How has science-‐fiction film related to the visionary architectural discourse of the 20th C? K13AH3 Katherine Scott 4155846
1
Fig 1: Wren’s masterplan for London, 1666, RIBA Library Drawings and Archives collection
Fig 2: Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder 1563
Fig 3: Architectural Visions of Early Fancy in the Gay Morning of Youth and Dreams in the Evening of Life, Joseph Gandy, 1860, Soane Gallery
2
Fig 4: Dynamism of a Cyclist, Umberto Boccioni, 1913
How has science-‐fiction film related to the visionary architectural discourse of the 20th C?
There exists an underlying relationship between Science Fiction film and Visionary architecture. But to what extent is this, and does one field affect one more than the other? Visionary architecture is the field of architecture that is speculative in nature; whether buildable or only possible on paper. This architecture doesn’t necessarily exist in the built world, though is still of importance, especially in retrospect. It tells a story of possibilities for the world around us for the future, or of designs from the past that never got built. Christopher Wren’s master plans for London after the Great Fire (fig 1), show a vision for a city that would have, if implemented, sizably changed how Londoners live today. Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain (Horsfall Turner, BBC4, 2013) studied these in today’s context and analysed the implications for London if Wren’s plans were realised and ‘to [Turner], the unbuilt represents possibility and vision’. By looking backward at these relics of architectural conjecture, we can revisit old solutions to the problems such as population growth and pollution that we still face today. One view is that, ‘telling stories through architecture is nothing new or even necessarily interesting.’ (Geoff Manaugh, 2009, p17) Even at the turn of the 20th Century, visionary architecture and narratives had existed in many forms of media for millennia. An example of this is the story of the Tower of Babel, as recorded in the Bible
‘At that time all mankind spoke a single language. As the population grew and spread Eastward a plain was
discovered in the land of Babylon, and was soon thickly populated. The people who lived there began to talk about building a great city, with a temple-‐tower reaching to the skies – a proud eternal monument to themselves. “This will weld us together” they said, “and keep us from scattering all over the world.”’ (Living Bible Edition, Genesis, chapter 11, p10, 2007)
The Tower of Babel has been reimagined by artists ever since, with fig. 1 Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563, fig 2) , one of three of his paintings of Babel. Whereas, Architectural Visions of Early Fancy in the Gay Morning of Youth and Dreams in the Evening of Life (fig. 3) (cited by G. Manugh, p. 2-‐3), is a fanciful collage of John Soane’s buildings (Joseph Gandy, 1860), painted side-‐by-‐side in an almost Babylonian composition. As can be seen through, rising upwards. It is evident from these examples that visionary architecture wasn’t new to the 20th century. Nevertheless, the turn of the 20th century saw the invention of a new medium, the moving picture film. The Lumiere brothers are widely heralded as the creators of the video camera and equally the video, in 1889. This new technology brought with it new ways of recording and creating images, combined with movement and later sound and colour, something which no other art could yet do – with an ‘admirable synthesis of the movement of space and time’ (Abel Gance, 1912; cited by A. Vidler, 1993). This enabled a new way of telling stories not yet possible. Film is not independent of other art forms. The Futurists, at the turn of the century, were already interested in recording movement in images (see picture). They wanted to look forward and be ‘no part of it, the past’ (Filippo Tommas Marinettie, 1910), a mind-‐set with which the Modernists in Architecture held too. Science-‐fiction (or SF at it will henceforth be known) is too an outcome of many factors. The Victorians had a thirst for knowledge and had a newfound
3
Fig 5a: Film still from Youtube of Le Voyage Dans La Lune, 1902
Fig 6: Vers Une Architecture, 1923, Le Corbusier
4
