Tomorrowlands of Yesterday and Today

This insight contrasts two very different present-day museums, a world apart geographically and otherwise. I know both museums well, as a guest rather than as designer. As such, my insights focus on the guest experience as it is delivered, what each museum says about ‘the future’, and what lessons we can take as practitioners.

Before we tall about these present-day museums, we need to go back in time, to where so much of our industry started: DisneyLand.

Tomorrowlands of Yesterday

Do you remember your first trip to Disney? Do you remember the feeling? Think back, it’s worth reconnecting with your childhood self, try to recall that magic of when you first experienced Disney.

I remember it. I sure do. I grew up in small town New England, nnd there was nothing in my childhood world of small-town Americana, rolling hills and clap-board houses, to prepare my eyes for seeing that monorail gliding through the Contemporary Resort. I was overwhelmed that day, with a feeling that I had seen the future, and that the future was going to be really, really great. More than just a way to go from place to place, that monorail gliding by felt like the promise of the future. A smoothly-running, effortless future. It made real all those artists impressions I’d seen about what the future might be. Flying cars and all. But this wasn’t a illustration, it was the real thing, built and in front of me!

So much of Walt Disney’s vision for Disneyland was about mobility, via train, steamboat, dark-ride, boat- cruises, horse-drawn carriages, etc. After researching I found that fully fifteen of the fifty-five opening day Disneyland attractions were themed to transportation. Why? Walt Disney’s fascination with transportation was personal. But it was also a sign of his times. Mobility meant freedom, mobility meant progress. Mobility was the future.
Those including me who grew up watching the Jetsons came to accept that the future would not in fact include many monorails, nor flying cars. That feeling, that Tomorrowlands feeling – the promise of the future – never went away for me.

Much later in life, when I entered into our industry, I came to see that Tomorrowland had never really been about the future. It’s always about we want from today, cloaked as the future.
Seeing Disney through kids eyes helps reconnect to that feeling. When my kids were young, one their favorites in Tomorrowland was Autopia. Such a simple attraction. It puts kids behind the wheel and gas pedal, and foreshadows a future of freedom and mobility as car owners, even getting their own drivers license on site. Autopia dates back to the 1955 park opening, and I like it for that. As a time-piece, for what it says about the mid-century context when it was built. As an aside, I’m glad Disney’s considering a switch to electric vehicles. For the sake of our actual futures.

Before Disneyland’s Tomorrowland there had been other ‘tomorrowlands’, world’s fairs and expositions that portrayed the future. Starting with London’s Great Exhibition within George Paxton’s Crystal Palace in 1851, fantastical architecture has been a key ingredient in presenting progress. Before that, going back to the 18th century, the visionary architects Claude Ledoux and John Soane were drawing incredible imagined futures. Back to the Future although they would not have know to put it that way.
Walt Disney built attractions at the 1964 World’s Fair to test ideas and to develop ride systems that would later be moved and rebuilt at Disneyland. It was 1964 World’s Fair that It’s a Small World debuted, under the title Children of the World. Children of the World was a huge hit, selling over ten million tickets during its run at the World’s Fair.

The Crystal Palace is gone now, but successive expositions left us with Paris’ Eiffel Tower, Montreal’s Habitat ‘67, Seattle’s Space Needle, and other landmarks. World’s fairs continue to today, with Dubai hosting in 2022 and Japan next up. But in my view a pinnacle was reached at the New York World’s Fair. By 1964 all the ingredients were in place: with national governments and big businesses promoting technological advances via immersive exhibits within architecturally extravagant pavilions. Wrapped in an aura of international cooperation and the promise of progress.

But in the last half-century, for me expos seem to have lost their steam. Too big to be nimble, too official to feel authentic. To be blunt, nobody in the west really expects innovation out of national governments anymore. It’s not that our dreams of space travel have waned, it’s more a case that we don’t see an agency like NASA as having the ability to marshal talents and resources. Instead it is entrepreneurs that we look to. Expos are inconsequential, like they aren’t taking the future seriously. It’s not surprising that we look beyond the west now for the Tomorrowlands of today.

That feeling – the promise of our own Tomorrowland’s – never goes away. Tomorrowland’s are everywhere around us. I see it sometimes – when the traffic is light- driving across Toronto on the Gardiner Expressway. Where do you carry your dream of freedom, of a better future.

Tomorrowlands, Today

Museum of Tomorrow, Rio De Janeiro

The Museum of Tomorrow opened in 2015, timed to coincide with the 2016 Brazilian Summer Olympics. Let’s begin with the name of the museum, which is purposeful. As the quotation says, when we think about the Future that usually feels very far away, versus Tomorrow which feels closer.

Continuing with that long tradition of housing stories of the future within signature architecture buildings, this Museum is no different. I snapped this picture of Santiago Calatrava’s building as we careened overhead in a helicopter.

Sustainability is a core message. The Calatrava building incorporates sustainability into its structure: the metal roof is fitted with solar panels that supply about 10 per cent of the building’s electricity.

In terms of the experience design, when I went through this museum, I was confronted with a different view of the future, different from the sunny optimism of Tomorrowland. There’s an edge to the storytelling about the near future, with an impending climate crisis ever-present.
10-metre tall digital totems literally overwhelm guests with data and images about where we are now: the Anthropocene, an era in which mankind has become a predominate force.
Its not just a question of tone – are we heading to a Star Trek future or Bladerunner – It’s what are we going to do about it. It’s different from Tomorrowland and then later EPCOT which presents the future as something we can look forward to, and to enjoy. A bright future that will be served up to you by someone else, usually either a company or a nation.

