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8/12/2019 Architectural Film, As the Meeting Point of Cinematic and Architectural Path of the Spatial Eye
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Elyne Legarnisson / BA(Hons) Interior and Spatial Design / Year 3 / Thesis / Tutor: Ana Araujo.
ARCHITECTURAL FILM, as the meeting point ofCINEMATIC AND ARCHITECTURAL PATH OF THE SPATIAL EYE.
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INTRODUCTION ................................................................ 02-05
PART 1 : PHYSICAL SPACE ....................... ....................... 06-18
PART 2 : TEMPORAL SPACE ......................... ................... 19-29
CONCLUSION.................................................................... 30-32
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................... 33
01
CONTENT
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Viewing architecture is a spatial experience by de nition. Archi -
tecture is designed for people who will experience it physically,
from the inside as from the outside.
When we view a physical architecture, what we use to under-
stand space is what Eisenstein calls the Architectural path of the
eye, where the spectator moves through a series of carefully
disposed phenomena which he absorbs in order with his visual
sense 1.
Nevertheless, this physical experience isnt always an option
when someone wants to discover an architecture in particular.
The reasons for that can be diverse: distance, accessibility, or
even physicality of the architecture itself (maybe it doesnt exist
yet, maybe it doesnt exist anymore).
To respond to those purposes, architecture has long been docu-
mented by photographers. This process is slowly being replaced
by lms and animations, which 24 frames/seconds are claimed
to convey a spatial experience closer to reality.
Great architecture usually exceeds the expectations
generated by a photograph. Since our knowledge of
buildings comes from seeing isolated facades ( the
building as painting ) or forms ( the building as sculpture
), only lming can deliver the essential spatial dimen -
sions of space and volume. To comprehend architecture
one needs to move through its spaces. After all this is
how we all experience buildings, inside and outside: we
walk, we look, we pass through space. Perspectives are
revealed. Corners turned. Scale changes. The depth di-
mension is revealed. Details can be explored. A combi-
nation of predetermined camera tracks and prearranged
lighting plans offers a chance to reveal the unfolding of
space and vista and show the movement of light and
texture. 2
Murray Grigor.
According to Eisenstein, what we use when we view space
1 Quoted in A.Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, 2002, New York, MIT Press, p 118.
2 Murray Grigor, Space in Time, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film,1994, London, Academy Group, p19.
INTRODUCTION
02
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through moving images is, by opposition to the Architectural
path, the Cinematic path of the eye, where a spectator follows
an imaginary line among a series of objects, through the sight as
well as in the mind, diverse impressions passing in front of an
immobile spectator . 3
Architectural Films are trying to reach the meeting point between
Architectural and Cinematic path of the spatial eye to convey the
physical experience of journeying through Architecture via lm.
If we could nd the cinematic means to reveal some -
thing of the rich sensory experience that visitors feel as
they journey through a building, such a lm could be a
revelation to a wide audience. 4
Murray Grigor.
In this Thesis we are going to question the clear separation
between Architectural and Cinematic path of the spatial eye
claimed by Eisenstein.
When does Architectural and Cinematic path of the spatial eye
meet in Architectural Film?
Namely that by Film, we only mean the power of moving images,
and will let go of any soundtrack.
This analysis will be based on two Films. The rst one is House -
03
3 Quoted in A.Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, 2002, New York, MIT Press, p 118.
4 Murray Grigor, Cinematic Scarpa, Architectural Design No 143: Architecture andFilm II, 2000, New York, John Wiley and Sons Ltd, p75.
Life, by Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine, which treats of the House
in Bordeaux, designed by the dutch Architect Rem Koolhaas
and completed in 1998. The second one, is an extract of In -
nite Space, directed by Murray Grigor, which deals with The
Chemisphere, a house designed by John Lautner in 1960 in
Los Angeles.
The rst reason why I chose to oppose and contrast those two
architectural movies is that they both deal with architectures
that one could call dream homes _ architectures speci cally
designed to accommodate the personalities, habits and desires
of its inhabitants. The house in Bordeaux belongs to a man
who was made disabled in a car accident, it is so designed to
respond to the particular way of life that this involves, namely
getting around in a wheel chair. He once said to Rem Koolhaas,
Contrary to what you might expect, I do not want a simple
house. I want a complicated house because it will determine my
world. 5 Although the owner of The Chemisphere of J.Lautner
didnt have such speci city, the house is still designed in re -
sponse to his particular preoccupations. Being an aerospace en-
gineer, living up in a house perched on top of a nearly thirty feet
high concrete pole seemed like a dream come true for Leonard
Malin.