interest in science and all things exotic and foreign, with Great Exhibitions of artefacts of every calibre. Equally, when at war, governments typically increase investment into transport and weaponry. With WWI, there was cause for governments to intensify production in these fields, with the development of brand new tanks and blimps, for instance. With this desire to explore and new possibilities in transport, people were given unprecedented access to the world around them, and curiosity developed to extra-‐terrestrial travel too. SF therefore became ‘based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.’ (Oxford Dictionary, 2014) The first sci-‐fi film was Voyage Dans la Lune, 1902 (George Melies), which comprised of ‘thirty fabulous scenes that portrayed laboratories, launching pads and of course, the pockmarked landscape of the moon itself’ (Donald Albrecht, 1987, cited by Fortin, David T. 2011, p. 34). This film started to consider the technology for how humans might try and make their way to the moon, sixty years before this became a reality. It sets a precedent for a language of built environment for SF film. The aesthetic language of the technology of munitions and transport fed into the creation of a SF genre, as did the theme of exploration and space that was fashionable in the Victorian era. These same languages were also interpreted by architect’s alike, with Le Corbusier’s work Towards a New Architecture (1923) comparing the mass-‐production of cars with the way a building can be made. (fig. 6) The relationship between film and architecture in general is a complex one, however this bond exists rather simply due to the fact that in order to shoot a film, a film-‐set is generally required (Antony Vidler, 1993). The mise-‐en-‐scene of a film is the predetermined set up before shooting starts. Sets, at least at the turn of the 20th Century had to be actually constructed, or filmed in existing architecture. At this time, architects were employed to construct the sets and contribute to the set design. It could be argued henceforth that any film ever made is of relevance to architectural discourse. ‘The art that is closest to architecture is cinema’ (Rene Clair, cited by D. Fortin, ). To look more specifically at the SF genre’s relationship with visionary architecture, ‘fictional proposals and architectural plans work extraordinarily well together in the imaginative rethinking of the world. Architecture is, in many ways, a very specific type of SF; it is its own genre of speculative thought’ (G. Manaugh 2009, p22). Hence, even more perhaps than other kinds of film genre, sci-‐fi is the genre most connected to visionary architecture. Tricks of the eye are used in film making, to make the impossible visible. Scale can be toyed with, to create landscapes that cannot be built in real life, for example like the cityscape in Metropolis, which uses large-‐scale models, and accused of being a film of “unsurpassable staginess” (Kracauer, cited by A. Vidler, 1993). Even at this very early stage, architects began to criticise this practice of special effects. That trickery is used at all in filmmaking was abhorrable according to Le Corbusier. Corbusier in 1933 called for a film aesthetics that ‘embodied a spirit of truth’, arguing that film and architecture are ‘mutually informative but properly separate realms’ (cited by A. Vidler, p. 100). The films produced by Corbusier himself were drastically different to the SF genre. In the 1930 film L’Architecture D’aujourd hui, Le Corbusier worked with the director Pierre Chenal to portray his own architecture truthfully, with a very precise film of each building. Of the architectures shown, it was said that ‘still photography does not capture them clearly… only film can make the new architecture intelligible’ (Sigfried Gideon, 1928, p. 92; cited by A.Janser, 1997, p. 34). Though, the film ends with the model of the visionary Voisin scheme for Paris (1925, fig. 7),
5
Fig 7: Voisin Paris Masterplan, Le Corbusier, 1925 Fondation Le Corbusier,
6
Fig 8: Film Stills from Playtime, Jacques Tati, 1967
Fig 9: Photos of the construction of “Tativille”, 1967
that would have seen the old parts of the city cleared to make way for new tower blocks. The subtitles praise; ‘Paris redeviendrait alors une VILLE MODERNE!’ (Paris becomes again a MODERN CITY!). This visionary scheme was never followed through, so ironically the last part of this film is now just a work of architectural fiction, of comparison with the earlier mention of Wren’s plans for London. New emerging technologies challenged the solidity and permanence of the Victorian “home”, creating in turn a response from moviemakers. ‘Architecture in movies is essentially ephemeral: it lasts as long as the production of film, it belongs to a poetic reality, and its relationship is not with humans but with the film image. “Real” architecture, in contrast, is meant to last at least a lifetime; it is part of history and obeys laws that are both structural and economic.’