Archinect - News

Oliver Wainwright on Disney's 'dream or nightmare' Storyliving community

2024-04-09T11:58:00-04:00

With revenue from cinema and streaming falling in recent years, income from Disney’s “experience” division is soaring, and property development is the next logical step. Disney tried it before in Florida, first with utopian plans for Epcot (the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), followed by the quaint town of Celebration, but Storyliving takes the branded living experience to the next level.

Writing for The Guardian, critic Oliver Wainwright reflects on plans for a major Disney-themed development at Rancho Mirage in the California desert.

As we reported initially in 2022 and in a follow-up last year, the 2,000-home Storyliving by Disney scheme will include a midcentury-influenced member's clubhouse named for the fictional Parr family from the company’s “The Incredibles” franchise, where users can engage with Disney-themed art lessons and experience dinners inspired by Disney stories.

Related on Archinect: Disney unveils further details for planned Cotino community in the Coachella Valley. Image courtesy Disney Parks

In his latest article, Wainwright views the development through the lens of the Architecture of Stage Realities exhibition taking place at Arc en Reve in Bordeaux. The exhibition "paints a portrait of Walt Disney as a natural-born developer, a cartoonist who understood not only how to lure people into his magical worlds but how to keep them coming back," Wai...

Albert Frey's Aluminaire House acquired by the Palm Springs Art Museum

2020-09-04T12:15:00-04:00

The Palm Springs Art Museum has announced its acquisition of Albert Frey and A. Lawrence Kocher's Aluminaire House, a futuristic prefabricated home that will be installed at the foot of the museum adjacent to a new public park.

The Desert Sun reports that the nonprofit Aluminaire House Foundation, the group that trucked the disassembled house from the East Coast to Palm Springs in 2017, hopes to finally erect the structure once again sometime next year.

Site plan for the RIOS-designed Palm Springs Downtown Park showing the Aluminaire House in the lower left corner. Image courtesy of RIOS.

The house was originally exhibited in New York in 1931 and changed locations several times, ultimately ending up on the campus of New York Institute of Technology before architects Michael Schwarting and Frances Campani created the Foundation as part of an effort to find a permanent home for the building. After raising the necessary funds, the building was shipped across the country and has sat in ...

Palm Springs Art Museum A+D Center draws hundreds

2014-11-10T14:16:00-05:00

Hundreds flocked to downtown Palm Springs Sunday for the grand opening of the Palm Springs Art Museum's Architecture and Design Center, an ode to the city's unique — and timeless — mid-century modern designs. The center opened with "An Eloquent Modernist," an intimate depiction of the work of E. Stewart Williams, the acclaimed architect whose designs defined desert modern style in Palm Springs throughout the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

Previously: Palm Springs: New Architecture and Design Center to open in November

Palm Springs: New Architecture and Design Center to open in November

2014-08-29T13:51:00-04:00

Each year Palm Springs dedicates a week to celebrating Midcentury Modernism architecture in the desert city. Now, it has more reason to celebrate. The Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion, is set to open Nov. 9. It will provide a place to showcase the sleek style pioneered by architects such as Richard Neutra, Donald Frey and E. Stewart Williams. The project is an expansion of the Palm Springs Art Museum, which also is housed in a Williams building.