KEYNOTE INTERVIEW
How Wētā Workshop helped convey a sense of wonder in Haikou
Image courtesy of Dafeng
Prologue: Wētā Workshop Co-owner Sir Richard Taylor has enjoyed a stellar career in the creative industries across an extraordinary range of artistic and technical disciplines. Along with his wife Tania Rodger, the New Zealander co-founded Wētā Workshop in the back room of their Wellington apartment and built it into one of world’s most acclaimed concept design and manufacturing companies.
Made a Knight Companion of the NZ Order of Merit for his services to film in 2010 Sir Richard (he insists on simply being called ‘Richard’), has won over 30 national and international awards for his work within the creative industries.
China is particularly close to his heart. Taylor has spent more than 20 years working regularly in the country and building close relationships with local and central government, educational facilities, and the creative industries. Such close contacts led to Wētā Workshop playing a key role in the design and creation of AURA, the astonishing attraction at the heart of the cdf Haikou International Duty Free Shopping Complex.
AURA brings imaginary worlds to life by delivering a dazzling array of visual effects and immersive visitor experiences and games. Martin Moodie, also a New Zealander, caught up with Taylor to talk about the project.
Sir Richard Taylor, a pioneer in concept design and immersive experiences
Image courtesy of Dafeng
“This project working for CDF has been so exceptional because what they requested was an environment that really is one massive organic immersive sculpture,” says Sir Richard Taylor of his and Wētā Workshop’s involvement in the cdf Haikou International Shopping Complex.
“It is one where the touch sensitivity, the interactivity, the way that the audience activates the environment – and the environment is activating to the audience – means that you’re really passing through a three-dimensional cinematic experience at a monumental scale.
“It’s hard to comprehend how big this is – 50 meters by 48 metres. But it’s not till you’re standing there with tens of thousands of people that you really comprehend how big that sculpture is. Many parts of it have made it exceptional, but the fact we’ve created this tactile three-dimensional art sculpture within a piece of exceptional architecture has made it so impactful and so special.”
Taylor recalls the moment he saw the finished project, the evening before the 28 October inauguration. “It’s a bit gauche to go, ‘Oh, well, the pictures might look good, but it’s nothing compared to the experience.’ But I genuinely mean it when I say it,” he says.
“I sent a photograph home to one of our most senior creatives and he wrote back and said, ‘Gee, that’s an amazing compositing job of putting the audience into your digital rendering.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not a digital rendering. This is the real environment.’ He couldn’t believe it wasn’t a digital rendering.
“In many ways, that’s what feels so special about the place – it’s actually been built. I’m not taking credit for this. We have art directed it, designed it and taken it through to engineering design but it has been entirely built by Chinese company Dafeng under the watchful eye of our team for CDF.”
Image courtesy of Dafeng
“Faultless in its perfection”
Taylor salutes the “exceptional’ work done by Dafeng, China’s largest themed experience construction firm. “Dafeng has created this illusion that you are actually in an object that’s been printed by one massive 3D printer. It’s really hard to wrap your mind around,” he comments.
“The illusion is the fidelity, the quality, the air of craftsmanship that has been brought to this. I’ve never seen a piece of construction work like it,” says Taylor, high praise from a man acclaimed internationally for the exactitude of his work.
“Because of what I do for a job, even if I was to step into your personal home, my eye is so trained to quickly flit around the architrave and around the scotia and around the window edges and I look for imperfections.
“That’s just a thing that’s in me – I’ve got to be so excellence-focused in everything that we do. I can’t help it, it’s almost a scratch I can’t itch. So I’m always looking for imperfections that may need to be made more perfect. And I couldn’t fault the work – it is so faultless in its perfection.
“And that’s a tribute to CDF who as a client were willing to go on that technical journey and give people the time and the money to do it. And then of course a tribute to Dafeng who never settled for second best. For example, they made one thing ten times to get it right – just astounding. So I see it as being an extraordinarily high watermark for the whole of the Chinese industry and to some degree for this type of installation in the world.”
Taylor says that CDFG was seeking to create an immersive experience that would serve as a drawcard for the mall and give people a reason to spend extended time in the public space. The retailer also craved an environment that would encourage visitors to share images of the space with others in China and around the world.
“CDF would have wanted to celebrate Hainan as a beautiful tropical wonderland of a place to visit, which it is as you know. And I now know myself, it’s an extraordinarily beautiful place. So we set about taking our inspiration from the fauna and the flora of Hainan island. That seems very obvious and almost a twee idea, but ultimately it’s all about the filter of creativity that you put it through. We knew that we wanted to be very bold with the graphics, the animations, the colours and the ideas.
“They’ve built the biggest duty free shopping mall in the world through the various levels of COVID lockdown in China and that just speaks to the dogged determination of an amazing group of people”
Richard Taylor
“We wanted to create an ageless experience, where little kiddies may find huge excitement, older teenagers would want to TikTok (and Instagram it; but also where older generations would find comfort because the environment it’s not jarring, not overly loud. It’s a beautiful place to sit.