(N. Nikolov, 2008, p. 41) This transient, fleeting, fanciful nature of imaginative built environments in film compared to the solid, real houses people were used to prior to the turn of the 20th C provide an interesting opening up of the meaning of home and what architecture can be beyond the typologies known until this point. And as film can disregard history, so did the Modernists. In Playtime (1967), directed by Jacques Tati, a sense of humour evolves out of the unrecognisable new modernist typologies emerging in Paris– for example airports, massive shopping malls, apartment blocks -‐ and the blurring between the languages of all buildings in the film; the effect of the International Style Le Corbusier promoted. Style here though, seems to outweigh practicalities of living. ‘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 (décor), but imprints its stamp on the staging (mise-‐en-‐scene), it breaks out of its frame; architecture “plays”’(Robert Mallett-‐Stevens, 1925; cited by Antony Vidler 1993,p. 46). And indeed in Playtime, this sense of playfulness is vital, and satirical of the Paris that may have been, were Corbusier’s plans taken forward. Lost amongst all this very uniform architecture style is the sense of what home is. That the language of all the architecture is the same creates an environment in which the characters are perpetually lost. If we look at the modern apartment scene, there are many apartments that all offer the same lifestyle to all the different families living in them. It is almost as if the architect has forgotten the comfort that is fundamental to human happiness, instead looking to the mastery of a new architectural style as the most important aspect in design. This narrative comments on both the fun aspects and the drawbacks of the modernist architecture evolving at the time. It is interesting however, that Tati couldn’t actually find such places in real life in which to film this movie. Instead, all of the sets had to be constructed in massive hangars, labelled “Tativille” ‘using 50,000 cubic metres of concrete, 3,200 metres of carpentry and 1,200 metres of glass’ (D. Neuemann, 1999). This shows how this film was not perhaps a true reflection of the problems with international style, but an imaginary look into the future; a social commentary in SF form. Important to all SF films is their narrative content in response to the concept of home. The 20th Century made people feel very quickly very small, as they were so much more aware of the amount of people in the world around them and the scale of the Universe itself too. This became a topic of fascination for the SF genre; where and what is home? Space travel becoming a reality in the last half of the 20th C saw this become a real-‐world problem too. ‘The impact of seeing the Earth from space focused our energies on the home planet in unprecedented ways, dramatically affecting our relationship to the natural world and our appreciation of the greater community of mankind, and
7
Left, Fig 10: Metropolis’ Tower of Babel, film still Above, Fig 11: The workers of Metropolis
Above and right, Fig 12: Collage work of Archigram Below Fig 13: Yellow Submarine, film still. Below Far right, fig 14: Monty Python’s Flying Circus, film still
8
Left, Fig 15: Archigram’s Plug in City, 1964 Below, Fig 16: A photograph of Rogers and Piano’s Le Centre Pompidou in Paris
Left, Fig 16: Kowloon Walled City, Internal view Above, Fig 17: Frank Lloyd-‐Wright’s Ennis Brown House Below,Fig 18: Blade Runner, film still
9
prompting a revolution in our understanding of the Earth as a living system’ (Marina Benjamin, 2009). The narratives of many SF films are centered on the discovery of home. ‘Films about space exploration, alien life forms, and the origin of the universe are implicitly about humanity’s quest to find our place in the time/space continuum – to feel “at home” in the universe’. (Susan Mackey-‐ Kells, 2001, cited by D. Fortin, 2011). Home is obviously an important architectural concept, which architects have revisited and reworked throughout history, again we see further mirroring of the outside world translated straight into film. There lies an interesting dialogue between Le Corbusier’s design for Paris’ masterplan and the film Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) too. Interestingly, Lang had architectural training and was heavily involved in the set design process. The imaginary technologies of flying cars and landing platforms on skyscrapers don’t look too dissimilar to images in The City of To-‐morrow by Le Corbusier. Perhaps when Corbusier defined architecture as ‘the masterly, correct and magnificent play of form in light’ (Corbusier, 1923) we see how this dialogue between architecture and film is so fraught. This very definition of architecture could be easily used our of context to describe the production of film also (Jonathan Glancey, 2009, The Guardian). Furthermore, the levels of chiaroscuro used in both Metropolis and the films of Corbusier’s own designs, the same filmic trickery is used to exemplify the forms