The second reason of this choice is that The House in Bordeaux
5 September 2011, Blog: http://storiesofhouses.blogspot.com/2005/06/maison- bordeaux-by-rem-koolhaas.html.
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and the Chemisphere being inhabited architectures, the public
is very rarely welcomed in or even around those houses. Archi-
tectural Film becomes the only tool which can bring the spatial
experience to the spectator.
And last but not least, although they both aim to depict homes,
the two lms do it in very different ways. When Ila Beka & Louise
Lemoine chose to present the house in Bordeaux in a modest
atmosphere by following Guadaloupe Acevedo, the housekeep-
er, Murray Grigor took the decision to show Lautners houses
through extremely controlled shots of the architecture.
This thesis will be punctuated by the following signs clarifying
the main conclusions of our analyses. They will placed in the left
margin of the concerned text.
04
Use of the only Cinematic pathof the spatial eye.
Use of the Cinematic path of the spatial eye fails to convey the Architectural one.
Use of the Cinematic path of the spatialeye conveys the Architectural one.
Use of the Cinematic path of the spatialeye supersedes the Architectural one.
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FIGURE 02 / Different lenses Angle of viewNovember 2011, Blog: http://www.unique-photography-concepts.com/lens.html.
FIGURE 01 / Hu an eld of vision.November 2011, Blog: http://newlandscapeworld.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-is-landscape.html .
05
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6 Quoted in A.Vidler, 2002, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, MIT Press, p 118.
In this rst chapter we will analyse the interactions between ge -
ography ( the science of space) and the two spatial arts, which
are Architecture and Film.
The understanding of space is indeed one of the most importantpoints when experiencing architecture. How does Film gives us
an understanding of the actual physical space ?
It is hard to imagine a montage sequence from an archi-
tectural assemble more subtly composed, shot by shot
, than the one which is composed by our legs walking
among the buildings of the Acropolis. 6Sergei Eisenstein.
The concepts of Architectural and Cinematic path of the eye
have already been introduced earlier. Let us clarify now what
they involve speci cally regarding the understanding of physical
space.
The Architectural eye being the tool one use when experiencing
space physically, is rst of all de ned by the human capacities.
The angle of coverage is de ned by the human eld of vision,
which is on average, as you can observe it on the Figure 1,
120 wide, and 150 high. We can notice that the closer we get
from the centre of the vision eld, the more precise the vision is.
By default the human eye always focuses on the in nite, unless
the eye is attracted by something in particular. Then regarding
the height of the point of view, its limits are potentially the oor,
and the human height. An interesting point is that the percep-
tion of space from the Architectural path of the eye is continu-
ous, the vision is never stopped and follows ones movements
through space. The change of angle of view will be executed
more or less fast, depending of the movements of the human
body and eyes.
On the other hand is the Cinematic path of the eye, where the
physical space is understood through Film, and thus through
one or several lenses. According to the focal of those ones,
06
PART 1: PHYSICAL SPACE
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FIGURE 03 / Scene 01 / Storyboard / In nite Space, fro 00:34:332 to 00:37:15.
07
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the angle of coverage will vary from 180 for a 8mm focal to
2,25 for a 1000mm focal. The lens also in uences the depth
of eld. The movements of the camera as well as the angles of
view have no limits except from the tools available during the
shooting (tripods, dollies, steady-cams ...). Most importantly, the
Cinematic path of the eye understands space according to the
way it is montaged by the director. It digests the pieces of space
shown on the different cuts to assemble them step by step to
form an idea of how the space looks like as a whole.
We will now analyse different processes used by lm-directors to
convey physical space through lm, rstly in In nite Space and
then in HouseLife.
The Scene 01, represented on the Figure 03, is the middle part
of In nite Space which is dedicated to The Chemisphere. After
a quite long serie of interviews, and footages from the past, we
discover the house in this scene, composed of seven plans.
At rst sight when we watch this scene, we know how the house
looks from the outside, the view on Los Angeles from inside, as
well as a part of the house: the living/dining room and kitchen
(the lm wont actually show us anything more of the house). So
we do get an overview of the space.
