architectural film, as the meeting point of cinematic and architectural path of the spatial eye

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

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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 .

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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.

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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,

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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:

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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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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.

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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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21

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 architecture, 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.


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 architecture, 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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24

FIGURE 12 / Scene 06 / Storyboard / HouseLife Fro 00:00:02 To 00:00:50 .


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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: architecture 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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architectural film, as the meeting point of cinematic and architectural path of the spatial eye

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