week 1 INTRO

I am studying the interrelation between film and architecture through a graduate course in the architecture department at Montana State University.  The focus of this course is on: the way architecture is portrayed in film; the way film can improve the presentation and representation of an architectural project; and how both disciplines are analyzed for their design in a similar manner of critical thought.

In thinking about the use of architecture in film, one of the first examples I thought of was how cities and their buildings are portrayed during times of war - how the architectural system that we intended has been broken down into rubble and the remaining forms take on a new landscape.  In these new landscapes, people adapt and utilize their world in ways that were never intended.  This is all taking place in horrific situations and my fascination with this idea is not meant to glorify war but there is something fantastical within the idea of reinventing how we use of our everyday landscape - it's like children inventing forts out of chairs and blankets.

War films - why are they so popular?  Why do I love looking at buildings that have been decimated on the screen (or in real life for that matter)?  Emily Godby, a professor at Albright College who has done extensive research on our fascination with destruction has some insight.  "We're able to experience the existential dilemma of human lives - that we know we're going to die," she says. "But if we're watching it and not in it, there's no real risk, and in a way you get to deny that you're not dying … and it's a moment of relief."  She also believes that this is preoccupation is a modern concept, a result of the industrialization.   "Part of what happens is that as industrialism spreads, people get these very routine lives," she explains. "The unexpected, no matter what it is, brings a certain kind of excitement to people's lives."  There is further detail on this subject here: http://www.alternet.org/story/138120/appetite_for_destruction:_why_are_americans_so_obsessed_with_disaster/


Enemy at the Gates (2001, Paramount Pictures & Mandalay Pictures), a film by Jean-Jacques Annaud about the battle between two snipers amid the besieged city of Stalingrad during World War II, had an incredible, large-scale set design.  The Soviet residents of Stalingrad have hunkered down in the rubble of their city to fight the advancement of German forces while the upper echelons of the Soviet military continue to live in relative splendor (as can be seen in the final minutes of the clip).  Viewer beware! Portions of this clip contain graphic imagery.