We guess that the lens focal is the same on each shot and prob-
ably between 18 and 28mm, which gives us a rather large angle
of coverage (between 75 and 100 wide) without distorting the
space. As you can compare it on the Figure 01, it is quite nar-
rower than a human eld of vision, in width and even more in
height. The all movie is framed in 16:9 and in HD quality. The
depth of eld is very wide, which reminds the human focus on
the in nite. The space is so framed in an as wide as possible
manner without distorting it. This wide framing can push the
viewer to brush the picture rather than looking at it as a whole.
So even though the only act of looking at space through a fram-
ing decided by someone else, by de nition, uses a cinematic
path of the eye, a lot of parameters are assembled here to make
this Cinematic path of the eye almost as close as possible from
an Architectural one.
The second point to analyse are the movements of the camera.
When we refer to the Figure 04, we can see that Murray Grigor
08
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FIGURE 04 / Scene 01 / Diagra s 01.
09
01
04(+06)
05
02
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FIGURE 05 / Scene 01 / Diagram 02 / In nite Space, fro 00:34:32 to 00:37:15.
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7 September 2011, Website: http://in nitespacethemovie.com.
unfolds the Chemisphere in two different ways: vertically or
circularly, always from one single static point of view per shot.
Each single shot slowly reveals a cinematic panorama.
The points of view chosen are all at eye height and most certain-
ly all reachable for everyone visiting the house (we cant make
sure of that as the points of view of two shot from the outside
are totally unknown).
Then the fact that those points of view are all static makes the
understanding of space totally rely on the cinematic path of the
eye of the spectator. It is indeed in complete opposition with the
architectural path of the eye which follows the movements of the
visitor walking through the architecture.
Regarding the vertical and circular panoramas, we cant deny
that they work perfectly with their subject, The Chemisphere.
This round house suspended on top of a mat is indeed all about
verticality and circularity: its inside is composed in a circular way,
and it imposes itself to the landscape, by being perched a tall
and strong vertical pole.
The director recorded the house in a very controlled and chosenways, to not only show the space, but also convey its composi-
tion, its tempo. It is an interesting choice, when we know that
Lautner architecture quest has always been to create An archi-
tecture that has no beginning and no end. 7
It appears that Murray Grigor tries to direct the path of our spa-
tial eye to highlight this particularity in John Lautners architec-
ture. This enable us to get even more spatial information about
the space than a physical experience would enable us to.
The Scene 02 (Figure 06), which is the scene just following
the Scene 01, is a good example showing how slow the move-
ment of the camera is during those shots. In 12 seconds, the
camera only gets closer of a few meters, probably three, from
its subject, a window placed on the oor. This movement seems
very unnatural, as although the scene is shot from eye view, the
movement of the camera is much closer than the movement of a
visitor would be.
The text point to analyse, is the way those seven vertical of
circular shots are montaged together. We will base our re exion
on the Figure 04 and the Figure 05, which is a decomposition of
the Scene 01.
One conceives and reads a building in terms of se-quences. To erect a building is to predict and seek ef-
fects of contrast and linkage through which one passes
In the continuous shot/sequence that a building is,
11
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12
FIGURE 06 / Scene 02 / In nite Space, Fro 00:34:15 To 00:36:26.
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8 Jean Nouvel quoted Kester Rattenbury, Echo and Narcissus, Architectural DesignNo 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p35.
9 Murray Grigor quoted in, Blog: http://designfaith.blogspot.com/2010/09/beyond- googie.html, September 2011.
10 Kester Rattenbury, Echo and Narcissus, Architectural Design No 112:Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p35.
the architect works with cuts and edits, framings and
openings 8
Jean Nouvel.
When looking our two diagrams, we realise that we cant ex-
actly understand how each space showed is physically related
to the others in reality. Although we do get a general sense of
the space, the cuts still leave us a bit of freedom as to how to
understand the precise composition of the house. Namely that
those shots only reveal a part of the inside of the house, the liv-
ing room, the kitchen and a part of the terrace.
Yet, he inspired thousands of architects (and architec-
ture students) to realize that a building emerging from a
dream could be built. 9
When the montaging of cuts could leave space for (mis)repre-
sentation and distortion, Murray Grigor chooses to leave more of
an abstract impression.
