Design Stack: A Blog about Art, Design and Architecture: Photographs of Abandoned Amusement Park

12 May 2017

Photographs of Abandoned Amusement Park - Nara Dreamland in Japan

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Japanese amusement park is demolished, 56 years after it was built, story and pictures in the post.
In the late 1950s Kunizu Matsuo visited the US, as part of his itinerary he visited the newly constructed Disneyland in Anaheim. He was so impressed, he started negotiating a deal to bring Disneyland to Nara, Japan. In the latter parts of construction there were disagreements between the two parties, that saw Matsuo create his own branding for the amusement park "Nara Dreamland". In the late 70s a deal was made to bring Disneyland to Tokyo which opened in the early 80s. When Universal Studios Japan, opened in Osaka it was the final blow for Nara Dreamland which eventually closed in 2006. the site was eventually repossessed by the state, due to unpaid back taxes. It took two rounds at the auction room, to sell the site for 730 million Yen ($6.5 million). The land was bought to build housing and demolition works started at the end of 2016. Parisian, French Photographer Romain Veillon, visited before it was torn down and did a fantastic job at documenting the (Architecture), Engineering and the Art that went into this fantastic place, with his wonderful (photographs). A place that stored a lot of good memories, before it was erased from the (map). info from wikipedia.