Not so the future presented here. Where the future takes us is down to us, as individuals. Advocacy is key to the museum’s mission and the guest experience. The museum is there to advocate, to teach, to challenge and to spur action. It’s about what we can do as individuals to help shape – maybe even rescue – the future.

The permanent exhibition invites us to go through an experience of five narratives: Cosmos, Earth, Anthropocene, Tomorrow and Nodes. The exhibits in the Tomorrow area feature interactive games that allow visitors to shape different futures. One measures the visitor’s ecological footprint and then calculates how many planets would be needed to support mankind if everyone on Earth had the same standard of living. Another is a collective Sims-type exercise in which four visitors make decisions – on energy sources, finance, land usage – that can enhance or diminish the survival prospects of humanity.

Museum of the Future, Dubai

At first blush, the Museum of the Future’s purpose shares a lot in common with their colleagues in Brazil. Museum of Tomorrow calls themselves a science museum. Museum of the Future thinks of itself as more a future-themed attraction. Both are purpose-driven.

In the Museum’s own words, “the Museum of the Future aims to explore the big challenges we face, and how we might overcome them. Having experienced both myself, these are very different visions of the future, very different experiences, with different lessons for us to draw as attraction industry practitioners.”

Equally ambitious as the Museum of Tomorrow, the Museum of the Future opened in February 2022. It has sold-out every timed ticket since, and has already surpassed 2 million visitors.
What’s driving this? To start with, the architecture is incredible. Designed by Killa Design Rising 77-metres above the ground and comprising 1,024 unique stainless steel composite panels, the façade is adorned in Arabic calligraphy, displaying three quotes written by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai.

You might well wonder where the galleries are, given the void in the center of the building. Essentially the fat side of the building has enough space to make three floors of core exhibitions totaling about 3000 square meters.

Note I didn’t call them permanent exhibitions, because the Museum’s intention is to continuously change the experience. Not as a showcase of technologies – this is not operating like an Expo of products, but instead as a changing expression of what we see in the distant future.

I say distant, because this museum ties itself definitively to the world as we imagine it will be in 2071, the centennial of the founding of the UAE. I think the museum has done well by picking the right time-frame. The near future is risky because you need to avoid content that can be readily disproved in a few years. Museums can not be in the business of constantly updating. However, a time-frame that is too far in the future runs the risk of not feeling immediate, not feeling relatable.
The core experience unfolds over three floors on the future of Space, Nature and Inner Future. the core experience combines elements of exhibition, immersive theatre and themed attraction to take visitors on a voyage to the year 2071.

In conceiving the experience, the Museum’s highest aspiration is to transform passive visitors into a community committed to making a better future, with a mission to empower people of all kinds to positively shape humanity’s next chapter.

This museum’s aspirations are much higher than so-called Instagrammable pop-ups. And yet, as experienced, it features gorgeous exhibits that are highly Instagrammable. Which I’m sure helps drives attendance. But it doesn’t do anything to advance the purpose. Can you really be posing yourself for Instagram and thinking about how to shape the future? I think those too human impulses are mutually incompatible. Guests can only be in one frame of mind, not both. For the record, when I went through I slipped into Instagram mode.

Being upstaged by Architecture. This building is incredible to look at from the outside and the inside. It was bound to happen that the galleries are upstaged. If you think of the lobby as the pre-show to the galleries, the pre-show is much more interesting, which in terms of any story arc poses a problem.

It’s interesting that both of these museums aim to motivate guests with a call to action. One with the carrot the other with the stick. Negative motivations for change – Museum of Tomorrow versus the positive motivations for change – Museum of the Future.

This is an incredibly high goal. Having experiences the museum myself, the actual experience almost inevitably felt to me like it fell short of the Museum’s goals for transforming visitors. Engaging, yes. Beautiful, absolutely. But can we expect our guests to transform their lives through a visit? Museum of the Future poses tough questions for us as creatives. How high should we aim?

Epilogue: The Future of Tomorrowlands

Where do we go from here? I leave you with long last thought. As I was preparing this talk, within the last couple of weeks, I went to an experience in Toronto called Arcadia Earth.
Compared to these two big museums, this was a modest experience. But it was really good, and got me thinking.

Using augmented reality, virtual reality and installations of light and art, the creators of Arcadia Earth hope to inspire action on climate change. The creators of Arcadia Earth want to awaken our conscience.

The experience unfolds over fifteen room over about 1200 square meters. Downloading an app enables you to point your device at symbols on the walls, floors and ceilings, which that unleashes another level of visual display. In the “Overfishing” exhibit, moving through colorful weavings from salvaged fishing nets, reveals QR codes that give lists of local businesses and restaurants that support sustainable practices.

As my youngest daughter has grown up a digital native, she could access the experience with no instructions at all. And loved it.

Compared to the cost and ponderance of building two the big museums I have spoken about, this is nimble, and effective. I look forward to hearing more from Leslie Morisetti in her upcoming session on urban pop-ups. But Arcadia Earth left me wondering, will the Future Tomorrowlands be more like this – small and impactful, and rather less epic.