Thanks for the perspective. Barbara's career and experience are impressively notable, and she was certainly brought in at a challenging time for Imagineering. It's difficult from the outside to know to what degree an Imagineering president's involvement touches on the realms of design versus project management. One would think it would be a little bit of both. Her experience as a licensed architect would lead to speculation that she at least had a hand in steering the look of projects in the pipeline, but as you rightly point out, the reality is always more nuanced.
When I speculate about Gensler's connection, it comes from a curiosity about the cross-pollination of Imagineering execs moving to/from Gensler to Disney and vice versa. Even if the firm had no official ties to WDI projects, it seems to the casual observer that the real-world design trends Gensler represents seem to mirror WDI's move away from exclusively (or at least primarily) fantastical design into projects rooted more in the architecture of the real world. I've been pondering why this is, and who actually designed and approved the plans for things like the hub, Poly DVC and Ft. Wilderness cabins. Who at Disney (Chapek? Someone else?) steered creative decision-making in this direction? Did WDI design the hub redo and Communicore Hall in-house from the ground up, down to every detail, or were outside consultants brought in? I ask because the project's results are decidedly evocative of a downtown development/urban core redesign, and there are multiple firms doing exactly the kind of work the finished hub and Comminicore Hall bring to mind.
So, is there a concrete tie to outside influences, is it a matter of upper Disney management showing a personal preference for the style of architecture such as those from Gensler and other real-world firms, or is Disney simply hopping onto the trend because that's the type of architecture many of today's architects are comfortable with and capable of?
BTW, WDI is certainly still capable of the fantastical. It seems evident or at least plausible the team that designed the Moana walk-through is different from other groups that worked on the hub. So where did the more bland, real-world architectural influence come from, and why is WDW the destination for so many of these types of projects?
