Disney's Black Spire Outpost brings Star Wars into the real world, and no detail is too small—even the rocks.

Standing in the middle of Black Spire Outpost , the Batuu village that’s the center of this new chapter in the Star Wars saga, it feels like we’re in a place that’s very familiar but strange.

Odd spires jut out of rocky crags. Pock-marked buildings reveal an ancient, unknown history. The ground is laced with tracks from past visitors. The marketplace is alive with the smell of barbequing meat and shopkeepers hawking unusual wares. Stormtroopers menacingly roam the village, keeping an eye on locals and visitors alike. In the middle of it all is the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, the Millennium Falcon, sitting idly yet ready for takeoff at any moment.

This is place-setting at its finest, every single detail of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is meant to invoke a world we’ve never been but firmly set in a universe we already love.

“Our job is make sure guests don’t question the reality,” Zsolt Hormay, Walt Disney Imagineering Creative Executive, Themed Finishes Studio told Popular Mechanics, “We are successful when they walk in and immediately think they are in a Star Wars movie.”

Walt Disney Company provided travel, accommodations, and access for this story, but didn't influence Popular Mechanics' editorial standards in any way.

A Whole New World

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For a company well-versed in creating a world , Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is by far their most ambitious.

In 2012, Disney acquired the rights to Star Wars thanks to a $4 billion acquisition of Lucasfilms. Three years later, the announcement was made that the four-decade-old movie franchise was being brought off screen and into real life.

“We are creating a jaw-dropping new world that represents our largest single themed land expansion ever,” Disney CEO Bob Iger told an excited audience at the D23 convention in 2015 , “These new lands at Disneyland and Walt Disney World will transport guests to a whole new Star Wars planet.”

In less than four years, Iger and Disney opened a 14-acre theme land, costing around one-billion dollars, in Southern California on May 31, 2019. It’s the largest single themed-land in Disney Parks history. Later this summer, a nearly identical replica will open in Central Florida.

"If we built [Tatooine], we are telling someone else’s story...It had to be a place that we've never been before."

The world is called Batuu , a planet that's been only on the fringes of the Star Wars universe—until now. This ancient and far-flung planet was once a prominent trading outpost before lightspeed rendered it obsolete. It’s largest village is Black Spire Outpost, which is named after the dark, black petrified tree trunk that’s sits in the center of the town. The village is also a notorious hotspot for smugglers, scoundrels, and adventurers looking to avoid the First Order.

The Millennium Falcon is here because, after The Last Jedi, the famed ship needed a few repairs. The remote planet makes it a perfect hideout for the Falcon and it’s co-pilot, Chewie. This also makes it a great spot for a Resistance base. Unfortunately, the First Order has also set up camp here, seeking to crush what’s left of their old foe. All of this foreshadows a potential galactic showdown on this once-forgotten world.



Two days before the park’s official opening, Chris Beatty, Disney Imagineering Executive Creative Director, explained that at the beginning of the land’s development there were long conversations around the idea of creating a planet that we’ve seen in previous films, like Tatooine, but creative liberation came from creating an entirely new world.

Matt Blitz

“If we built one of those places, we are telling someone else’s story,” said Beatty, “It had to be a place that we’ve never been before. Once we figured that out, we were free to tell any story.”

This creative license is what makes Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge so fascinating, unexpected, and risky. The land doesn't rely on nostalgia (though, there’s plenty of that) or feeding fans the familiar. There’s little mention of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, or Darth Vader. The phrase “Star Wars” can’t be found anywhere.

Black Spire Outpost is the true star, and every detail is in the service of a story. The buildings, food, merchandise, the signage, and the rocky landscape all play their part in telling what is essentially a spinoff saga of an already legendary tale.

So, how does a planet get built from scratch?

In a Galaxy Not Too Far Away

Concept art for Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. The city was largely inspired by Ralph McQuarrie, the concept artist on the original Star Wars trilogy. Disney

Early on, everyone involved in the project realized that Galaxy's Edge would only work if was grounded in the familiar. So designers ventured back in time to the conceptual art of the original trilogy.

“There’s a very distinct visual vocabulary [to Star Wars], and a lot of it was established by Ralph McQuarrie , the original Star Wars designer,” explained Lucasfilm’s Vice-President and Executive Creative Director Doug Chiang, “Ralph McQuarrie is Star Wars and Star Wars is Ralph McQuarrie.”

A quiet corner of a market in Marrakesh, Morocco. Real-world markets like this one helped inspire the look and feel of Disney’s Black Spire Outpost. Starcevic Getty Images

Black Spire Outpost. Matt Blitz

Throughout their research, they began to notice an architectural style and motif that used a lot of domes, spheres, and spires, something that Chiang said they wanted to lean into. To add authenticity to the village marketplace, the creative team also drew inspiration from historical marketplaces around the globe, visiting ones in Marrakech, Morocco and Istanbul, Turkey.

“There’s so much we learned from going on location,” says Chiang, “Just smelling the air, feeling the moisture, seeing what real materials are used... it all gave us a foundation for reality.”

There was also a desire to learn how these places were built over time and how these layers of history can still be observed today. For example, the DIY-nature of the electrical wiring that runs among centuries-old homes or how an air conditioning unit may be installed into a five-hundred-year-old stone wall.

Much like Istanbul, Black Spire Outpost’s mythology is that it’s been inhabited for centuries. The integration of modern technologies into this ancient village is most vividly seen in the details, like how electrical wiring seemingly haphazardly hangs down or how a modern control panel is screwed onto a very old-looking rock formation.

