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Abstract :
[en] In 1992, The Walt Disney Company opened EuroDisneyland along with seven themed hotels designed by world renowned postmodernist architects. Among these was Michael Graves’s Disney Hotel New York, which reopened in 2021 as Disney Hotel New York – The Art of Marvel after a significant refurbishment. Although the hotel’s exterior architecture remained unchanged, its core narrative and interiors shifted from celebrating the Golden Age of New York to a reimagining of contemporary NYC infused with Marvel characters.
Contemporary critics argue that postmodernism goes beyond a mere stylistic label, encompassing constructed myths and narratives. For instance, Sylvia Lavin contends that postmodernism "turned architecture into the myth of architecture itself," where architecture is not just a built environment but a self-referential narrative crafted by iconic "genius" architects and buildings are merely one component of a broader array of storytelling devices, including drawings, publications, and exhibitions. However, with as many narratives as there are postmodernist figures, and a consequently vast array of languages and buildings, how can we understand and assess the value and meaning of postmodernist architecture?
Using Michael Graves’s Disney Hotel New York as a case study – exemplifying postmodernism’s myth-making potential in a highly commercialized and fantastical context – this paper explores how narrative and storytelling techniques can deepen our understanding of postmodernist architecture. It examines how these strategies shaped the hotel’s original design and, when applied today, how they can either reinforce its narrative or alter it, potentially leading to a loss of its meaning.
