When you talk to Joe Rohde, you’re talking about story, no matter what the topic at hand.Start withAulani,the lavishnewDisney resortonthe western shore ofOahu whose creative development Rohde is overseeing as head ofWalt Disney Imagi- neering. Opening in August, Aulani will offer 359 rooms, 481 two-bedroom villas, a full-service spa,andmorethan 50,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor event space, including a 14,000-square-foot conference center—but Rohde seems most keen on the 21-acre property’s “storytelling power.” Move on to why something like Aulani even needs its own sense of narrative, and Rohde says,“We may not realize it, but we’re constructing story all the time.”And later, discussing his approach to man- agement, he notes, “[W]hen I’m leading a project, I actually see the process of lead- ership and organization itself as a narrative function.”
What’s Rohde’sownstory? His official title is senior vice presi- dent and creative executive ofWalt Disney Imagineering—the famous company’s famous division of builder-artists. He’s been with Disney for 30 years, beginning as a model builder for Epcot. He’s worked on rides, hotels, restaurants, and entire theme parks, including Disney’s Animal Kingdom.Andin his left ear hewears an earring weighted with mementos fromhis travels around the world. So even when he’s not talking, he’s telling a story.
Had the general design of Aulani already been committed to paper when your Imagineering team came on board? There’s a lot that goes into getting the resort basically designed, that was [already] in place.We knew that we would have big towers.We knew that we’d have a lobby that would be in the middle.We knew we would have a pool that would be between the two towers.We knew where we would be relative to the lagoon.We knewthose things. Whatwe didn’t necessarily know was, how exactly is this thing going to bring Hawaiian culture to life for the guests? That’s really where a lot of our attention has been in the last couple of years.
What doesthat processinvolve? It’s all kinds of levels of things. Certainly for us always, a cer- tain amount of just physical research: What do things look like? What do they really look like? Especially a place like Hawaii— there’s a lot of misinformation and misperception out in themar-
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ketplace about Hawaii, so one of the first things you need to do is just educate yourself. What is the real stuff? What does it really look like? So we went all over the island of Oahu, pho- tographing details—rockwork, riverbanks, everythingwecould get our eyes on to get the feel of the look. We paid a lot of attention in museums and in collections to
the actual look of realHawaiian objects.What’s the feeling you get from them? And this is one of the interesting things about Hawaii, becauseHawaii has this kind of “jungle tropics”myth, which brings with it an implication of jungle simplicity or of sav- agery almost. But if you go look at the actual objects created by Hawaiians, there’s an extraordinary degree of elegance and refinement and finish to these objects. The natural state of Hawaiian art is a quest for perfection. And so that was a very interesting clue, because in order to be harmonious withHawai- ian art, our own design has to have this quality of elegance, of refinement, of an extreme focus on very fine levels of detail.
What is it about the Hawaiian story — beyond the aesthetics you described — that you would like Aulani to communicate to guests? It’s interesting, because I think there are some nice correlations between our value systems as a company and value systems that you encounter in Hawaii. One of these core values is this notion of community and family. That you are part of something.You are not here alone; we are here with you.We will form a fam- ily; we will form a community. You will be part of something.