I just picked up a new read, The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation, and Self. The volume is collection of essays by scholars of a variety of backgrounds from around the world, edited by Scott A. Lukas of Lake Tahoe College. Most of the content comes from the social sciences, and there is a solid glossary of terms used throughout the book. Reading it has raised an important issue for this project—given the wide body of work on theming from a sociological / anthropological perspective, how will the vocabulary and criteria differ from a design-centric discussion of theming?
For example, someone in the social sciences might consider particular 'themes' that I would dismiss, or group spaces in with thematic environments that I reason—from a design perspective—don't really belong. A good example of this is what sociologist Mark Gottdiener at University of Buffalo calls "representing the unrepresentable." In his seminal book, The Theming of America, Gottdiener outlines several archetypal themes—those that occur over and over again in our culture, such as the "Wild West" or "Tropical Paradise." Along with these he counts abstract spaces that tell a story not as a literal narrative, but more as a metaphor; among his examples are Maya Lin's Vietnam Wall and the Jewish Museum Berlin. By the standards Gottdiener uses as a sociologist, both places do convey themes—mourning, loss, redemption, remembrance, etc. Yet I don't consider either site to be a thematic environment, or to be an example of thematic design.
As I get deeper and deeper into my criteria and terminology for the design language of theming, I think it is quite important to make these distinctions. Theming is obviously thought of in a much broader sense in the social sciences, and it is by no means a universally described phenomenon. What constitutes a theme and a thematic environment is bound to vary widely—even between creative professionals. An architect, an environmental graphics designer, and an urban planner may not be able to agree on what is and is not theming. One of the goals of this thesis is to clarify thematic design as a movement with its own language, and provide designers with a framework for identifying, evaluating, and appreciating theming.