CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1.
INTRODUCTION
2.
ARCHITECTS’ VISIONS OF
FUTURE CITYSCAPE
3.
PAST PORTRAIT OF FUTURE
CITYSCAPE IN MOVIES
(a)
METROPOLIS
(b)
THINGS TO COME
(c)
BLADERUNNER
(d)
GHOST IN THE SHELL
(e)
MINORITY REPORT
4.
CONCLUSION
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY
WEB
PUBLISHING
This dissertation will be published on the
following website:
http://www.geocities.com/yuewailam/dissert/dissert.htm
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to
express my gratitude to all those who have encouraged and supported me in
preparing this dissertation. Particularly to my supervisors,
Dr. Lynne Distefano and Dr. Lee Ho Yin for their
clear directions and encouragement. Thank you!
1.
INTRODUCTION
Title
Reality
fringe: Vision of future cities from Metropolis to Minority Report
Focus
Movies depicting
future cities draw ideas from literature, paintings, social context and
architectural theories, etc. Yet for the visual proposals, the contemporary
cityscape and the architects’ visions would be the major inspiration. This
paper shall focus on the effect of architects’ visions and the contemporary
cityscape on movie set design. Is movie a true re-presentation of them or a
complete re-construction? How does movie keep in pace with the advancing
theories? What are the significances of these movies?
Issue
Numerous studies on the relationship between
movie and architecture were conducted before. However very
little research covered the aspect of future cityscape. In the last
decade, Asian cities, especially
Theoretical Basis
With Thomas More’s Utopia came the quest of what the world should be. During the Futurist Movement, Architect Antonio Sant’ Elia showed us what the future could be in his writings and drawings, “We must invent and rebuild ex novo our modern city like an immense and tumultuous building site, active, mobile and everywhere dynamic, and the modern building like a gigantic machine.”[1] In depicting a creditable future, movie also played an important role. It helped laymen visualize and relate themselves to the visions of a futurist city. By investigating the relationship of the two, we would be able to construct a more complete understanding of how people apprehended our future cities.
Hypothesis
Metropolis, produced
in 1927, drew inspiration from Antonio Sant Elia’s 1914 design of traffic incorporated architecture. In
Minority Report, produced in 2002, such design was adopted again. This paper tries to prove that the contemporary
cityscape and architects’ visions have long been the major sources of
inspiration for movies depicting future cities.
Methodology
Architects have generated endless visions of ultimate cityscape from their own values and wishes. Movie as a powerful form of mass media opens up extensive discussions and critiques of these visions. From 1920s to 2002, five influential movies are selected for study. Through a conceptual breakdown, an analysis of the ingredients and rules that made up the futurist cities, we will investigate how the movie set design of future cities is related to architects’ theories and visions.
2. ARCHITECTS’ VISIONS OF
FUTURE CITYSCAPE
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|
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Fig.1 Cite Industrielle by Garnier,
1908. |
Fig.2 Citta Nuova
by Sant’Elia, 1914. |
Fig.3 Ville Contemporaine
by Le Corbusier, 1934.
“As the
ancients drew the inspiration for their art from the elements of nature, so we,
being materially and spiritually artificial, must find this inspiration in the
elements of the immensely new mechanical world which we have created, of which
architecture must be the finest expression, the most complete synthesis, the
most efficacious artistic intelligence.” _____Antonio
Sant Elia, 1914[2]
The Industrial Revolution had
taken the traditional city beyond its limits and initiated architects to divert
their attention and effort to the planning of a metropolis. Industrialization
itself has even become the generating concept for modern city planning.
One of the significant early future city
visions was generated by Tony Garnier in 1908. He
believed that future cities would all be industrial organized in the principle
of separate function zoning and in the spirit of socialism. At roughly the same
time, the Italian Futurist architects identified “speed” as the new beauty of
the world. In 1913, Antonio Sant'Elia designed a
future metropolis for the Citta Nuova. The metropolis had
terraced skyscrapers with their internal structures exposed and elevator shafts
separated from the main structural body. Grand traffic routes and bridges
intersected the skyscrapers at various levels. In 1934, based conceptually on Garnier’s Cite Industrielle and
aesthetically on Sant’ Elia’s
Citta Nuova, the master
Modernist architect Le Corbusier designed a complex metropolis Ville Contemporaine. His conviction that the space of modernity
was created by destroying everything that was both natural and pre-modern has
enormous impact on architects and planners of later generations. Glorifying the
Grid space as the symbol of modernism being efficient, rational, and
transparent against the “curvilinear, paralyzing and arbitrary”[3]
urban fabric of the past, he designed a grid city of skyscrapers in the form of
slabs with ample green open spaces in between and a clear separation of
vehicular and pedestrian circulation.