Architecture is essentially, inherently different from
lm. Film is linear, fundamentally linear, an extraor -
dinary process in which the director replicates andsubverts the viewers actual existence, offers them, for
a limited time, an alternative way of seeing, an alterna-
tive life. It does this through circumstances of extreme
control: the darkened room; total attention; provision
of object, story, focus, idea, tone, argument, mood,
dialogue, background music, resolution. Its creator,
invisibly, provides and dominates the experience of the
individual. 10
Kester Rattenbury.
Here, Murray Grigor seems to manipulate the path of our spatial
eye through his controlled shots to portray the somehow magic
and sculptural particularities of the architecture. He detaches
it from reality, rather than presenting the space as a place, a
home. This completely distances the cinematic experience pro-
vided from a physical experience.
Let us analyse now analyse how the physical space of The
House of Bordeaux is conveyed in HouseLife.
This Scene 03 (Figure 07) is the third scene of HouseLife. It is
a 5min continuous shot, following Guadaloupe Acevedo, the
housekeeper, walking through the House of Bordeaux, probablysimply using a steady-camera.
The scene offers an overview of the house from the beginning
of the lm. First we visit the living room, and its large glassed fa -
13
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FIGURE 07 / Scene 03 / Storyboard / HouseLife, fro 00:04:33 to 00:09:13.
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11 Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112:Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p13.
cade opening this oor to the outside. Then we take some stairs
down, leading us one level lower on the oor ground. We pass
quickly through the courtyard, then through the ground oor, to
access what seems to be an open elevator platform surrounded
by book shelves. This leads us two levels higher, on the top
oor, where we go through different bedrooms and bathrooms,
to nally take some spiralled stairs, leading us once again on the
ground oor, but in the kitchen part.
Being a continuous shot, the whole scene is obviously shot us-
ing the same lens, focal, and focus. The result is a quite narrow
eld of vision, probably shot by a 28mm focal lens, or even long -
er. The depth of eld is extremely wide as the very foregroundappears as clear as the background. The focus is on the in nite.
Namely that the entire lm is presented in a 3:4 format. Compar -
ing to the Scene 1 from In nite Space, this scene focuses a lot
more the attention of the viewer on speci c parts of the house,
by framing the space a lot more closely.
Then the main particularity of this shot, is the fact that we arefollowing someone who is present on each frame. This helps us
in two main ways to understand the space.
First of all, the presence of Guadaloupe makes us understand
the point of views from which we discover the house. As we can
see it on the gure 08, the scene is shot from a human height,
and the camera is orientated in a natural human eye direction
when walking. All those choices makes the understanding of the
perspectives of the house very natural. We only see the house
from a very familiar point of view, the one of a visitor.
Then, another information is the scale of what we see.
The importance of scale is also revealed in the con-
nection between close-up and medium- and long-
shots. 11
Michael Dear.The presence of Guadaloupe on the shot acts just as a human
gure on a drawing: it gives a instinctive information about the
scale of what is shown. We know straight away if this is a close-
up, medium- or long-shot, and as a matter of fact the scale of
the space shown.
As we follow the steps of Guadaloupe, we also know that we are
experiencing the space at an average human speed walk. Beingaware of the speed of the shot gives us an important indication
about the scale/surface of the house. This is the theory of De
Certeau which Micheal Dear explains here:
15
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FIGURE 08 / Scene 03 / Diagra 01.
16
Ground Floor First Floor Second Floor
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FIGURE 09 / Scene 03 / Diagram 02 / HouseLife, fro 00:04:33 to 00:06:13.
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12 Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112:Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p13.
In our transportation orientated culture, one important
distance-related variable is speed... Boyer says It is
speed that has erased the fragmentation and hierar-
chies of space and time, homogenized everything to an
absolute present. But the absence of speed is also an
element of space making. Michel de Certeau has drawnattention to the importance of walking as a spatial prac-
tice, constitutive of peoples life paths. Everyone
and everything becomes part of the aesthetic of the
commodity system. 12
Micheal Dear.
It also forces a speed of movement to the cameraman, which is
the speed of human movements. This choice of style enablesthe viewer, even though he is following someone, to analyse
the whole space around him. He will look for informations is the
format of the pictures passing in front of his eyes.
The scene being shot in a continuous way, without any cuts, it
literally unfolds the house before our eyes. This is what we can
observe on the Figures 08 and 09. Although we cant under-stand the precise con guration of the house by watching it just
once, we can still get a rough idea of it. We guess the number
of levels in the house _three_ , the three different options to
move from one to the other _ two set of stairs, plus one elevator
platform _, and the programme of each oor _ kitchen and other
function rooms on the lower oor, living space on the rst oor,
and nally en-suited bedrooms on the top one.