and details in both. When Corbusier said that ‘architecture is everything’ (1933), perhaps he compromised his own argument against the filmic imaginary. In Metropolis, is another interpretation of Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, this time however, as a modernist skyscraper. The International style, of which Corbusier was a advocate and promoter, could be said to do exactly what is depicted in the Bible. That is to create an architectural language that is exactly as the Bible describes ‘one language and a common (Living Bible Edition, Genesis, chapter 11, p10, 2007). Though, the international style found itself in disarray come the mid-‐20th Century as if like the story of Babel were true, ‘let us confuse their language’ (Living Bible Edition, Genesis, chapter 11, p10, 2007). Confused did it become, as CIAM ended in 1959, giving way to the rise of Postmodernism as the next most dominant style. Perhaps Metropolis predicted this downfall, as the elitist community living in the modernist buildings becomes overruled by the mechanics originally employed to keep what could be called the ‘machine for living’ (Corbusier, 1933) running. Contrastingly with the modernist movement, Archigram were a visionary group who were very much part of the Swinging Sixties -‐ embracing popular culture and all things non-‐architecture. This group – nicknamed “the Beatles of Architecture” -‐ was established in Britain. In the climate of the Cold War, moon landings and the rebellious generation of baby boomers, ‘archigram had asked everyone to rethink everything –and, if we didn’t like the world, to change it’ (Peter Cook to Dwell Magazine, ). They equally wanted ‘to put the zap back into architecture’ (P. Cook to Dwell, cited by G. Manugh, 2009, p 32) which could be taken to mean the life and fun they felt had been missing from the more sterile and plain architecture of the modernist movement. High-‐tech ornament, colour and movement became vital components in their design work. The cartoonish aesthetic they produced was anti-‐establishment and had an influence on popular culture, as much as it absorbed it. The film Yellow Submarine (1968, fig. 13) shares the same stylistic way of representing its characters and landscape as much of Archigrams work, while the Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-‐74, fig 14) is similarly influenced, with outlandish, collaged scenes – comedic avante-‐garde. Both of these films use cartoon, which unlike Metropolis, do not pretend to make real what is not, but amplify impossibility. Though fanciful and mostly remaining only on paper, Archigram’s work
10
didn’t only affect the discourse of architects, but was relevant to popular culture at the time. Though, in time, Archigram became more accepted by the establishment; particularly with the construction of Le Centre Pom[idou, Paris, by Piano and Rogers, which captures the essence of their work. Their drawing style still remains popular to this day perhaps due to the dialogue they had with popular film. By bringing architecture into film again, we see the elite are not the only people able to give commentary, but that the layman becomes engaged in architectural discourse. It is curious to also see how on the flipside, real built architecture filters back into sci-‐fi film. Blade Runner is a film, which yet again has the vital theme of lack of home. Instead of having a home, the characters are lost, however unlike in Playtime, they are lost not from over simplicity, but rather over complexity in the post-‐modern city they inhabit. ‘The loss of, or perhaps the impossibility of, home is not only a narrative strategy in Blade Runner, but also extends to the imagery of the film and, in particular, to its use of architecture’ (David T. Fortin, 2011, p.98, fig. 18) Influences that informed the complex overgrown architecture shown in this film could be the Kowloon Walled City. ‘For a long time the Walled City was Synonymous with all that was darkest and most threatening in China: opium dens, warring Triad gangs, huge rats and huge drains’ (Peter Popham, 1993, p.10, fig 16). There is a distinct parrallism between this and the environments of Blade Runner. Equally, other architectures that were literally included in the film include Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis Brown House (1923, fig. 17), which forms the home and headquarters of the creator of the replicants. That architecture is collaged in this film to form new fanciful landscapes echoes of the way Archigram worked too. That by placing old objects together in new ways, we may discover is just as vital as inventing completely new things. Kowloon Walled City being such a clear precedent for the set for Blade Runner is down to the nature of how film set-‐design is constructed, by the designers looking to the world around them for inspiration to draw into new situations and exaggerate. Filmic architectures may not ever be completely original, but can perhaps bring original ways of looking at known architectures. There is a dichotomy though, that although SF landscapes tend to be fanciful and fleeting in people’s memories, the actual medium of film is itself a time capsule of permanence. That in this essay alone, the films studied span a whole century, and can be watched on Youtube in an instant, expresses how film can show things today that in reality are ‘shrouded in history.’