Women of Walt Disney Imagineering by Karen Connolly Armitage

Author:Karen Connolly Armitage [Irvine Elliott, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

As a show set designer, I had the incredible good fortune of being assigned to Harper Goff, who was in the process of designing the World Showcase for EPCOT. I was concurrently assigned to Jack Martin Smith, who was designing the Universe of Energy Pavilion for Future World. Both men were accomplished professionals, though very different. I felt privileged to work with them.

Harper Goff’s big idea was to create pavilions for different countries around a large lagoon. He was in the process of having a large model built and needed designs for the different countries to be showcased around the lagoon. As a first assignment, Harper gave me free rein to design the (unrealized) Israel Pavilion. He taught me how to hand-draw 3-D aerial views as we went along. In those early years, Harper assigned many of these countries to me, and my concepts were constructed into that first model.

The World Showcase model was a work of art, built by a small and very talented crew of dimensional designers. It was also painted to perfection. When the model was completed, there was a photo shoot. Harper asked me to stand beside him while he scrutinized the model. He complimented the team. The air was filled with satisfaction. We knew we all had done our best, and it looked great.

After the first couple of photos were shot, he turned to me and asked me quietly if I noticed anything was missing. I said, “No, it looks beautiful.” Then he said loudly, “Stop shooting! Bring me some salt.” Salt? Really! Was this a superstition, a WED ritual we were about to witness?

With saltshaker in hand, Harper leaned over the model, creating perfect miniature white wakes on the lake surface behind each tiny boat. It was so realistic that the boats looked like they were sailing forward on the green-blue lagoon! Another lesson learned. I noted to myself that every detail counts, no matter how small.

At the same time, I was working on the Energy Pavilion with Jack Martin Smith. I dove into the research on the future of energy and on the most recent development of photovoltaic cells. I designed an entry statement for the pavilion: a huge sun-tracking parabolic dish. It had a diagonal, extendable arm to track the various angles of the sun daily and traveled horizontally on a large circular rail to follow the sun’s position in every season. It was designed to provide power to parts of the pavilion, including the show—a new idea in the 1970s—and it was also an impressive sculptural statement.

Solar power—and panels that tracked the sun—soon would become a bright idea internationally, though not on the immense scale of my parabolic dish that tracked the sun. My design, which had seemed so forward-thinking and new, never made it to EPCOT. In Future World, we had a difficult problem to solve: the ideas of the future would quickly look like the present once they were finally built.

As part of the EPCOT team, I was surprised

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