BrutalisminAndor

Coruscant

This essay analyses two Brutalist buildings used within Andor, the Brunswick Centre and the Barbican. Both places have been used to depict a different perspective of the infamous city planet of Coruscant in the Star Wars universe.

The highly dense urban planet has been the centre to the rise of the Galactic Empire, a new fascist regime. Andor’s narrative is heavy on the spark of the rebellion, highlighting acts of espionage, coups, sacrifice, and the formation and destruction of alliances. The context is used to reveal the oppression under the Empire’s rule, stripping away an elegance and sleekness of a futuristic city originally shown in earlier Star Wars films ( EP I:The Phantom Menace (1999)– EP: III Revenge of the Sith (2005)), to evoke the anticipation and risks taking place under the masks of social hierarchy and urban living, simultaneously grounding a sciencefiction into a reality we can recognise more as part of our own.

Starting within a wider context, light and colour played a large role in Andor, depicting Coruscant as very different but real. Light reaches the city in the prequel films, radiating the frames of the cityscape with a highly saturated use of pink and yellow hues. There is a setting of an energetic and high-paced tone for the city, a personalisation of sculptural buildings, following characteristics of Futurist architecture where forms extrude to the sky, emphasizing the celebration of speed and movement 7 (Fig.3)

7Daily Herald Archive, “A Time to Experiment: Futurism” from “Houses of the Future: British Post-War Architecture from Modernism to Futurism”, The Daily Herald Archive via the Science and Media Museum (Published 3rd September 2021) https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/british-post-war-architecturemodernism-futurism

BrutalisminAndor

Whereas in Andor, the rise of the Imperial Fascism is asserted through closer frames of the cityscape. Wide shots are limited but produce a sense of monumentalism, desaturated to a monochromatic tone where the city looks sterilized and less lively, depicting a rawness of material across the city. (Fig.4)

The main principles of Brutalism, such as where material is used “as found”, is combined with a verticality found in the principles of political/fascist architecture. Its scale and monumentalism seems to follow the functionality behind totalitarian regimes. In this case, Brutalism can be seen as a tool for the Empire, asserting itself in the core of its reign within public spaces. It contributes the image of an imposing regime as it represents a political reality where public spaces and constructions are manipulated by political interests.

Michael Minkenberg describes in ‘Power and Architecture’ that this approach of architecture, like art, contributing to an image, does not just represent a reality but rather creates a reality:

“In this way architecture can be seen not only as providing visual and spatial means of legitimation for a political regime or elite, but also a genuine act of constituting political reality.” 8

This proves to be successful for even in the absence of the classical silhouette of the Stormtroopers or the Galactic Empire’s symbol, the architectural style, and public spaces in Andor’s Coruscant does not discount the presence of oppression and surveillance of an Imperial fascist regime.

8 Michael MinkenBerg, “Introduction.: Power and Architecture: The Construction of Capitals, the Politics of Space, and the Space of Politics.” 1st ed., Berghahn Books, 2014, pp. 1– 30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qd8m7.6. Accessed 14 Dec. 2022.