Cinematography and architecture have always been two artistic disciplines that influence each other, in search of inspiration and formal quotations. There may be films dedicated to the work of an individual architect, as well as films set in architecturally significant locations. There are others that build a world of design to communicate ideas, and finally there are those that use environments to interact with the rest of the mise-en-scène.
5 films in which architecture is protagonist, suggested by 5 architects
We asked a selection of studios to tell us about the films that have most inspired their professional practice. Here are the recommendations of 2050+, Bovenbouw Architectuur, Enorme Studio, Jean-Benoît Vétillard and Plastique Fantastique.
“Almost forty years ago, this film dealt with very timely themes in a poetic and visionary way: the relationship with the other, the need to coexist and establish alliances with the non-human, to promote interspecies and intergenerational forms of inclusiveness, to accept, work with and theatricalize toxicity. In the face of the climate collapse we are experiencing, Nausicaä is almost a manifesto, as much as the writings of Donna Haraway from which it draws inspiration”.
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- Romina Totaro
- 02 May 2022
We therefore asked five architecture studios to recommend a film that has particularly influenced not only their professional work but also their vision and interpretation of the world, including great classics, pop references and a few gems for true connoisseurs. For example, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli of 2050+ told us about the imaginative scenarios and inter-species alliances recounted by Miyazaki, while Belgian studio Bovenbouw Architectuur looks at the modernist abstraction created in the films of Vincenzo Natali. In the five films proposed in this collection, architecture becomes a fundamental means of expression. We present them to you in no particular order.
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli for 2050+
“Almost forty years ago, this film dealt with very timely themes in a poetic and visionary way: the relationship with the other, the need to coexist and establish alliances with the non-human, to promote interspecies and intergenerational forms of inclusiveness, to accept, work with and theatricalize toxicity. In the face of the climate collapse we are experiencing, Nausicaä is almost a manifesto, as much as the writings of Donna Haraway from which it draws inspiration”.
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli for 2050+
Dirk Somers for Bovenbouw Architectuur “What I find so striking about architecture and film is how the evil is dominantly situated in modern and highly abstract architecture. Wether it’s Dr. No, North by Northwest, The Ghostwriter or Sleeping with the Enemy, slick architecture houses the bad guys who got disconnected from society and its values. Even more explicitly, in the movie Cube the evil is embodied by the abstract grid where the characters are trapped inside. Architectural historiography still equals modernist abstraction to the values of the free, modern world of late enlightenment. Cinema depicts modernist architecture as its opposite”.
Dirk Somers for Bovenbouw Architectuur
Carmelo Rodríguez for ENORME Studio “We recommend the documentary on Paolo Soleri because the figure of the Italian architect is fundamental for architecture in particular and life in general. One of the last utopians ahead of his time by more than fifty years, founding a city and a way of life, that of Arcosanti, which still stand as symbols of ecology and well-being”.
Carmelo Rodríguez for ENORME Studio
Jean-Benoît Vétillard “The more you explore this film, the more you get lost. You have to love slippage, vertigo and wandering. You have to accept Fellini’s delusions for what they are: reveries. In this film the architecture is gigantic, its aesthetics are made of fragments, the wandering is an exquisite corpse through spaces without transition. The strange property of Dr Xavier Katzone – whose wives demand its demolition – is an environment with a virile accent. Narrow galleries of portraits of women, high white marble walls highlighted by green neon, a huge dining room or gymnasium, a bedroom bathed in palm trees, a stormy night, a long slide full of childhood memories, a circus, a cage, a cellar, a courtroom, behind a wall a narrow corridor, a staircase... to finally get out into the open air and fly away in a hot-air balloon, an enormous inflatable doll”.
Jean-Benoît Vétillard
Yena Young for Plastique Fantastique “I watched Gattaca in a movie theater more than 20 years ago and I am still impressed by its setting. The movie is about a despotic society where the Power of Control has overwhelmed all boundaries. A futuristic scenario is reproduced using an exquisite selection of elements from the 60s. The brilliant and unique use of artificial, vivid green light transforms the way we perceive this retro setting into a timeless surrounding. The director uses light saturation and architectural dislocation to enhance our perception and disturb our equilibrium”.
Yena Young for Plastique Fantastique