The Pittock Mansion arrived in pieces at the loading dock of the Design Museum, packed into crates, and over the next 72 hours it had to become something a guest could walk up to and look inside. At 14 feet tall, with roof sections heavy enough to test the building’s clearance, and skylights that required careful positioning just to fit the structure underneath them, the assembly was less a gallery installation than a construction site in slow motion. LAIKA Studios was building Wildwood: The Exhibition before the film it celebrates had even reached audiences, and the pressure of that timing was visible in every clay-filled tile gap and every rewired practical light.
When the set breaks apart, someone fills it with clay
The Pittock Mansion, one of the primary showpieces of the exhibition, is also one of the main sets from the film itself. Terrace sections go down first, then walls attach to the terrace, then roof pieces settle on top. That last step is where things get complicated: the roof components are substantial in weight, the museum has roughly 10 feet of clearance, and the mansion had to land precisely between two skylights with almost no margin. Once it was positioned, a crew member went around the base with clay matched to the color of the existing grout, pressing it into the gaps where the sections no longer sat perfectly flush. ‘It’s difficult for them to line up perfectly,’ she explained, working a small amount into each joint. The result, close up, reads as a real tiled terrace. That level of repair work, invisible to a visitor standing two feet away, defines the standard the whole exhibition was held to.
Lighting required its own quiet expertise. Fabrizio, the electrician responsible for the practical lights inside the sets, resoldered connections that were slightly off before any fixture went to its final position. In the trash can beside one scene, the prop department had placed rigatoni pasta. The detail was not incidental: it was the point of the entire exercise.
Brad Schiff posed a puppet so you feel the weight on one hip
Animation supervisor Brad Schiff, who worked across all of LAIKA’s films, arrived on the morning the first puppets came to set. His job was to give the main character, Prue McKeel, a pose that read as movement even though she would stand still for the entire run of the exhibition. Prue is described as strong-willed and adventurous, and she appears mid-scene pushing her bike. ‘Life is imperfect,’ Schiff said, working through the logic of the pose, ‘so you actually need to sort of bring that through the puppets for them to feel natural.’ He was looking for asymmetry through the body, weight settled onto one hip, a counter-posture that makes the figure read as caught in motion rather than placed on display. The curls at the back of her head had compressed slightly in transit. He adjusted those too.
Guests viewing Prue’s bedroom set would be able to lean in close enough to see every surface of the floor. The design team added light sources near the windows so a glow could be thrown outward, giving the impression of an interior that extended beyond the frame.
The animator who spent eight months nervous about this moment
On opening day, with animators from the Portland studio walking through the finished galleries alongside visitors, the person who had shepherded the exhibition into existence described feeling relaxed for the first time in eight months. The animators had spent over a decade on the work being displayed. ‘It always makes me nervous when we’re representing their work,’ she said, ‘and we’ve got to showcase that, and pick things out.’ Travis was there. People had come from Portland. The wild pig armature, the costumes, the character puppets, the full mansion: all of it under one roof at the Design Museum, before the film had opened.
The Pittock Mansion sat between the skylights exactly as planned, clay joints invisible, rigatoni in the trash can, Prue’s weight on one hip.
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