ONE ON ONE WITH JOE ROHDE

made this choice to come to a place, you want to get somewhere that confirms that you actually got somewhere: I wanted to go to Hawaii, and I get to this place that looked like Hawaii.

Does Aulani’s story extend into its meeting facilities as well? The interesting thing about meetings is that people of course bring a lot of story to their own meetings.We don’t want to get in between themand their purpose. But we havemade the meet- ing rooms quite beautiful.There’s a lot of Hawaiian detailing in them—the designs of the textiles and the rugs, the light- ing fixtures, the wall finishes. There’s carved lintels, nonre- peating; every single one is a unique carving around the tops of all the doors, all representing Hawaiian subject matter that would relate around the idea of where the [meeting rooms] are, of the names of the [rooms], and of this sort of ennobling qual- ity—that the idea of gathering for a purpose, which is a very Hawaiian idea, is made important through the level of design that goes into those meeting facilities.

Did you bring anything from the many other Disney projects you’ve worked on to this project? Most of the work that I’ve done has revolved around Animal Kingdom, and Animal Kingdom has a heavy focus on cultural authenticity itself, so we knew some of what was going to be required in terms of research and collaboration to reach the lev- els of authenticity. Which is a funny word, “authenticity.” I’m not always comfortable with it, because so often it sounds like

TheStoryof Aulani

Joe Rohde explains how Disney chose the name of its latest resort: The naming process in Hawaii is a very serious process, and one that is not done casually. It’s taken very seriously, and the name is much more than a label. The name becomes a kind of destiny, a kind of obligation. Your name is something you are supposed to be in a very deep way. We did not create the name. As a matter of fact, we went

to our Hawaiian consultants and advisers, and we had long conversations over many, many weeks, even months, about the meaning of the resort, about what we were trying to do, about what this resort would mean. And the name Aulani, I believe, came to one of our advisers whose family is deeply involved with this land in a dream. He put that name out to the group; the group discussed that name, and decided as a group that this would be one of the few names that we would put in front of the Disney Company to make a final choice from. The name Aulani can mean many things. It suggests one

who speaks on behalf of a chief, one who speaks on behalf of a higher power. The word aulani would once refer to a herald, like the guy who would come before the chief got there and

in order to be authentic you have to copy something else and copy it really well, and then people can look at the real thing and look at your thing and it looks authentic.That’s not at all what we’re doing here.We’re creating something here that is really quite new together with the Hawaiian artists and advis- ers and consultants who are helping us.What makes it authen- tic is its originality, not so much that it’s a copy of something else you can go look at.The artwork that we have—a sub- stantial amount of the art—is quite contemporary artwork, not replicas of old Hawaiian pieces. All of that’s really interesting to me, because it’s a real, liv-

ing culture.You’re involved with real art, real artists who are doing contemporary work that’s very relevant both to them- selves and to the world, and for us a lot of the time the work that we do is more focused on our own intellectual properties, and it’s kind of a closed shop.This has been just really invig- orating and fascinating for us and for all the people working on the project, to be so involved with something that has its own life, something that we can learn from, and the opportunity to do the design is itself a learning opportunity for us.

You’ve mentioned telling the story of Aulani. Is storytelling a crucial component of a meeting? It’s funny you would mention that, because I think there’s a way in which when I’m leading a project, I actually see the process of leadership and organization itself as a narrative function. As a leader, you have to have a clear narrative sense: Who are we?What is our story? Where are we going?Whyare we going

announce that the chief was coming. It also is used, for exam- ple, in translations of the Bible to refer to angels, because they speak on behalf of a higher power. In our case, we aulani are speaking on behalf of a higher

power; that higher power is Hawaiian culture itself. So our name is our identity. Our name is what we want to be: a place that speaks on behalf of something bigger than ourselves, and that thing that is bigger than ourselves is Hawaii — its stories, its people, and its culture.

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pcmaconvene June 2011

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