5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema

Written by Romullo Baratto | Translated by Matthew Valletta

June 15, 2017 Share

“ "There are several ways of making films. Like Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson,
who make music. Like Sergei Eisenstein, who paints. Like Stroheim, who wrote
novels spoken in the days of silent film. Like Alain Resnais, who sculpts. And
like Socrates - I mean Rossellini, who creates philosophy. Cinema, in other
words can be everything at the same time, judge and litigant "- Jean-Luc
Godard [1] ”
It is di icult to imagine cinema taking place in a vacuum. Without the scene to fill each storyline, we cannot
Save
be transported away from our reality to the world of the film we are immersed in. Within Godard's list of
ways to make films, we can add another: cinema as architecture. The interaction between cinema and
Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 1/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

architecture - "the inherent architecture of cinematic expression and the cinematographic essence of
architectural experience" is a complex, o en multifaceted dialogue between both disciplines. [2] 

Regarding the production of these two distinct "art forms", the architect Juhani Pallasmaa emphasizes that
both are realized with the help of a team of specialists and assistants as a result of collective e ort.
However, another aspect emerges: both are the arts of the author, the fruit of a creator, an individual artist.
Let us turn our attention to this and other moments in which these arts intersect. 

Set construction is undoubtedly one of these moments of intersection. Allowing for great control over
shooting conditions, sets built in closed studios enable the possibility of getting rid of limitations related to
the climate, lighting and eventual setbacks that may occur in shooting in "real" environments. Alfred
Hitchcock is an example of a filmmaker who has made extensive use of sets to create spaces of tension and
horror in his productions.

Save

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 2/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

Another emblematic example of the use of sets in cinema occurs in German expressionism. Films such as
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Robert Wiene's Nosferatu (1922) are
works in which Pallasmaa says spaces and environments present a "fantastic architecture suspended
between dreaming and reality." Wiene's film Nosferatu shows completely distorted architecture
characterized by oblique angles and marked shadows on the surfaces of the setting, establishing the
architecture as something out of touch with reality. Nosferatu's scenography replicates architectures that
are realistic, however, the film's narrative charges these spaces with a dreamlike atmosphere.

Save

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 3/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

The artificial spaces of German expressionism with their forced angles, shadows and perspectives generate
tension and distort human perception, "oppressing the observer's own space by incorporating it into the
vortex of the film." [3] Thus, films like Caligari produce entirely new spaces which simultaneously embrace
and absorb everything in the scene. In these films one perceives the scenery acting as a protagonist in itself,
not just as a backdrop.

“ "To endow with a poetic value that which does not yet possess it, to willfully
restrict the field of vision so as to intensify expression: these are the two
properties that help make cinematic decor the ideal setting for modern
beauty." - Aragon [4] ”
It isn't necessary to only create scenarios that simulate shadows and distort perspectives. Camera
movements and specific frames can create similar e ects in cinematography. “ To pre-stylize reality prior to
tackling it amounts to dodging the problem," writes Erwin Panofsky, “The problem is to manipulate and
shoot un-stylized reality in such a way that the result has style” [5] 

Save

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 4/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

Filming "real space" was the goal of directors like Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti and
Pietro Germi, who created narratives that showed the reality of Italy in the second half of the 1940s. Films,
which include famous works like Rome, Open City (1945), The Bicycle Thief (1948) by De Sica and Visconti's
La Terra Trema (1948), present critical views of Italy's post-war period. As Siegfried Kracauer states: urban
space, with its streets and buildings, was both the site and the vehicle fuelling this social critique.

Save

Representations of urban space, however, are not limited to Italian neo-realist films - they also make up an
important
Homepart of the plot in later
Projectsproductions. ForProducts Foldersin his film Two or Three
example, Jean-Luc Godard Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 5/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

Things I Know About Her (1967) uses images of Paris and the transformations that the capital went through
 in the 1960s: with the construction of great projects in the suburbs and suburbs themselves - as metaphor
for everyday situations in the lives of some of the characters portrayed in the film. Consumerism,
capitalism, and globalization appear as central themes of this story, whether referring to the city or the
personal life of the women portrayed in the film. Similarly, Quentin Tarantino with Pulp Fiction (1994)
portrays the periphery of a generic city as the background to a series of banal stories: unemployed people,
murderers, waitresses, and roadside hotels make up a plot that fits into what could be called "dirty
realism" - that can occur anywhere in the world. [6] 

Dystopic visions of future cities also make up the specter of architecture's role in cinema. An example of
this is the film Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott, which features a fictional city (San Angeles) that is the
product of a "new cybernetic society that brings together ethnicities and diverse architectural styles,
highlighting the results of years of a hybrid use of o en-unsupported spaces and waste generators." Their
environments are dystopian manifestations of "postmodernism guaranteed by the capitalist supremacy of
the postindustrial era." [7]  Save

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 6/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

Metropolis (1927), by Fritz Lang is another instance of the future being portrayed as dystopia. Santos (2004)
writes that "the systems’ great machine is e ectively represented by an oppressive and omnipresent city,
which reduces its inhabitants to mere ventriloquists manipulated by gears in a clear manifestation of the
fears aroused by a new industrial city." Lang's work must be examined from the context in which it is
made. Having been produced in the late 1920’s, it reflects questions about the inter-war period, when
Germany su ered from the defeat of World War I and other European countries showed accelerated
economic growth due to heavy industrialization. In that sociopolitical scenario, Metropolis was the
possibility of a dystopian future, not as distant from reality that might conjure from other German
expressionist films. 