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|
|
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Fig. 4 Walking city by
Herron & Harvey, 1963. |
Fig. 5 Plug-in city by
Cook, 1964. |
|
The above images illustrate
Archigram’s two main concepts, expandablity
and prefabrication. |
|
In 1940s
came the World War II. On
one hand it created an urgent need of huge scale reconstruction,
on the other hand it reinforced people’s optimism in technology and thus kicked
off the Megastructure Movement. Megastructure
was a concept of integrating all the functions of a city or part of a city
into one huge structural frame. Peter Cook, one renowned Megastructuralist,
designed the Plug-in city in 1964. The city was one big expandable and adaptable
infrastructural skeleton plugged with prefabricated living capsules. However
as a way of imposing a formal order on the chaos of cities, Megastructure posed a big question in the feasibility and
gradually gave way to Postmodernism.
In 1966, Venturi
in his writings accused Modernism of causing the loss of architecture’s
associative imagery. It marked the beginning of Postmodernism. Postmodernism
was basically the critique of Modernism in its revival of historical detail and
the consideration of context and tradition of the site.
In
1995, Rem Koolhaas
published his “Generic city” vision. He looked at Asian cities, like
Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, the Pearl Delta Region of China etc, for future
city models. He suggested that future cities would lose all cultural identities
as a result of the urbanization and globlization at an accelerating speed.[4] To
him, city planning will be dead. Everything in the city will be fractal and ad
hoc.
Having
studied the previous future city visions of architects, I shall in the
following chapter look at how these visions were conveyed or re-presented in the
movies.
3. PAST PORTRAIT
OF FUTURE CITYSCAPE
(a)
METROPOLIS, 1927
Director Fritz Lang
Set designer Karl
Vollbrecht, Erich Kettelhut,
Otto Hunte
Script Writer Thea Von Harbou
The
significance of the movie
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Fig.6 |
Fig.7 Lang’s vision of future in Metropolis. |
European cities in 1920s were cities filled
with high-dense low-rise masonry houses. How striking and innovative the crew
of Metropolis was to have produced such a futuristic world of skyscrapers and
infrastructure! By illustrating the contemporary anxiety of
Industrial Revolution, Metropolis has been the most celebrated masterpiece ever
depicting a dystopian future of oppression and
exploitation. It is also influential in many other ways:--
”Metropolis
is a film of powerfully expressive architectural metaphors, a gallery of
contemporary visions.” ____Neumann[5]
“This film marks the beginning of an intensive
interplay between cinema and architecture. In its most grandiose moments the
two fuse to become cinematic architecture, an independent art form.” ____Wolfgang
Jacobsen[6]
The
city in 2026
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Fig. 8 The leisure garden |
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Fig. 9 The machine |
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Fig. 10 The underground workers’ city |
Metropolis
set in 2026. The planet was one continuous city, which was actually a mega
machine. The planet was divided into three levels,
above the ground, the machine level and the underground. Above the ground, the
city had the “New Tower of Babel” at the center, a “street-canyon” of
monumental skyscrapers, a Gothic Cathedral, a medieval hut, sports stadium,
night clubs and pleasure gardens. The mighty machine was at the middle level.
Underground there were workmen’s living quarters, gigantic caves and ancient
catacombs.
The vertical connections between different
levels were emphasized with layers of staircase, steep tunnels and elevators
while horizontal connections were presented by bridges linking different
buildings at various levels. [7]
Inspiration from contemporary cityscape
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Fig.11 New York Night scene |
Fig.12 Night scene in Metropolis |
“The
buildings seem like a vertical curtain, shimmering and very light, a lavish
backdrop hanging against a murky sky, dazzling, distracting, and hypnotizing.
It was only at night that the city gave the impression that it was alive: alive
the way illusions are alive. I knew that I had to make a film about all these
impressions.”