We also get an idea of the general atmosphere of the house, a
modern architecture which with the strong and rough materialwhich is concrete and glass, to create a house widely open on
the outside, surrounded by trees.
This continuous shot enables us to grasp as much informations
about the House in Bordeaux, than we would if were visiting the
house ourselves for 5min, forced to follow the same person on
the same path. It presents the house as a space but also as a
place.
To put it in a nutshell, we can say that the speci cities of this
shot (continuous, shot by a steady-camera following someone),
enables us to have a very similar spatial experience as if we
were discovering the space physically. It gives us the same
amount of information (spatial con guration, scale and atmos -
phere), and shows us the house in a very close-to-real manner.It seems like Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine manage to portrait the
house in such a way that cinematic and architectural path of our
spatial eye naturally meet.
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13 Jean Nouvel quoted in Kester Rattenbury, Echo and Narcissus, ArchitecturalDesign No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p35.
14 Quoted in A.Vidler, 2002, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in ModernCulture, MIT Press, p 118.
Architecture exists, like cinema, in the dimension of
time and movement. 13
Jean Nouvel.
Architecture in the dimension of time and movement is what
we will call here the temporal space. For Parameters de ne the
temporality of an architecture.The rst one is the way the archi-
tecture is attached to a time and context and how it evolves with
it.
Then the three others give its tempo to the architecture in the
present. First we have the activity inside the house, what makes
it alive. Then we have the movements of the architecture itself.
And last but not least, the changings of light that time inposes
through day and seasons.
The physical experience of an architecture, which in most cases
doest last more than a few hours, will only disclose two parts of
the temporality of an architecture: its rythm through shapes, and
its activity. This are therefore the temporal informations about
space that the architectural path of the eye is used to get. If the
physical experience was to last for a 24h then it would also showthe changings of lights.
The cinema incorporates time to space. Better, time,
through this, really becomes a dimension of space. 14
Elie Faure.
According to Faure, a cinematic experience would convey more
informations about the temporality of space. The lm camera isindeed also called the time-base tool, which isnt neutral.
This is what we will question in this second chapter. Which
informations about the temporality of architecture can the cin-
ematic path of the eye grasp in comparision to the architectural
path of the eye, and how.
We will do this through the analyses of four scenes from from
HouseLife and In nite Space.
19
PART 2: TEMPORAL SPACE
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20
FIGURE 10 / Scene 04 / Storyboard / In nite Space, fro 00:31:37 to 00:33:42.
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FIGURE 11 / Scene 05 / Storyboard / HouseLife Fro 00:32:30 To 00:33:14.
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15 Micheal Tawa, Agencies of the frame : tectonic strategies in cinema and architec- ture, 2010, Newcastle, Tyne : Cambridge Scholars, p42.
16 Jeff Hopkins in Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, ArchitecturalDesign No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p11.
17 Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112:Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p11.
So rst of all lets analyse how each portrait attaches its architec -
ture to a period between past, present and future.
We will base this analyses on the Scenes 04 (Figure 10) and 05
(Figure 11) severally from In nite Space and HouseLife.
In the scene 04, opening the cinematic portrait of the Chemi -sphere, we see a mix of drawings, pictures and lms from the
past. They reconstruct the evolution of the Chemisphere as an
architectural project as well as its construction.
Architecture and cinema are always situated within a
context _ a site, a landscape, a room, a time. Conse-
quently they are always framed by that context and set
among the circumstances that environ them. Wethersituated within natural or urban contexts, in a wilder-
ness or suburb, in deserted spaces of abandonment
or in a vibrant city, architecture and cinema always
take place in a milieu, in relation to themes and ideas,
objects and spaces, times and occasions, people and
communities. 15
Micheal Tawa.By the quality and format of the videos and pictures (grainy,
black and white or recoloured, 4:3 format), as well as by the
out ts of the characters appearing, the viewer is very quickly
able to place the Chemisphere in its original context, the 1960s.
Once he is aware of that context, he wont see the architecture
with the same eye. This scene also gives us some clues about
the complexity and monumentality of the construction of The
Chemisphere.
