Environments / Constructions

I use to do a lot of construction work like this for places like the Biodome (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), The Lost City (Bophuthatswana in Africa), the Henry Doorly Zoo (Omaha, NE), and Sea World (San Diego, CA). These all have a common theme. They are all fake environments that did not exist until we created them.

For example, the Lost City was a resort, of sorts, created alongside Sun City (think Las Vegas in South Africa), where a billionaire wanted to create a family-friendly water park which kids could enjoy while parents could still go gamble. He created a mythology which claimed a forgotten city was lost to the ages after being destroyed by the eruption of a volcano. He discovered it (or so he claimed), then turned it into a theme park.

The reason I am sharing this, beyond the fact that this construction work was a significant part of my life, is the idea of artificial or fake environments were created where visitors were willing to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy the park, resort, or zoo.

These projects were what gave birth to the idea of something like the Museum of Alternative History (MoAH), although the purpose and concept wasn’t fully formed until decades later, when a school board in Texas decided to rewrite history to include in textbooks that were distributed to schools throughout the South.