“The other critical component – which is probably rarely acknowledged, but it’s an imperative – is that it complements the very high-end brands in the mall. I would hazard a guess that the brands in the mall are probably in the top 0.1 percent of world shopping brands… extraordinary brands.
“It was imperative that this space and the escalator built served as a portal through which the public go from arriving as a customer and leaving as an audience member. And somewhere in between that portal-like interface they are going to want to purchase. It was also imperative, therefore, that the aesthetic complemented all of those brands. It couldn’t be too organic. It couldn’t be too busy and bitsy. It had to be very sophisticated and graphic and architectural in its approach.”
Transforming an enterprise into an experience
That’s an interesting comment in the context of widespread research findings that underline how the pandemic has accelerated a trend among Chinese travellers – especially younger consumers – towards the experiential more than the transactional.
“That was very much the foundation of CDF’s brief,” Taylor concurs. “It was incredibly bold of them because a shopping mall ultimately is a place of functionality. It is housing shops under a weatherproof roof to give an audience access in the most comfortable way. So anything that is put into an environment that enhances the non-commercial side of the transaction is amazingly gifting.
“Of course it has commercial aspirations… to make it a destination that brings more people in etc. I understand that. But if you really shake it down and think about an entrepreneurial company choosing to invest whatever the sum of money was – to do something so extroverted, so outrageous and so out there – speaks to their desire to give their customers something more than what other people may be doing.
“I really sensed that on the morning that the public first came into the space – 40,000 people came in on that first day, and it was just incredible. I figure that maybe a million, maybe 2 million photographs were taken that day because there wasn’t a single person walking through the environment who didn’t stop to take photographs.”
Taylor says his favourite photos were those at the end of the opening day as visitors rested, exhausted from shopping and simply relaxed in the environment. “That made me super happy because to me CDF had achieved everything they had attempted to set out to do, which was to make something beautiful that they could give back to their audience – their customer.
“They had wanted to make it comfortable enough so that their audience would spend time in there socially. And then to ensure that it enriches the environment so the retailers who are ultimately paying the rentals on the property feel that their brands have been celebrated.”
Taylor recalls sitting at the celebratory post-inauguration dinner with several executives from some of the world’s most illustrious watch, whisky and leathergoods brands. “They all said they were thrilled at how their brands felt like they were sitting in one thematic universe. That was very nice to hear.”
On a video released by CDFG in the run-up to the opening, Taylor said he and Wētā Workshop had wanted the customer treated both as an audience member and a participant, a nice premise. Expanding on that notion, he explains: “Most people that will visit probably don’t know {beforehand} what the interior looks like. They’re going because they want to buy something special or they’re just going to do what we all do, which is cruise around the mall on a wet Sunday afternoon.
“And what I guess CDF were trying to do through the work that we did and Dafeng did, was transition people from not just coming to buy but coming to participate in the culture of shopping, socialising and eating. There’s definitely a sense of merriment.”
Taylor emphasises the term merriment, observing that much of modern society is “quite cold”. He adds, “I call it the vanilla-flavoured Ikea future that we’re delivering our children into. It’s a sameness with a cold interface. How many kids are never going to feel grass between their toes because they’re born into an urban pavement environment?”
Image courtesy of Dafeng
Warming to the theme, he adds, “A shopping mall by its very nature has to be hygienic and of course meet all codes and be earthquake-proof and so on. And by its very nature, it has to be a certain thing – a box in which you house retail stores. But why shouldn’t it also be an immersive experience that takes you into a fantastical world?”
That is precisely the glory of CDFG’s achievement, Taylor says. After the official opening he visited the company’s offices and engaged with his collaborators whom previously he had only met during online conferences. “I finally got to spend an afternoon with them and chat about their core principles as a company and why they’re willing to spend this type of money to unlock experiential retail for their audience. That’s because they want them to be participants, not just customers.
“We’re watching this emerge around the world, specifically in the US but also other parts of the world where these old, hard shopping malls – even if they’re decorated with the best marble and the best of glass paneling – still don’t evoke an emotion from you that the product and the stores may.
“And there is obviously a shift in the psyche of these type of landlords to make sure that their customers go away feeling like they had a holistic experience – a complete 360 degree immersive experience in the process of shopping.”
Taylor relates a compelling anecdote that sums up how triumphantly CDFG has succeeded in that aim. “The loveliest thing I witnessed was a group of elderly ladies who had come together to the shopping mall. I saw them in the process of all having their cell phones out photographing.
“There probably were half a dozen, maybe eight of them. And then they started moving as a group in a rotating manner so that they could all photograph, unaware that they were almost locked in step with each other. It was gorgeous. It was such a beautiful thing to see. And that made me super happy.”
Wētā Workshop – creating ‘cool stuff’ for over 30 years
Wellington, New Zealand-based Wētā Workshop has won world acclaim for conceiving and building projects of rare imagination and often breath-taking scale.
