Living with Mickey: In Search of the Boundaries of the Theme Park

Abstract

This paper examines the placement of the notion of theme park today, and its implications for the built environment. Examples are explored which contain insight into what may constitute the definition of theme park, and discussed with a view towards establishing a useful distinction between the real and the fake. This paper posits the assertion that the meaningful environment, and thus the meaningful life, is in the process of erosion and is being replaced by nothing more significant than a Mickeynized version of living, that the gates have opened and we are now on the inside looking out.

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Loraine D. Fowlow

BIOGRAPHY

Loraine D Fowlow is an Assistant Professor of Architecture in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary. Professor Fowlow trained as both an engineer and an architect and currently undertakes research work in the area of the inauthentic environment. Her writing on this subject has been presented in Oxford. Paris, Rio de Janeiro and numerous American cities. For the 2000 edition of the Canadian Encyclopedia, she contributed the entry for the West Edmonton Mall. She is currently writing Theme Park Builders as part of the Builders series for Academy-Wiley, to be published in 2002. Another book, Is This Real?, in collaboration with four colleagues in the Faculty of Environmental Design, is also underway. Professor Fowlow is also working on an article about Frank Gehry's first Canadian commission, to be published in Architectural Design.