Essays

In Pirates of the Caribbean nobody looks at me. In Frozen Ever After everybody does. Two boats drifting through the dark past show scenes, and yet a completely different feeling.

What makes that difference? An essay about acknowledging the viewer, and about theatricality.

Guardians of the Galaxy leaves me cold, and I still think Mission: Breakout is a good ride. Ratatouille is the other way round. Apparently how much I love a franchise says very little about what I make of the ride.

What does make the difference is the choice designers have once the brand is already settled: re-enact the film, or show what the camera never covered.

I dug into the history of Herkenrode Abbey, and it turned out not to be a church so much as a venue: there was something to see, an audience came for it, and somebody decided where they walked.

The same three things sit underneath Aachen, Varallo, an Amsterdam maze from 1602 and Panorama Mesdag.

As a child I went to Living Tomorrow in Amsterdam. What stuck was a house assistant with a woman's voice and a portable Philips television, and neither of them was quite there yet.

Alongside those, the food pill, the Monsanto house, and Chriet Titulaer's house in Rosmalen, where the bathroom ceiling opened on a voice command when it felt like it.