Save

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 7/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

Decades later, the modern city was masterfully represented ironically in the films Mon Oncle (1958), Play
Time (1967) and Trafic (1971) by Jacques Tati. Technology and modernization, embodied by the most
eccentric artifacts, devices and buildings are contrasted by the symbolic figure of M. Hulot, a subject who
simply does not fit into the new way of life imposed by the accelerated process of urban modernization. Out
of place, he tries in vain to adjust to the new reality that promises ease and comfort, yet presents only
obstacles and resistance. 

Save

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 8/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

Another interesting point that Pallasmaa comments would be to investigate whether cinema architecture,
freed from the constraints of practical functions, constructive technology and costs "has gained some
artistic advantage over the actual architectural designs of the architects of these remarkable buildings." Far
removed from its concrete limitations, would the architecture of cinema have gone further than the
architecture that gives rise to our physical environment? Hints of this can be seen in projects by set design
architects, such as Paul Nelson's Maison Suspendue, in which "environments are suspended in a steel and
glass cell like bird's nests." [8] We can only imagine what buildings these set designers would have built if
they hadn’t dedicated themselves to cinema. Architect Robert Mallet-Stevens notes: 

Save

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 9/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

“ "It is undeniable that the cinema has a marked influence on modern

architecture; in turn, modern architecture brings its artistic side to the
cinema.... Modern architecture not only serves the cinematographic set
[decor], but imprints its stamp on the staging [mise-en-scene], it breaks out of
its frame; architecture 'acts.’”- Robert Mallet-Stevens [9] ”
These crossovers can also occur the other way around: just as architecture builds scenes in movies, cinema
can, with light, shadows, scale, and movements, construct spaces. For filmmakers with a study or academic
approach to architecture, such as Sergei Eisenstein, the absence of concrete physical limitations (gravity,
functionality, etc.) allows cinema to go even further than architecture (understood here as a practice of
designing and constructing buildings) in terms of spatial experiments. 

1. GODARD, Jean-Luc. Godard on Godard. New York: Da Capo Press, 1986. p.208.
2. PALLASMAA, Juhani. The Architecture of Image. Existential space in architecture. Helsinki:
Rakennustieto Publishing, 2007. p.14.
3. VIDLER, Anthony. The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary. Assemblage, No. 21
(Aug., 1993), pp. 44-59, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993. p.47.

4. ARAGON, Louis. "Du decor", Le Film 131, 1918, p. 8-10. In: VIDLER, Anthony. The Explosion of Space:
Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary. Assemblage, No. 21 (Aug., 1993), pp. 44-59, Cambridge: The MIT
Press, 1993. p.50.
Save
5. PANOFSKY, Erwin. Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures. Bulletin of the Department of Art and
Archeology, Princeton University, 1934. p.32.

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 10/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

6. TOORN, Roemer van. Architecture Against Architecture - Radical Criticism Within Supermodernity.
Available at: http://www.roemervantoorn.nl/architectureagai.html. Accessed on: 05/04/2010. P.9.
7. SANTOS, Fábio Allon dos. Architecture as a film agent. Vitruvius - Arquitextos, 2004. Available at:
http://www.vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/arquitextos/04.045/616 Accessed on June 25, 2014.
8. PALLASMAA, Juhani. The Architecture of Image. Existential space in architecture. Helsinki:
Rakennustieto Publishing, 2007. p.17.
9. MALLET-STEVENS, Robert. Le Cinema et les arts: L'Architecture, Les Cahiers du Mois-Cinema, 1925. In
VIDLER, Anthony. The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary. Assemblage, No. 21
(Aug., 1993), pp. 44-59, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993. p.46.

Share

About this author

Romullo Baratto
Author FOLLOW

#TAGS

News Articles Representation Cinema Architecture

BROWSE THE CATALOG

SINKS PLASTICS PARTITIONS MANUALS & ADVICE

Save

hansgrohe
Home Mitrex
Projects ProductsSkyfold Folders Cupa Pizarras Feed
Bathroom Mixers Solar Siding
https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema
Choosing the How to choose 11/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily
Bathroom Mixers - Solar Siding Choosing the How to choose
Talis S Skyfold Wall for… materials for a…

BATHROOM FURNIT... PANELS / PREFABRI... VENTILATED / DOUB... METAL PANELS

Bradley Corporatio... Bruag Danpal Lorin Industries

Toilet Partition Back Ventilated Façade Systems Anodized
Cubicles Facades -… Danpal® Aluminum -…

GLASS PANELS / PREFABRI... BEDS BATHROOM ACCESS...

Dip-Tech ULMA Architectural... Longhi Ceadesign

Ceramic Printing Water Facade Interior Furnishing Towel Warmer -
for Public… Panel in New York… EQUILIBRIO
More products

Save

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 12/13
5/4/2021 How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema | ArchDaily

Comments Community 🔒 Privacy Policy 

1 Login

 Recommend t Tweet f Share Sort by Newest

Start the discussion…

LOG IN WITH
OR SIGN UP WITH DISQUS ?

Name

Be the first to comment.

✉ Subscribe d Add Disqus to your siteAdd DisqusAdd

⚠

Save

Home Projects Products Folders Feed

https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema 13/13