____Lang talking about his
Manhattan Trip, 1924.[8]
Though the
screen play of Metropolis had been completed long before his trip to
Inspiration
from architects’ visions
As Lang had received
formal architectural training, the design of sets reflected closely the
contemporary architectural visions and critiques.
German
urban planning vision
He was fascinated by the canyon-like
topology of the streets in
Skyscraper
incorporating traffic
|
|
Fig. 13 Leigh’s |
Metropolis depicted an impressive traffic
system with numerous bridges connecting different buildings at various levels
and traffic arteries running underneath buildings. The concept of incorporating
multi-layered traffic into skyscrapers was apparently inspired by Antonio Sant Elia’s Citta
Nuova and
William Robinson Leigh’s
“The
gong”
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|
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|
Fig. 14 Gropius’s Monument for the March
Dead, 1920-22. |
Fig.15 Metropolis’s underground city monument |
“At the central square of workers’ underground
city stood a big gong with ramping up base which was to call workers to work.
The gong is a symbol of repression. Ironically, this monument is modeled on
Walter Gropius’s Monument for the March Dead which
had been then criticized heavily politically.” ____
Neumann[9]
Again Metropolis drew references from contemporary
architecture with re-constructed meaning.
Yoshiwara Night club, pleasure gardens & the Gothic Cathedral
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Fig.16 Yoshiwara Nightclub in Metropolis |
Fig.17 Final reconciliation at Cathedral |
“The
only reference to Expressionist architecture in
Here
the filmmakers projected their own values on the architecture and place.
(b) THINGS TO COME, 1936
Director William
Cameron Menzies
Set
Designer Vincent
Korda, Moholy-Nagy
Script
Writer H
G Wells
Based on Well’s novel “The Shape of Things To
Come”
The
significance of the movie
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|
|
|
Fig.18 |
Fig.19 Things To Come’s 2036 city
illustrated the Art Deco spirit of the contemporary culture. |
In 1930s buildings in
“As a general rule you may take it that
whatever Lang did in Metropolis is the exactly contrary of what we want done
here.” ____Wells[11]
The movie was
the antithesis of Metropolis. Wells rejected Lang’s
urban dystopia as outdated and inaccurate. Under his
influence, Things To Come was a true visual
presentation of the Modern Movement.
The
city in 2036
The
movie showed the evolution of a city, the Everytown,
from 1936 to 2036. For thirty years from 1936, the world was continuously
in wars. Everywhere was either in ruins or abandoned as wasteland. Civilization
had fallen back almost into barbarism. For the next sixty years, the society
was more stabilized and people start mining the mountains for various resources
to rebuild the city. Man’s lives were ever since tied with the gigantic mining
machine. In 2036, the earth surface returned to Nature with the old Everytown still in ruins. Dug into a mountain, the new Everytown was designed in an Art Deco clean and streamlined
fashion. The underground city had glass and white towers extending hundreds
of stories down with terraces, walkways, monorails and glass elevators.
[12]
Inspiration from contemporary cityscape
None. As the city of 2036 was completely underground,
there was no existing city for reference.
Inspiration from architects’ visions
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|
|
|
Fig.20
Le Corb’s Plan Voisin, 1925. |
Fig.21
Mies’ glass skyscraper, 1922. |
The
formal order of the city was inspired by Le Corbusier’s
Plan Voisin for
(c) BLADERUNNER, 1982
Director
Ridley Scott
Set Designer
Script Writer
Based on Philip Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”
Illustrator
The significance of the movie
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Fig. 22 |
Fig.23 Future |
Unlike the 1920s Futurists’
and 1960s Megastructuralists’ visions, the Bladerunner’s
futuristic city was rooted in the present and invoked the past. The former
ones were too romantic that they proposed a brand new world, which disregarded
all ancient forms of architecture and history, failing to address any possible
cultural and social problems. Recognizing the existence of old buildings,
slump areas and depression, the Bladerunner city
was comparatively a more creditable visual futuristic manifesto of our age.