“Inside our Wellington facility exists the capability to execute almost any creative brief, to the highest quality, and deliver just about anywhere in the world,” the company says.
“Over more than 30 years, we’ve designed and built specialty suits, mixed reality experiences, and sculptures of monumental proportions. High-tech weapons and vehicles that move. Entire worlds with rich cultures, histories, and ecosystems. From film, TV, and gaming to themed attractions, collectibles, exhibitions, public art – even children’s playgrounds. We love projects that capture our imaginations.
“We do intimate. We do epic. Whether it’s a small-scale charity project or a blockbuster film of epic scope, we pour the same passion, creativity and craftsmanship into everything we do.”
Film projects include New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall as well as I Am Mother, The Amazing Spiderman 2, and more.
“We love projects that capture our imaginations.” And, as with the company’s work at the cdf Haikou International Duty Free Shopping Complex, capture the hearts of consumers.
Unprecedented challenges
I suggest to Taylor that it must have been thrilling that he could make it to the opening given the tough travel restrictions in place at the time. “I think ‘could’ is an interesting word – that I could make it. I just knew I should make it,” he replies.
Image courtesy of Dafeng
“I was just so blown away at the artistic integrity of the people, the team and what they’ve delivered“
– Richard Taylor
“It was a big commitment from me because I run a relatively big business and I can’t really afford to be out of the loop for ten days in [quarantine] isolation, but I felt firmly that I should be there, to celebrate along with Dafeng and CDF because of the exceptional project this has been for us. Irrelevant of the end result, the project has been as close to as perfect a project as we could hope.
“It had almost unprecedented challenges, but never have those challenges been due to any discourse between us, CDF or Dafeng. The challenges have purely come because of the problems of not being able to travel due to COVID. They’ve built the biggest duty free shopping mall in the world through the various levels of COVID lockdown in China and that just speaks to the dogged determination of an amazing group of people.
“I met a lot of those people. I met the architects, all the CDF creative leaders who have run the project, and the Dafeng people that were still on the project. And every one of them is operating at the very pinnacle of their career and unwavering in their pursuit of excellence.”
Taylor talks with reverence of meeting a young French-Chinese architect who had set about building the glass atrium rooves in a manner that kept a maximum glass ration to minimum steel framing. Though Taylor had long been aware from the architectural plans of what was in place, the impact on actually seeing the end result was profound.
“I noted it the moment I walked in. The impact would be invisible to the public, because they’re not appreciating it, but emotionally they sure as hell would get it. They would sense the travel of light, the passage of shadows, the beauty of the space being so illuminated with natural light.
“He could have very easily copped out and worked with the traditional triangular truss framing process, but instead he forced the project down a much more challenging pipeline to give something totally new and beautiful and original. That was very elevating, as you could imagine.”
Paying tribute to Dafeng
On Dafeng’s contribution to the project, Taylor says, “Every imaginable amount of credit that can be given to Dafeng needs to be. I can’t imagine there’s another company in the world of this scale and the sophistication doing this type of work.
“They took this in their stride. They built it in a frighteningly short length of time. I think it was eight months from when they came onto the project. And they achieved it down to the wire but with great aplomb.
“I was just so blown away at the artistic integrity of the people, the team and what they’ve delivered. There is this collaboration of extraordinary companies that have actually made it happen. And we’re just a part of that. It was a very collaborative effort.”
Asked about his emotions on opening day, Taylor replies: “I desire to retain my childlike wonder in the world. I have a deeply inquisitive mind and I find that my greatest blessing. I have an almost unquenchable thirst for the inquisitive mind that I’ve got. Walking in and seeing what I had only seen through photographs and only intimately through the draftings, the digital plans and the huge highly detailed miniature that we had built… was very emotional and very impacting on me.
Image courtesy of Dafeng
Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger have reinvented consumer experiences with their whimsical take on experiential design and retail
“It’s hard to wrap words around it. I was just overwhelmed. I took hundreds of pictures. The next morning arriving for the opening, where all the dignitaries were, was one thing. But then minutes after the opening finished, they opened the doors and this was almost like a Beatles concert.
“There were people pushing at the doors and the security was holding everyone back. Then they opened the floodgates and people just poured into the building. And that was special because it’s one thing to see dignitaries and clients and the owners and the workers and the technicians and the artists all celebrating what’s been done.
“It’s a whole other thing to actually see the public who are coming in cold, highly critical, as they should be, suddenly entering the space. Even just watching the restaurants fill up… and watching people twirling around almost dizzy with the experience. It was really great.
“And as people started to discover that they could actually activate the space themselves – because we didn’t have any signs and we didn’t tell them – that was really cool. That made me very, very happy.
“I felt very special but I felt it was also incredibly special being back in China and amazing being in Hainan. I thrive on the time I spend in China and I put it down to the optimism of Chinese people. I love that optimism. Always thinking about what’s better tomorrow than reflecting on what could have happened yesterday.”
Spotlight Series - February 2023