Architecture in the cinema

[sigue2000]

I've started this thread again and maybe french pillou and the others can pitch in again.

Please enter the Title, Director and year of release in the title, so that everybody can try to find the film.

One of the films that utilises architecture in almost every picture is Gattaca by Andrew Niccol.
The Gattaca Corp. Headquarters is the Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, California by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Marin County Civic Center complex comprises an administrative building and a judicial center that are set into the area between three small hills. The administration building was completed in 1962 and the Hall of Justice in 1970. The project fully embodies Wright's ideal of organic architecture — a synthesis of buildings and landscape. In Wright's words, the structures were planned to “melt into the sunburnt hills.” The Civic Center is a California Registered Historical Landmark.

Docent-led guided tours Wednesdays at 10:30 am and other times by appointment.www.co.marin.ca.us

Civic Center Dr.
San Rafael, CA 94903
415.499.6646

[sigue2000]

A site dedicated to filming locations in california: Gattaca

Uma Thurman in the movie

[sigue2000]

What and where is this building? The home of Jerome (Jude Law).
Is it a studio prop?
Notice the reference to the DNA's double helix in the stairs.

[sigue2000]

Tati - Site

Jacques Tati's 'Playtime'

Production took place from October 1964 to October 1967. Filming began in April 1965 primarily on a set dubbed "Tativille", where 100 construction workers built two buildings using 11,700 square feet of glass, 38,700 square feet of plastic, 31,500 square feet of timber, and 486,000 square feet of concrete.

Plot:
Monsieur Hulot has to contact an American official in Paris, but he gets lost in the maze of modern architecture which is filled with the latest technical gadgets. Caught in the tourist invasion, Hulot roams around Paris with a group of American tourists, causing chaos in his usual manner. Meanwhile, a nightclub/restaurant prepares its opening night, but it's still under construction...

[sigue2000]

Here's an interresting summary.

'Tativille'

[sigue2000]

The Vandamm House

In PPB1 there was a question about this house opposite Mt. Rushmore in 'North by Northwest', concerning the architect.
Well it's not by F.L.Wright. They couldn't afford him!

It was designed by the MGM set designers in apparently his style.

Read more here.

[franjayo]

There is a specific course in the subject:

http://www.architecture.uwaterloo.ca.../484_film.html

[sigue2000]

There is a specific course in the subject:

http://www.architecture.uwaterloo.ca.../484_film.html

Thanks franjayo. The course is specifically for science fiction as it seems.

[sigue2000]

In a cyberpunk vision of the future, man has developed the technology to create replicants, human clones used to serve in the colonies outside Earth but with fixed lifespans. In Los Angeles, 2019, Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specialises in terminating replicants. Originally in retirement, he is forced to re-enter the force when five replicants escape from an offworld colony to Earth.

The film 'Blade Runner' is a great example for the use of architecture in film. It's reference is of course 'Metropolis' (1926) by Fritz Lang. But Lang creates a very futuristic city, whereas 'Blade Runner' derives it's visual impact from the mixture of past, present and future of a Los Angeles 2019. The pyramid (!) of the Tyrell corp. even has Art nouveau elements in its very machine-like exterior cladding.

[sigue2000]

The city of L.A. in the state of permanent darkness and drizzling rain.

[sigue2000]

A city would in its future always incorporate its old buildings.
Art direction by David L. Snyder, special effects by Douglas Trumbull.

[sigue2000]

The last pic.

[greggV]

Image of the "War Room", in Stanley Kubrick's, "Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb."

According to one of the DVD special features, Ken Adams was guessing at what the interiors of the war room and the bomber might look like. He got it so right that government officials wanted to question the movie's crew.


Biography of Ken Adams from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Wizardly designer who has added style and imagination to period pieces, futuristic films, realistic dramas, and even musicals. After studying architecture at London University, he worked as a draftsman on films like The Brass Monkey and The Queen of Spades (both 1948) and gradually assumed art direction chores on films including Around the World in 80 Days (1956, for which he received his first Oscar nomination), The Angry Hills (1959), and The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960). He began his long association with the James Bond films on the very first one, Dr. No (1962), and as the series' budgets increased, Adam constructed more elaborate, spectacular sets for Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977, another Oscar nomination), and Moonraker (1979). He was also the production designer on the Harry Palmer spy films The Ipcress File (1965) and Funeral in Berlin (1966), as well as Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Seven Percent Solution (1976), Agnes of God (1985), Crimes of the Heart (1986), and The Freshman (1990). Some of Adam's most impressive work includes the expressionistic War Room from Dr. Strangelove (1964), the meticulously recreated 18th century architecture of Barry Lyndon (1975, which won him the Oscar), the brilliantly stylized Edward Hopperesque settings of Pennies From Heaven (1981), and the witty, Oscar-nominated sets for Addams Family Values (1993). He received a second Oscar for The Madness of King George (1994).
Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.

[greggV]

This is a great, "B"-movie, that incorporates a very elaborate set. I saw the "making of" special and it was impressive how much time and resources this production lavished on getting things built.

SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The idea of a giant space ship which is constantly able to transform itself in order to accomodate the mind control experiments of the alien overlords on their human captives ( who are unaware of this in large part due to the convincing renovation of their surroundings and total amnesia induced by some scary chanting of a choir of Nosferatu look-alikes) is pretty cool.

I liked this more than the Matrix when it first came out.

A deserving underdog.

[sigue2000]

Hi GreggV,

could you post some more pics to the set and supply some more information on the setdesigner / architect?

[primocordara]

Hey! Good to have this thread again!
I havent seen this film (Showtime), but in Mon Oncle he laughs at modern architecture.

Here you can see the modern housewife as she tells her guests over and over "tout cominique..." (everything comunicates)

I made the question in North by Northwest, but actually in closeups where Cary Grant creeps into the window they might have used Fallingwater as location, or made a very good replica.

[SWANK-E]

which is the movie with the Diamond Range School by Morphosis??

[sigue2000]

Ferris Beuller's Day Off had this modernist garage with a great Ferrari flight sceen.
The house and garage are here.
Ben Rose Auto Museum - 370 Beach St., Highland Park, Illinois, USA

[sigue2000]

The Vandamm House

In PPB1 there was a question about this house opposite Mt. Rushmore in 'North by Northwest', concerning the architect.
Well it's not by F.L.Wright. They couldn't afford him!

It was designed by the MGM set designers in apparently his style.

Read more here.

House by William Beckett 1961.

[sigue2000]

which is the movie with the Diamond Range School by Morphosis??

The film was 'Orange County'. I haven't seen it yet.

Address: 100 Diamond Ranch Dr. Pomona, CA 91766
Telephone Number: (909) 397-4715