It was for the first time in
The city in 2019
“The city
was getting very dense. Buildings 3000-3500 feet high would have old ten and
twenty storey buildings underneath, functioning as service accesses to huge
megastructures. Cables and generator tubes, delivering
air and waste, would go up outside of the old buildings because they were
still there. The street level becomes a service alley to the megastructures towering above.” ____Mead,
the Set Designer
[13]
Inspiration
from contemporary cityscape
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Fig.24 |
Fig.25 |
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Fig.26 Ginza District, |
Fig.27 |
Bladerunner city was in the image of an old and dirty “
Inspiration
from architects’ visions
Retrofitting
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Fig.28 Cook’s Tricking Tower, 1978-79. |
Fig.29 Roger, Piano & Francini’s
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Fig.30 The
retrofitting facade of Tyrell Skyscraper |
“Things
are retrofitted after the fact of the original manufacture because the old,
consumer-based technology wasn’t keeping up with demand. Things have to work on
a day-to-day basis and you do whatever necessary to make it work. So you let go
of the style and it becomes pure function. The whole visual philosophy of the
film is based on this social idea.”
____Mead on “retrofitting” Bladerunner[15]
The busy and sleazy cityscape was achieved
by “Retrofitting”. This adaptive façade concept was very likely originated from
Peter Cook’s Trickling Tower, 1978-79, in which the initially polished megastructure changed their appearance over time. Roger,
Piano and Francini’s
Pompidou Centre, opened in 1977 and famous for its external infrastructure, had
apparently inspired Scott with the idea of “retrofitting” the façade with
services.
Tyrell’s office
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|
Fig.31 The grandiose solemn
interior space of Tyrell’s office. |
“It was intended to have a “neofascist”
or gothic look to physically strike fear in people.” ___ Paull, Set
Designer
The
office of Tyrell, the master creator of androids, signified power. With
twenty-foot-high columns and a huge window, Tyrell’s spacious office juxtaposed
with the cramped living condition and streetscape of the lower class. Alienated
from the public, he ruled his empire from the top of a towering ziggurat.
Sebastian’s and
Deckard’s apartments
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Fig.32 |
Fig.33 Ennis Brown House |
Fig.34 Deckard’s apartment |
The home of Sebastian, an android engineer,
was staged in
Deckard, the leading character, lived in an
apartment skyscraper of a hundred stories. Scott shot the exterior of it at
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis Brown House as it had a lot of Maya motifs. The
interior was furnished in a Gaudian look. [16]
Apparently the presence of the historical
landmarks, the buildings in Mayan and Gaudian
fashions enhanced the richness of the movie and reinforced the identity of Bladerunner city as a continuation from the past.
(d) GHOST IN THE SHELL, 1995
Director Mamoru
Oshii
Set Designer Atsushi
The significance of the movie
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Fig.35 |
Fig.36 Ghost in the shell City |
In Ghost In The
Shell,
The
city in 2029
The image of the city was a network society.
It was implied physically by the bridge networks and conceptually by the
“information networks”. Water was the metaphor of the sea of data, flooding the
city. A ferry in the image of
“The
Ghost In The shell city is a world densely packed with information, and I
thought that I would express this visually with a mountain-like concentration
of signboards that would stand for networks. …… In the midst of the profusion
of signs and the heat of the messy urban space, the streets are remarkably
chaotic. Passers-by, shouts, cars, all kinds of mechanical noises and human
"sound pollution," all merging into one, forcing itself into humans'
central nervous systems through their ears…….Pulled directly into the whirlpool
of information through the stimulation of visual and auditory senses, their
feelings are henceforth numbed. On the other hand, countless mutually
interfering and uncertain data pass through cables at light speed. This is the
way informatics continues to expand its domain.”
____Oshii,
the Director[19]
Inspiration
from contemporary cityscape
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Fig.37 |
Fig.38 Ghost in the Shell city |
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Fig.39 Sheung Wan, |
Fig.40 Ghost in the Shell city |
The director had a conviction that Asian cities
would become the center of world development and the future city model.
“Ghost In The Shell does not have a definite
chosen set, but in terms of street scenes and general atmosphere, it is obvious
that Hong Kong is the model…....There is a sharp contrast between old streets
and new ones on which skyscrapers are built. My feeling is that these two,
originally very different, are now in a situation where one is invading the
other. Maybe it is the tension or pressure that is brought about by so-called
modernization! It's a situation in which two entities are kept in a strange
neighboring relationship. Perhaps it is what the future is.” ____Atsushi,
Set Designer[20]
Inspiration
from architects’ visions
None.