“There’s a layered history here,” says Carrie Beck, Vice President of Development at Lucasfilms. “There are things that have happened here, probably thousands of years prior to our visit.”

This familiarity is meant to ground and give visitors permission to immerse themselves in a world they understand, while still providing plenty to explore.

“The trick with designing Star Wars is that 80 or 90 percent of is... anchored in a real place,” says Chiang, “It's that 10 or 15 percent that’s the freshness that takes it to the Star Wars universe.”

Do. Or Do Not. There Is No Try.

Black Spire Outpost marketplace. Richard Harbaugh / Disney

All designs, ideas, intent and concepts are merely theoretical until it’s actually built—and that was the job of Zsolt Hormay. In 1987, Hormay left communist Hungary bound for the U.S. More specifically, Lansing, Michigan.

Zsolt Hormay, builder of many of the features at Disney’s Black Outpost Spire. A long-time Disney Imagineer, Hormay's creations include the Tree of Life at Disney World’s Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, Cars Land, and Pandora: The World of Avatar . Matt Blitz

“The only job available in Lansing using my artistic background was at a golf course,” says Hormay, “That’s where I learned how to weld, spray cement, paint, and sculpt. It was truly a crash course.”

He soon parlayed that into a job at Disney, helping to build Typhoon Lagoon . Two decades later, he now heads up Disney Imagineering Themed Finishes Art Studio, which is charged with place-making. This means creating and designing rockwork, environmental landscape, and buildings that give a location an organic look and feel.

A big construction process always begins on a small scale. Much like what was done on A New Hope , Hormay’s team built a series of highly detailed three-dimensional models that allowed them to work through the design, layout, and even coloring. The models started with a quarter-inch to a foot scale model.

“It’s much easier to manipulate things,” says Hormay, “It allows us to commit and clarify the whole lay of the land.”

Once they establish the look and layout, they move to full scale construction. Hormay says that all the materials and most of the tools they used are no different than what’s used in regular building construction. That includes several different kinds of steel (stainless, rebar, pencil rod), plaster, water and acid-based paint, and cement, the latter which he considers an almost magical material.

“From cement, you can create from metal to dirt and everything in between,” says Hormay, “We have bronze doors, wood structures, and dirt made out of cement. It’s just the way you render it.”

A model creation of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Disney

While cement is decidedly old school , modern tech was also used for creating better, more efficient construction methods. Next to the black spire in the center of a village is a seven-foot-tall statue that looks like it’s made out of ancient limestone. It’s not.

“This is truly milestone for us. It’s a full scale statue that’s completely done by 3D printing and printed all in one piece,” explains Hormay. What’s most impressive about the statue is the realistic look and feel of the spongy texture of limestone.

“Texture is important with rock. We actually superimposed real rock textures onto the digital data so it could feel like real limestone,” says Hormay, “Someone worked on this for weeks and weeks to make sure we got it right.”

Despite the labor-intensive nature of this initial piece, he says they plan on using the 3D printing process again for more and potential bigger projects.

A Living World On the Edge of the Galaxy

Walking the land two days prior to the public opening, Hormay explains that his job is to bring the land out of the conceptual and into real life. He reiterates the shared vision; to create a unique, yet familiar world and to establish layers of history.

Pointing out specific examples of how they went about establishing this, he gestures to a crumbling, discolored wall that’s jammed next to a smooth, more modern wall in the village center.

“This is supposed to be the oldest wall [in the village]. As you can see it’s structurally compromised, really falling apart, and eroding away,” Hormay says, “Next to that, it’s a wall that was obviously constructed more recently. It’s not the same era. We were really looking to establish these timelines that are different from each other.”

These two landscapes mixed together help create a layered structural history of Black Spire Outpost. Matt Blitz

Forced perspective, something Disney is well-known for , is used to great effect here as well. It isn’t just the size that tricks the eye but the texture and color. Hormay explains that the texture is much more detailed on the closer rockwork than the ones further away. This is also something they did with the rock color.

“The color temperature is much more warm and vivid close by and much more cool and misty, almost pale, as it gets further away,” says Hormay.

In fact, they had to compensate for the different climates and land positioning in Southern California and Central Florida. “In Florida, we had to punch the colors a bit more because the sun is mostly behind [the land],” says Hormay.

Things in the rear are not as large as the appear. Matt Blitz

The position of the rock and spires is also very strategic, creating a feeling that there’s more land beyond what we can see. After all, Batuu is a big planet.

Like the rockwork and the statute’s limestone, creating realistic-looking natural elements is paramount to fully immersing a visitor. The village’s namesake black spire looks almost like a semi-precious stone, a sharp glistening arrowhead type of rock that supports the mythology that there’s something almost spiritual about it. The petrified trees that dot and raise above the landscape are based on trees found in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park .

The rockwork that surrounds the village shows its age and its centuries-old history of being inhabited with roof structures, little windows, and indentations. All of this is to create a world that’s familiar, unique, and teeming with life.

“It’s not a dead, abandoned place,” says Hormay as he looks around Black Spire Outpost, “People are still adding to it. It’s still very much alive.”



Crowds are expected to be large at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and it’s unclear how each and every subtle detail will play when packed tightly like Mos Eisley Cantina when Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes are on stage . But for true Star War fans, Black Spire Outpost will instantly transport you to a galaxy far, far away.

“Here we are at the end of the galaxy and... doing something that has never been done before,” says Hormay, “And I think we’ve done it.”