(Andreas Haus, p.) Much like the visionary works of Christopher Wren being shown in 2013, now film provides unique snapshots of time too. Architects now have this vast array of a century of film knowledge at their fingertips, to rely on and seek inspiration from, so that their ideas may be informed by events from the past to enhance their own designs. Perhaps as a result, now more than ever, film will be a useful tool for architects to refer back to. As we question the world we are in and the future problems it may bring, film can be a useful tool to experiment solutions. After the 1927 premiere of Metropolis in Spain, Luis Bunniel, a director and critic, commented that ‘Now and forever the architect will replace the set designer. Film will be the faithful translator of the architect’s boldest dreams’ (cited; D. Neumann, 1999). It is almost as if architects are responsible for the mise-‐en-‐scene for the real world and that in visionary architecture in both film and paper form, are given the chance to test out what may not be possible yet. It is now not uncommon to see architecture students utilising film to their advantage in design projects. The silver RIBA student medal in 2011 was won by a student for a filmic project (Kibwe
11
Fig 19:Robots of Brixton, Kibwe Tavaras’ Film Stills, from RIBA President’s Medals 2011
Fig 20 :Tron, 1982, Film Still Fig 21:Maxxi Museum, 2010, Zaha Hadid
12
Tawaras, cited on Presidents Medals, 2011, fig. 19). This suggests that by the 21st Century, the architecture establishment has now come to realise the importance and relevance of SF film to architecture, which 90 years ago may have been a different story. Though, a criticism of this is that current in vogue architecture drawings use the same tools as film special effects teams, to produce highly-‐rendered, polished images to sell to clients. A distinction between real and cinematic architectures perhaps has dissolved over recent years, with Zaha Hadid’s architecture often called sci-‐fi in style, for instance the Maxxii Museum (2010, fig 21) has been seen to have similarities to the film Tron (S. Lisberger, 1983, fig. 20), especially in terms of her highly computerised design. We see that perhaps the world of Cinema has influenced the practise of architecture so much so that rather than producing architecture, architects are initially expected to produce beautiful images or films to sell their design. The laymen who pay for architecture to be constructed, perhaps has become intoxicated with the kinds of imagery they are used to seeing in the cinema. Science-‐fiction film’s relationship with visionary architecture is evident. But its sole impact upon architecture is difficult to extract, as there are so many other factors to consider over the 20th Century. Nevertheless, it has been seen that architecture has clearly been of direct influence to SF films. While in SF, there is freedom to test architectures that we haven’t yet needed in our lifetimes, while giving a fresh perspective on old architecture. Though the stories and fundamental ideas are not necessarily original, there is interest and new understanding to be gained from revisiting and reanalysing what is known already. Via SF film, far more laymen now interact with visionary architecture, than when it was a far more elitist discourse. With this though comes a responsibility for architects; there needs to be understood a line between filmic architectures and real architectures. A worry is that popular demands for buildings today inspired by these filmic architectures could be unreasonable for the real-‐world. That in all our endeavours to look out of our own environment to that of the imaginary and of the unknown universe around us, maybe all we really want is to find our place within it all. In an age of technology and Internet, perhaps the true meaning of ‘home’ is lost. As is said in the closing scene of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, ‘And crawling on the planet’s face, were a species called the human race, lost in time and space… and meaning’ (J. Sharman, 1975). Thus, maybe SF and architecture can together find this meaning that is lost.
