Bob Weis
’80, Architecture

He’s worked for some of the biggest names in the country: the Walt Disney Company, National Geographic, NASA and the Smithsonian. Yet back in 1980, Bob Weis was simply a Cal Poly Pomona student armed with two things — a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture and big dreams for the future.

A lot has happened since then.

“Originally, I thought I might go into stage or film design,” says Weis. “I was very lucky, however, because Disney was in a growth period when I was graduating. I met a Disney recruiter at Cal Poly Pomona and that led to my first job.”

Eventually, he served as senior vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering for 15 years, where he led the design and development of Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Fla. Working closely with Disney CEO Michael Eisner, he led a multi-disciplinary team to execute the project, which has attracted more than 80 million visitors since opening in 1989. He also supervised development of Tokyo DisneySea in Japan from inception to final approval and was instrumental in the development of Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris.

“I knew back in college that I wasn’t going to graduate and do mainstream architecture — that’s really not where my heart was,” says Weis, who balanced his architecture studies with coursework in Cal Poly Pomona’s theater program. “My passion was somewhere between design and entertainment, so I really targeted the entertainment world.”

“The great thing about the architecture program was that it taught us about architecture, but it also taught us how to think and solve problems,” says Weis. “By balancing my architecture time with my time in theater, I learned more about story, immersive storytelling in entertainment, and it put me in a position to be able to do architecture for a company like Disney, as well as museums and other companies.”

In 1994, Weis left Disney to launch Design Island Associates, a successful entertainment design and multi-media company specializing in new technology, destination development, film creation and museum and exhibit design. The client list includes some of the world’s most prestigious names, among them the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Kennedy Space Center, The American Revolution at Valley Forge, Sony Retail Entertainment, the Smithsonian, National Geographic, Rockefeller Center, Graceland, Port of Los Angeles and National Harbor.

“The field of entertainment design, used in a variety of themed destinations and
hotels, is a mixture of storytelling, entertainment and architecture,” he says, “but it wasn’t really that developed back when I was in college. It really only existed in theme parks like Disneyland. Now, it has really exploded and has created a demand for people who can design immersive environments that tell stories.”

Weis’ impressive achievements also include film directing. His independent film “Inconceivable” is currently airing on Lifetime. His documentary project “In Their Footsteps/Lewis and Clark” is airing nationwide on public television stations.

In 2007, Weis returned to Imagineering and now serves as executive vice president of creative at Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, Calif. — the master planning, creative development, design, engineering, production, project management, and research and development arm of the Walt Disney Company and its affiliates. His primary responsibility is leading the current expansion of Disney’s California Adventure during the next five years. The expansion will include new Cars Land, inspired by the hit Disney·Pixar animated film “Cars.”

One person who’s helping in these efforts is Weis’ 12-year-old son, Gabriel. “If you can see the world through a 12-year-old’s eyes, you can really get attuned to what people actually see. As designers, we can fall in love with some detail or something people might not notice, but with kids, you get right to the heart of what’s boring and exciting. So it’s very helpful to see my projects through his eyes.”

“I really enjoy my work at Disney, but I also enjoy working on documentary films and nonprofit projects, like museums, which I continue to do on the side,” he says. “It all comes back to storytelling. Whether it’s filmmaking, design, museum work or theme parks, the one common element is telling great stories — taking people to new and interesting worlds they haven’t been to before.”