The building in which this movie was shot, Villa Necchi Campiglio, catches the entire mood and the feelings of the characters that inhabit it and the atmosphere of their world, with all its resonances and sense of voluptuous loss. No other film is able to evocate the Milanese decadence so perfectly, finely set up in the spaces designed by Pietro Portaluppi at the beginning of the ‘30s.

Best film at 2020 Oscars, the tragedy intertwining the private lives of two South-Corean families, takes shape in one of the most perfect comparisons between faux architectural sophistication and the pretensions and evil consequences of the privilege of upper class society.

The American masterpiece, starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, is still today one of the greatest explorations of thrill and fear, excitement and uncanniness of proximity in urban environments, of course perfectly unravelled in an exquisite plot by the great director.

Second movie by the director well-known for Gothic and fairy settings, Beetlejuice is a brilliant exposition of the myth of the haunted house and a fantastic take-down of architectural and social pretensions – all done in the most brilliantly stylish manner.

George Clooney comes back for the third (and last) time in the shoes of Danny Ocean for the subtle crime comedy in which parametricism comes to the big screen via Las Vegas – perhaps the best and only place for it?

This is the movie that has made all fin-de-siecle country hotels utterly terrifying to stay in. Based on the novel by Stephen King, more than a terror story it is an imaginative psychological thriller in which Jack Nicholson gave one of his best performances in a space, the Overlook Hotel, that became iconic. Have long empty hotel corridors ever felt the same since you first saw it?

The life of a young doctor in a skyscraper in London in the middle 70s tells about the utopian dream of brutalism that translates into a megastructure the microcosm of society that lives in it, almost isolated from the city. Nevertheless the problems of a small society are the same as those of the society at large but, when compressed, they become more terrible... and behold, everything goes belly up. Blame the architect.

Imaginary tale or time travel, this story by Sokurov takes place in one uninterrupted sequence “as if it was just a breathe”, thanks to a unique one-hour-and-a-half shot. But Russian Ark is also the metaphor for a national architectural treasure as the embodiment of a nation and its history: in this wonderfully dreamy film, by walking through the rooms and corridors of the Hermitage, all Russian history is gently and ever-so-elegantly unfurled before our eyes.

In the context of a movie based on the relationship between classicism and modernity, there could be no better match for Malaparte’s house than a surly Brigitte Bardot, sunbathing on its roof, climbing its steps, staring out of its windows.

You never see a building in this film, as the main character is alone in a car the whole time, but the drama is all about a vast concrete pour he is responsible for, the base of a huge new building. In the unwinding of the plot, we follow this project in tense wonder, hearing in all technical details about how grilling and challenging such a task is to achieve, while our character races away to deal with a terrible personal dilemma.