CINEMA & ARCHITECTURE

STORYTELLING: EXPRESSION & EXPERIENCE

M. SAI MEHAR
1150100530
SCHOOL OF PLANNING & ARCHITECTURE

ABSTRACT
"Architecture exists, like cinema, in the dimension of time and movement. One conceives and reads a building in
terms of sequences...” Jean Nouvel
The interaction between Cinema and Architecture is like - ‘the inherent Architecture of cinematic
expression and the Cinematographic essence of architectural experience.’ Regarding the production of
these two “art forms”, it needs a group of specialists and assistants as a collective group effort. However
both are the products of the author, the fruit of a creator, an individual artist. It is difficult to imagine
cinema taking place in a vaccum. Without the scene to fill each storyline, we cannot be transported away
from our reality to the world of the film we are immersed in. The artificial spaces with their forced angles,
shadows and perspectives generate tension and distort human perception, "oppressing the observer's own
space by incorporating it into the vortex of the film." Thus, films produce entirely new spaces which
simultaneously embrace and absorb everything in the scene. In these films one perceives the scenery
acting as a protagonist in it, not just as a backdrop. (Baratto, 15 JUNE 2017)

Film and architecture medium gives us more of physical reality than any other form of art. Both of them are
a total art and they have encouraged people to think that the way to artistic perfection lies in
approaching nearer and nearer to full physical reality. Whether real or imaginary there is an inextricable link
between the creation of films and development of our built environment, at least in the exploration of
volumetric space in time. In both the cases the reality is proposed and the imagination is left to fill the gaps,
the key difference is the element of control. The actual experience of an architectural space within that
space has many similarities to the viewer’s perception of a chosen sequence in a film. Films exaggerate
and portray a larger than life view, this require films to create their own worlds. We all have great
memories about films and architecture. For instance, Hitchcock representations of modernity or later
Wim Wenders surrealistic sensibility about the 50's, David Lynch dreams about landscape and life
and many others that continue a certain relationship between the fiction of the film and the reality
and the vision about this reality that is the architecture into it.

But I would like to point out the differences in between both. One strong difference is that in fact,
the invention of the cinema is based on the movement, on having the images in motion, passing
from photographs in a static way to the movement of the images. This kind of motion is clearly the
key question of the origin and development of the cinema. It has ‘Expressions’ in it and I have to
say that architecture is something totally static, something that is more confronted to
permanence that really something in motion , which has ‘Experience’.

KEYWORDS
Cinematographic essence, art forms, creator, storyline, physical reality, imaginary, exploration, volumetric,
experience, surrealistic, expressions.
Bibliography
Baratto, R. (15 JUNE 2017). How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema. ARCHDAILY , 1-9.

Pallasmaa, J. (2014, 09 24). UCALGARY. Retrieved 08 25, 2018, from UCALGARY:

https://www.ucalgary.ca/ev/designresearch/publications/insitu/copy/volume2/imprintable_architectur
e/Juhani_Pallasmaa/index.html

Singh, D. (12 MAY 2008). CINEMA & ARCHITECTURE. ARCHITECTURAL PAPERS.