The power of the lm image to (mis)represent thematerial and social world lies in its ability to blur the
boundaries of space and time, reproduction and simu-
lation, reality and fantasy, and to obscure the traces of
its own ideologically based production.
Jeff Hopkins 16
By choosing to include this scene at the very beginning of The
Chemispheres portrait, Murray Grigor actually chooses to con-vey a real picture of the Chemisphere. Rather than using lm to
detach the Architecture from its context, and so to misrepresent
it, he attaches it so its original social and material time.
Andrea Kahn is equally blunt: to attend to the work
of architecture we must rst seek out what we do not
see- that the art of construction goes beyond appear-
ances our work is not simply a matter of drawing andfollowing the line . 17
Those images de nitely go beyond the informations that we
would get by a physical experience, they show us what an
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18 Micheal Tawa, Agencies of the frame : tectonic strategies in cinema and architec- ture, 2010, Newcastle, Tyne : Cambridge Scholars, p133.
23
architectural path of the eye wouldnt be able to see: the origi-
nal context of The Chemisphere, and enable us in this way, to
understand the Architecture more accurately.
The Scene 05 (Figure 11), included in the middle of the portrait
of The House in Bordeaux, shows us what happens in the housewhen it rains outside: it rains inside. This is one of the numerous
examples during the lm where the viewer get to see the reality
of the house and its architecture, as well as the way it is quickly
ageing.
There is a time dimension, since place is a complex
amalgam of past, present and emergent forms coexist-
ing simultaneously in a single landscape. 18Rather than attaching the architecture directly to the past, the
directors choose to show the evolution of the architecture in
time, in other words the effect time had on the architecture from
its original context to the present.
There again, it proves a will to realise a honest portrait of the
house. Maybe even more honest than the Chemisphere one,
as it unveils negative features of the architecture, where In niteSpace only shows the good ones.
Nevertheless, the access to those temporal informations being
still physically possible, we cant really say that the cinematic
experience brings here an added value regarding the amount of
temporal informations that the viewer gets. The cinematic expe-
rience will just equal the physical experience.
After the attachment of the Architectures to the past, and evolu-
tion from it, we will now analyse the way both portraits treat of
the second temporal parameter of an Architecture: its activity.
In the portrait given of the House of Bordeaux, this activity is
obvious, as we discover the programme of the house during awhole week day. We know that during the day the house is left
to its two housekeepers, Guadaloupe and her husband,and
what their activities are. During the evening it shelters the life
of a woman and her two children, which we only observe from
the outside. Thus, we are as aware of the life inside the house
as Guadaloupe herself is. The cinematic choice here is simply
to portrays honestly in what we could physically experience byspending a day inside the house.
Nevertheless, the interesting point is that the portrait of the
house is entirely attached to the activities of Guadaloupe. The
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FIGURE 12 / Scene 06 / Storyboard / HouseLife Fro 00:00:02 To 00:00:50 .
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19 Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112:Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p13.
20 Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112:Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p9.
lm being lmed by a steady camera, it enables the directors
to let Guadaloupe move freely in the house without having to
choreograph her. The camera is either following her when she
moves, or lming her at a x angle (examples in Figures 2 and 4
).
Following the steps of Guadaloupe, we know that we are experi-encing the space at an average human walk speed.
In our transportation orientated culture, one important
distance-related variable is speed... Boyer says It is
speed that has erased the fragmentation and hierar-
chies of space and time, homogenized everything to an
absolute present. But the absence of speed is also an
element of space making. Michel de Certeau has drawnattention to the importance of walking as a spatial prac-
tice, constitutive of peoples life paths. Everyone
and everything becomes part of the aesthetic of the
commodity system . 19
Micheal Dear.
Being aware of the speed of the shot gives us an important
indication about the scale/surface of the house. This is Michel deCerteaus theory, which Micheal Dear explains above. It enables
the cinematic path of the eye to get closer to the extremely com-
plex informative level of the architectural one.
On the opposite, in in nite Space, the Chemisphere is portrayed
without any trace of its activity. The house we see is perfectly
tidied, the space is empty. The camera is lming it very slowly
from different xed point of view. All of this makes us forget that
it is actually more than a space, but a place, a home. The cam-
era seems to distance us from the temporality of the architecturein terms of its activity. The house seems like frozen, out of time.
We will now analyse the third parameter which gives their
rhythms to Architectures: the movements of the architecturesthemselves.
