The Bilbao Effect is well-known, but what about the Disney effect? Certainly, the castle that graces the company’s logo far eclipses Gehry’s Guggenheim design in recognizability. A synthesis of various European manses, Cinderella’s turreted abode can be visited as easily in Tokyo as in Florida, not to mention found lighting up millions of screens the world over.

“Disney is often seen as what’s quote-unquote ‘wrong’ in postmodernity. But apparently people like going to Disneyland,” says curator Saskia van Stein. “I’m trying to investigate why.” To that end, van Stein brought together artists, architects, theorists and designers to organize an exhibition at Rotterdam’s Het Nieuwe Instituut this fall. On display through March, “The Architecture of Staged Realities” is split into eight chapters, including “Constructing Identity,” “The Dream of Progress,” and “Inclusion and Exclusion.”

Van Stein quotes Walt Disney as saying, “Imagination is the model from which reality is created.” Touching on some of the tension in that statement, Frédérique Albert-Bordenave’s exhibition design embraces “go-away green” — the colour used to hide infrastructure like lamp poles and antennae in Disney parks. This choice of paint also turns the environment into a giant green screen, ready to be swapped out with one of the simulated backdrops that make up the illusory environments of Disney and its subsidiaries’ blockbuster films.

Various works play with this mediation of fantasy and reality: Kem Weber proposes Bauhaus-inspired designs for Disney’s studio complex, Bas van Beek converts the 2D teacups of Beauty and the Beast into the real deal and Pilvi Takala’s film The Real Snow White shows someone dressed as the titular character denied entry to Disneyland for violating the park’s control of its simulation.

The exhibition also explores how the wonderful worlds of Disney films have not always been so wonderful to everyone. “The caricatures and the dissemination of racism [in early Disney films] talk back to architecture,” van Stein explains. “Whom do we represent? For whom do we build? How can architecture absorb a more diverse way of living, or even an alternative way of organizing your built environments?” While the question is open-ended, she hopes that it’s one that stirs visitors. “It’s a provocation,” she says — perhaps, we might think, for us to imagine new realities.