishments or kind of what their legacy is but when I first met with the Disney family, I was intimidated because of the amazing depth of the experience that they're part of. You know, it's almost like the "First Family." And I was surprised by the way when we were approached about the project -- my first assumption was that there already was, there had to be a Walt Disney Museum, given his significant contribution to the 21st century, and his artwork in the 20th century, and the way we think about animation, and the way we think about mixed media. And I realized that the reason I thought that is, in some ways what Walt did, and what the Company has continued to do, have merged as a message. The significant take-away from the many meetings with the Family early on, particularly in this wonderful building they have in the Presidio that has this extraordinary collection of artwork and artifacts and things that Walt made, things that he was interested in, was in fact, his story was not the Company's story. His story was a very personal story. And it led us to striving for every element of this Museum and center to tell the story in the first person. To have Walt really tell that story for us and enable it to have that happen physically. Q: Two years from now, what will the Museum experience be like? DAVID: Well, it's impossible to predict exactly what the impact of the Museum is going to have on an individual viewer. And part of that's by design in the sense that this is a museum that's designed for multiple visitations. The goal as articulated by Diane and Ron and Bruce Gordon, who was an extraordinary collaborator, who really lived and breathed Disney, was to make the experience spontaneous and new every time someone goes through it. So, while it's possible to take a linear path through each one of the pieces and end up at the end, it's more likely that people are going to take a non-linear path and kind of move back and forth between these extraordinary moments. I do think that visitors will come out with a renewed sense of what's possible creatively in the world. And come out with a renewed belief that, in fact, there are no creative boundaries and that you can combine all of your passion. The ideal thing would be if people come out of it with some personal interest that this Museum ignited that they're going to develop and nurture and take some risk and take some chance. I mean, Walt was all about taking chance and the early part of the Museum as we look at his history looks at his willingness, first of all his love of travel and transition, his love of newness, and his willingness to rip up the rules and start over. And in each case, have this kind of extraordinary success. I don't know any other artist who represents that kind of risk taking and vision and willingness to start over. Q: What did you learn about Walt Disney that you didn't know before? DAVID: I certainly learned a lot more about Walt's relationship to his family -- and how significant family was to him. I knew a lot about Walt Disney World because as an architecture student in the mid-‘70s, I researched it and studied it from a systems point of view. And of course, that was built after Walt's death but a lot of the thinking and the majority of the conception of a kind of fantastical world for kids and adults alike was born of Walt's interest in developing Disneyland which came from research from things he saw around the world. So, I learned about his relationship to his family and I learned a lot more about his curiosity and how he maintained that. I was really interested in stories about Walt taking animators and having them begin to model with clay, and taking people who did fine art and asking them to do animation. In this moving people back and forth and trying to inspire them to step outside of their comfort zone, I learned a lot more about his collaborative approach. That is, that's a complicated thing for people to understand that this man who had a huge Studio would sit in on story meetings and inflect things in one direction or another and so much of his thinking was "how do we get all these elements together to tell this story?" And for someone who was certainly very influential in technology being developed across all areas of entertainment and many of which have affected how we live in homes and, you know, he really was fascinated with the future -- future travel, future home. But for all of his fascination with gadgets and technologies, and I always thought the Imagineers were the coolest people in the world, it was all about telling story and that is really the point of view of the Museum. There are no bells and whistles just for bells (and whistles). There will be a lot of great technological moments but they're all there to tell the story. Q: How are you using technology in the Museum in the service of the story? DAVID: One of the most interesting, I guess, realizations that we came together as a team is that because of Walt's public role, and you know he was through TV, he was a part of everyone who was really focused on American culture and looking at TV at that period -- he was part of their family. We had enormous archival footage of Walt talking and so, as we started to put those pieces together, we realized that this literally could be Walt telling his story in the first person. So the sound technology is sophisticated and advanced and very detailed and totally transparent. So it's technology that won't call attention to itself but it's probably the most advanced museum, in terms of sound, that's been built. Q: Will that seem different to people than other museums they've been in? DAVID: It's hard to say whether the Museum, certainly the net effect of the Museum will seem new. And as we build the story starting with his past and then the museum, the building in the Presidio is a "U-shaped" building and at the center of it is the second to last act in Walt's life where the museum expresses the extraordinary abundance of TV, live-action TV, the explosive impact of Disneyland, and all of that's looked at in this one big space and you, the viewer, on this ramp that's moving through it and it's a lot like a camera dolly, I think when you get to that, you will never have seen a museum that does that. And I think that's because that's where the story takes us. The story takes us to this unique moment in time, and we wanted to create the thrill of discovery so that the people experiencing it -- everyone knows Disneyland and everyone is very familiar with all of the accomplishments of Walt -- I don't think that what they're so familiar with is how those intersect and seeing those in context. Please stay tuned for the next installment of our visit to Rockwell's offices in New York, coming up next month.