The gures 12 and 13 shows us the mechanism of the two archi -
tectures in action. This is actually a similarity of the two houses,
they both move on their own, their shelter mechanisms.
Erwin Panofsky announces the unique possibilities of lm,
de nedas dynamization of space and accordingly spatialization of
time. 20
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FIGURE 13 / Scene 07 / Storyboard / In nite Space, Fro 00:26:42 To 00:27:42.
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21 Quoted in Murray Grigor, Space in Time, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p19
The scene 06 ( gure 12), from HouseLife, is a 50 seconds
continuous shot where we can see the elevating platform of the
house in action from beginning to end. This is the introduction
scene in the lm.
This elevator is the heart of the house, this is what enables its
handicapped owner to go from one level to the other, and thewhole architecture revolves around it. The continuity of this shot
gives us an idea of the architecture in the dimension of time. We
understand the time it takes to go through it, and its extremely
slow rhythm when it comes to going from level to the other.
Ansel Adams said Its not what you see, its how
you look. 21 The fact that this scene is shot from a
x point of view highlights this particular rhythm evenmore, and give you 50 full seconds to analyse the pro-
cess and get really immersed in the slow tempo of The
House of Bordeaux.
Also by choosing this scene as an opening scene the directors
direct the cinematic path of the eye of the viewer towards the
heart the house from the beginning, to then show what revolves
around it. By doing so they help us to then understand the restof the house in line with in spinal column: the elevating platform.
The is where the Cinematic path of the eye supersedes the Ar-
chitectural in this scene. It explains its programme without even
using words.
In the Scene 07 ( Figure 13), from In nite Space, we can see
the mechanism which enables people to reach the level of the
house, which is indeed inaccessible by car, because of the
choice of its design. The scene is divided in three cuts, wherewe can see the elevator from the car park, then we see the view
on the house from inside the elevator in movement, and nally
the people inside of it.
This scene tells us the speed at which people can reach the
house, but as it is cut in three shots, we cant really tell how
much time it takes. Nevertheless something interesting happens
in the second shot, as we understand the rhythm at which thepeople discover the house, and the way the elevator is placed to
unfold and slowly transform the perspective of the house that its
visitors get. In a way, we understand how Rem Koolhaas de-
signed the introduction to its architecture. Namely that this is the
scene that the director chose as well to introduce the house.
We will now focus on the last temporal parameter of architec-
ture, which is the way light transforms it as the day passes.
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FIGURE 14 / A day in a house 1 / Stills fro In nite Space .
FIGURE 15 / A day in a house 2 / Stills from HouseLife .
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The gures 14 and 15, are small collections of stills from each
lm. They both show us that the two directors chose to show
their subjects under different lights.
In the gure 14, from In nite Space, we can see that the lm
shows us the Chemisphere at different times of the day, oneduring day time, the other during night time. The light seems
to have a very strong impact, as the house is very open to the
outside, with a whole panoramic view on Los Angeles from the
living room. So as the skyline of Los Angeles transforms itself,
it also transforms The Chemisphere. This could of course be
noticed during a physical experience of the place, if staying long
enough to observe the house during day and night time.What is interesting is that the director chose to shoot the space
from the exact same point of views but under different lighting.
The fact that the points of view are similar, and only the time
parameter changes enables us to have a very clear idea of how
the architecture is transformed by light. It shows us the house a
bit as a sculpture under different lighting. This choice uses our
cinematic eye to absorb more informations than our architecturaleye would get.
In the gure 15 , from HouseLife, again the space in shown
in different lights. The portrait actually attend to show the pro-
gramme of a full week day in The House of Bordeaux. We can
so observe the effect of the smooth changing of the natural light-
ing during the day, to pass to the arti cial one in the evening.
There again, this could as well be observed by a visitor.
The directors didnt choose here to show the same point ofviews. During the day, the lm focuses on the inside of the
house, when the owners are away. Then at night, when the own-
ers come back, the camera captures the house from the outside.
The viewer is not able to have a clear understanding of the way
the light changes the space, as he cant make any real compari-
sons.
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Part 2: Temporal Space / Architecture between pastand present
Part 1: Physical Space
HouseLife In nite Space
Part 2: Temporal Space / Activity
Part 2: Temporal Space / Movements of the
Part 2: Temporal Space /Light changing
FIGURE 16 / Conclusions in Statistics.
h i ( i h f h i i
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The Figure 16 synthesises the different conclusions made during
our analyses regarding our two case studies: HouseLife portray-
ing The House in Bordeaux, and In nite Space, portraying the
Chemisphere. It appears that they both play with Architectural
and Cinematic path of the spatial eye to convey their architec-
tures, but in different ways.