To them the
(e) MINORITY
REPORT, 2002
Director Steven
Spielberg
Set
Designer Alex
McDowell
Think Tank MIT
scientists
The
significance of the movie
Fig.41
Minority
Report was the first and the only movie in recent years that set its intention
as portraying a creditable future in fifty years time. Such approach was rare
to find since directors usually preferred a dramatized
marvel to a realistic projection of the urban development. Unfortunately this
most probable future, suggested by a
think tank of MIT scientists, was one deprived its people of the privacy for
national security and consumerism. Yet here what I found more amazing was how the
infrastructure and the cityscape become one entity.
The
city in 2054
“Washington
D C has evolved into three layers – the monuments of
____McDowell,
Set Designer[21]
Unlike Bladerunner
city which had a vertical urban growth, the Minority Report city had the traditional
horizontal development pattern. However, regarding the spirit, Minority Report was
a combination of Bladerunner’s advertising city and
Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother city. Here we found retina scanners dominating the
cityscape. It was a world where you could run but you could not hide. Beyond Bladerunner’s passive advertising, Minority Report showed
an active version modeled on the internet sale tactic – what you bought was
recorded and the company could keep on selling similar stuff to you.
Inspiration from contemporary
cityscape
To
emphasize the city of
Inspiration from architects’
visions
The infrastructure & architecture integration
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|
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Fig. 42 Sant’
Elia’s Railroad station, 1914 |
Fig. 43 Building façade as part
of road network |
In the chic area of the city,
futurist architecture had its building façade totally integrated into the
Magnetic Levitation transport system. Inclining highways forming part of the
building façade dropped like waterfall and merges with the horizontal road
network. This concept was apparently adopted from Antonio Sant’
Elia’s Railroad Station design in 1914.
The
The heart of the Pre-Crime headquarter was
known as “The Temple” as it housed the three prophets of crime, the Pre-cogs.
The headquarter, carried a paradox of being a transparent organization hiding
the biggest secret, was designed in the spirit of Frank Gehry
- the ad hocism and the
radically complex form with industrial material.
The Hall of Containment
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|
Fig.44 Garden of gravestones in |
Fig.45 The jail for prisoners of Pre-Crime
in Minority Report |
The Hall
of Containment was a jail keeping the prisoners of Pre-Crime in a coma state.
Spielberg was inspired by the image and ambience of
4. CONCLUSION
From the five significant movies studied, we
can observe how director’s intentions and values influence the set design of
future cities in relation to the contemporary cityscape and architects’ visions.
Total re-interpretation
Among the five movies, Metropolis showed the
most abundant references to contemporary debate on architecture and urban
planning. We can identify traces of the surreal
In-between
Bladerunner was both a re-interpretation and re-composition
of its inspiration source. Out of his fascination of life in a super high-dense
big city, Scott successfully re-composed the dynamic elements of
True presentation
Things To Come and
Minority Report shared the same ultimate intention of depicting the most
creditable future. To Wells and Spielberg even the dramatic effect come second.
Nothing was overdone or distorted. Wholeheartedly believed in the Modernist
architects’ utopian ideology, H G Wells who dominated the making of Things to
Come presented the true spirit of Modernism in the movie. Movie sets were
modeled on the design of Le Corbusier and Mies. Minority
Report was basically the honest manifesto of the finding “our near future will
be dictated by consumerialism”[22]
generated by Spielberg’s MIT think tank. Spielberg wanted everything in
the movie a logical extrapolation from the current context. Architecture and
the cityscape of Washington D C were presented in their original qualities.
In Ghost In The
Shell,
5. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Publication
Banham,
Reyner. Megastructures – Urban Futures of the
Recent Past.
Banham,
Reyner. Theory
and Design in the First Machine Age. MIT, 1990.
Fear, Bob. Architecture & Film II.
Jacobsen, W. & Sudendort, W. Metropolis: a cinematic laboratory for
modern architecture.
Lamster, Mark. Architecture and Film.
Le Corbusier. Towards a New Architecture.
Neumann, Dietrich. Film Architecture: Set designs
from Metropolis to BladeRunner.
Tohru, Nozaki. The Analysis of Ghost in the Shell.
Toy, Maggie. Architecture &
Film.
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