13
Books and Journals
Cited References
Architecture and Science-‐Fiction Film: Philip K. Dick and the Spectacle of Home, David T. Fortin, 2011, Ashgate BLD BLG Book, Geoff Manaugh, 2009, MacFadden & Thorpe Cinemarchitecture. NIKOLOV, Nik. (2008), Journal of Architectural Education, 62: 41–45 City of Darkeness – Life in Kowloon Walled City, Greg Girard and Ian Lambot, Introduction by Peter Popham ,1993, Watermark Publications The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary, Antony Vidler, 1993 as cited in Film Architecture (see below). Film Architecture: Set designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner, 1999, Edited by Dietrich Neumann, with essays by Donald Albrecht, Anton Kaes, Dietrich Neumann, Antony Vidler and Michael Webb; Prestel. The Futurist Manifesto, 1910, Filippo Tommas Marinettie The Hero and the Perennial Journey Home in American Film, Susan Mackey-‐Kells, As cited in Architecture and Science-‐Fiction Film (See above) Living Bible Edition, 2007, Tyndale House Publishers Only Film Can Make the new Architecture Intelligible, 1997, Andres Janser, within Cinema and Architecture, Melies, Mallet-‐Stevens, Multimedia Photogenic Architecture, Andreas Haus, Daidabs 66, December 1994, pp 85-‐91 Vers Une Architecture (Towards a New Architecture), Le Corbusier, 1923, translated by John Goodman, Frances Lincoln 2008 edition Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, 2002, Antony Vidler, MIT Press Films Architecture D’Aujourd Hui, 1930, Pierre Chenal, France Blade Runner, 1982, Ridley-‐Scott, USA, Warner Bros. Dreaming the Impossible: Unbuilt Britain, Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner, November 2013, UK, BBC4 Metropolis, 1927, Fritz Lang, Germany (Weimar Republic), UFA Playtime, Jacques Tati, 1967, France, Specta Films The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975, Jim Sharman, UK, 20th Century Fox Tron, 1983, Stephen Lisberger, USA, Walt Disney Productions Voyage Dans La Lune, 1902, Georges Melies, France Yellow Submarine, 1968, George Dunning and Dennis Abey, United Artists Websites From Metropolis to Blade Runner, The Guardian online, Nov 2009, Date accessed Jan 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/05/architecture-‐film-‐riba Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond, Marina Benjamin, 2009, Date accessed Jan 2014 http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/Why_We_09.html Rpbots of Brixton, Kibwe Tawaras’ winning project in 2011, Date accessed Jan 2014 http://www.presidentsmedals.com/Entry-‐29391 Image Sources 1 RIBA Archive, 2 Wikipedia 3 BLD BLG 4 Wikipedia 5 Youtube, 6 Vers Une Architecture, Le Corbusier, 1923 7 Le Corbusier Fondation, 8 Youtube 9 AA Diploma 9 – Rewriting the Statement 10 Stills from film 12 Archigram Archives Online 13, 14 Stills from films 15 Archigram Archives online 16 Rogers Stirk Harbour Website 16, 17 Daily Mail Online, 18 Film Still 19 RIBA President’s Awards 20 Still from film 21 Zaha Hadid Architects Website
14