In HouseLife, the boundary between Cinematic and Architectural
path of the eye is undeniably crossed. The cinematic path of
the eye reproduces the Architectural one as much to convey the
physicality of the space as to convey its temporality.
It seems that the main goal of Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine was
the manipulate the cinematic experience to make it as close as
possible from a physical experience. Thanks to their cinematic
choices (continuous shots, presence of human gure in action,
narrow focal, points of views, montage ...) they succeed in offer-
ing a spatial experience which is almost as rich in the amount
and quality of informations than a physical experience would be.
We can notice that they manage to even supersede the Archi-
tectural path of the spatial eye when it comes to convey themovements of the architecture, by choosing a continuous shot
from a x point of view, and placing this scene of the elevator as
an introduction of the movie.
In In nite Space, the boundary between Cinematic and Architec -
tural path of the eye is crossed a lot less often. It seems like the
director had a preference for a pure Cinematic path of the eyeto convey the space of The Chemisphere, particularly regarding
the understanding of the physical space. Through very con-
trolled movements of the camera and montage of his shots, he
manipulates our spatial eye to make us absorb the informations
that he, as a director, wants to convey of the space. He seems
to show us the space the way he sees it.
Nevertheless, this doesnt stop the lm from making Cinematicand Architectural path of the spatial eye meet several times.
There again, it becomes the most interesting when the qualities
of the Cinematic and Architectural path of spatial eye meet, by a
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CONCLUSION
choice of recurrent static points of view for example mimic enough of the Architectural path of the eye using the
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choice of recurrent static points of view for example.
We can nally say that it is a question of choice wether the
director chooses to put an emphasis on a very Cinematic path
of the spatial eye or to try to get as close as possible from an Ar-
chitectural path of the eye. Our analyses actually demonstratesthat both Cinematic experiences can be very rich in terms of the
amount and quality of informations about space that they give.
The pure cinematic path of the eye will impose the point of view
of the director on the space, using controlled shots and montage
to convey the speci cities of the architecture that he is wishing
to highlight.
When the Cinematic path of the eye tries to imitate the Archi-tectural one, the viewer will feel a bit more free, as the way he
will absorb the informations is much more familiar to him. This
familiarity enables the spatial eye to digest a big amount of infor-
mations about the space, although they dont always seem to be
controlled anymore by the director.
Where making Cinematic and Architectural path of the spatialeye meet becomes the most interesting is certainly when they
manage to combine the informative thickness of both spatial
eyes: The Cinematic path of the spatial eye is manipulated to
mimic enough of the Architectural path of the eye _ using the
familiarity that the viewer has with this spatial experience _ but
still imposes some strong cinematic choices _ which will convey
additional informations through the creative and critical eye of
the director.
This ideal combination of the Cinematic and Architectural path ofthe spatial eye conveys cinematic moments where the thickness
of the spatial experience is multiplied.
The Cinematic experience of Architecture no more attend to
simply imitate the Physical one, but supersedes it.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
FILmS
- Murray Grigor, In nite Space, The Architecture of John Lautner, 2009, The GoogieCompany.
- Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine, Koolhaas Houselife, 2008, Rome, BekaFilms.
BOOKS
- A.Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, 2002,New York, MIT Press.
- Micheal Tawa, Agencies of the frame : tectonic strategies in cinema and architec ture, 2010, Newcastle, Tyne : Cambridge Scholars.
ARTICLES- Murray Grigor, Space in Time, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film,
1994, London, Academy Group.
- Murray Grigor, Cinematic Scarpa, Architectural Design No 143: Architecture andFilm II, 2000, New York, John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
- Kester Rattenbury, Echo and Narcissus, Architectural Design No 112: Architectureand Film, 1994, London, Academy Group.
- Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112: architec- ture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group.
WEB
- September 2011, Blog: http://storiesofhouses.blogspot.com/2005/06/maison- bordeaux-by-rem-koolhaas.html.
- September 2011, Website: http://in nitespacethemovie.com. - September 2011, Blog: http://designfaith.blogspot.com/2010/09/beyond-googie.html.
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