CINEMA AND ARCHITECTURE

DEEP SHAH, 09 – ARG – 38, 8TH SEM, B.ARCH, COA- SVIT – VASAD
ABSTRACT

CONTENTS

1.0 Introduction
1.1 Research aim
1.2 Research objectives

2.0 Theory

2.1 Montage
2.2 Montage and Architecture
2.3 Motion in cinema and Architecture
2.4 Form and Space in Architecture
2.5 Parallels between Architecture and Films
2.6 Cinematic
2.7 Cinematic spaces and Cinematic Mapping

3.0 amodal perception

3.1 visual space
3.2 haptic space
3.3 cinematic spaces and cinematic mapping
3.4 psychogeography: mapping transgressive space
RESEARCH AIM

The notion of creating, the inter-relationship, and the correlation that might exist
between multiple areas of knowledge. Film concerns itself primarily, but not exclusively,
to that which is revealed to the viewer frame by frame. Architecture and Urban Design
must contend not only with the spaces in the frame of view, but the order and structure
of the spaces both within and outside a given perspective. Whether in film or
architecture, the use of narrative can provide structure to the experience encountered as
the viewer moves through space.

Can we begin to use film and filmmaking processes to guide the architectural process by
better understanding how film directors have manipulated the medium, and the user, to
create experiences in multi - dimensional space that have a lasting impact on our real world ?
can we use filmmaking as a tool for stimulating and redefining the learning environment of the
architectural design studio and the resulting architectural designs?

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The objective is to establish film and architecture as two unique worlds which are in some way
interwoven to each other. I am interested in the ways cinema constructs spaces in the mind,
creates mind-spaces, reflecting thus the inherent ephemeral architecture of human mind,
thought and emotion.
To explore the relationship between the two worlds not just in their physical relationship, but
more as associated in values in a metaphoric way. This research will try to attend both to the
richness of strategies for using the moving image to represent the built environment, and how
architecture and urban spaces are cast as protagonists, determining action and psychological
effects.

Research scope

The scope of this particular research lies in development of certain guidelines that could be
established through which cinematic spaces can be created in response to the local context or the
city’s character.
INTRODUCTION

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.

Film and the city share a dimension of living, that is, the space of one's lived experiences. They are about
lived space, and the fantasy of habitable places. They are both inhabited sites, and spaces for
inhabitation, narrativized by motion. Such types of dwellings always construct subjectivity. Their
subjectivity is a body that occupies narrativized space, and leaves traces of its history on the wall and
the screen. Crossing in-between perceived, conceived and lived space; the spatial arts thus embody the
viewer. "Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is
consummated." An heir to this practice, film continues the architectural habitus. It makes a custom of
constructing sites, and building "sets" of dwelling and motion. It has a habit of consuming space.
It is space which is both used and appropriated. Being at the same time a space of consumption and a
consumption of space, it is a user's space. One lives a film as one lives the space that one inhabits: as an
everyday passage--tangibly. Perceived by way of habit and tactility, cinema and architecture are both a
matter of touch. The haptic path of these two spatial practices touches the physical realm. Their kinetic
affair is a carnal one. In their fictional architectonics, there is a tangible link between space and desire.
Space unleashes desire. The habitus is absorption. In this domain, one absorbs, and is absorbed by,
moving images--tales of inhabitation. The absorption of subject/object in the narrative of space involves
a series of corporeal transformations. As in fashion, the mode of "consumption" involves the ingestion
of body space. Providing space for living and lodging sites of biography, film and architecture are
constantly reinvented by stories of the flesh.

Space in the cinema is not an intractable, solid thing but almost like a fluid substance capable of all sorts
of changes: something which can be handled on the screen with the same omnipotence as we
manipulate physical space in our thought, imagination or a dream. It displays the features and
properties of abstract space and yet at the same time identifies this abstract space with the reality of
world of our senses. The cinema is capable of demonstrating visually what science has proved
empirically: that the experience of space we obtain through our senses in everyday life has only an
illusory tangibility.

The links between film and urban culture made in recent research have provided another rich
field of discussion; for instance the exploration of the close interaction between the images of
cities and their filmic representations (Clarke 1997, Bradley 1999, Krause 2003, Donald 1999).
However, despite the pleasures of these and other approaches there have been interesting
structural and perceptual questions less explored. Those questions concern the influence that
cinematic techniques and concepts (given the enormous cultural influence of the medium)
might have on the embodied process of perceiving the built environment, as well as the
potential for their incorporation in architectural and urban design processes.
This area has begun to be explored more recently as digital technologies have made filmic
processes more accessible. Courses taught at the Cambridge University Moving Image Studio
(CUMIS, now closed) in the early 2000s aimed at making architecture students more familiar
with screen language and technical skills. This contributed to exercises where students created
“portraits” of buildings – seeking an expression of character beyond physical characteristics
(Thomas and Penz 2003). There have also been recent attempts to: rethink architectural
representation through the possibilities of digital film (Ratinam 2005, Schaedler and Brown
2007), enhance and extend student engagement with the organisational compexity of the
design process through adopting film project planning methodologies (Clear 2005), and
produce more “sensorialised” environments through filmic analysis and representation of place
(Pizarro forthcoming). This paper will discuss and reflect

. How do we experience the city in a cinematic sense? Can our understanding of space and place be
enhanced through film? Can zooms, montages, jump edits, storyboarding, scripting, establishing shots,
pans, close-ups, framing, tracking shots, sequencing, depth of field, continuity and other aspects of film
productively contaminate architectural design? Finally, can architectural students (and architects), use
filmmaking as a tool for stimulating and redefining the design process?
ARCHITECTURE AND MOTION

The fundamental premise upon which this research rests is that apparent temporal and spatial
contradictions between image and sound come together through movement. The inherent
differences between space and time were reconciled in the idea of ’space-time’ during the last
century.
Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and Siegfried Gideon’s Space, Time and Architecture
(Gideon 1941) both reveal how our individual perception of space and time are intimately
linked and cannot be treated as separate entities. Movement inherently occupies both space
and time, as does music, visual arts and architecture, particularly when related to the
perception of an individual.
Architectural spaces are translated and re-constructed within filmic space and a film language
has evolved that enables the viewer to understand jumps in location or viewpoint that would
not be possible to experience in real space. I suggest that the first stage of this translation
begins at the camera, the instrument of capturing space with its different possibilities for
movement. At the most basic level there are two approaches to camera movement, either the
camera moves or the object or space it films moves, or any combination of these two. The use
of the camera itself can become an expressive gesture that can be ’played’ in time, reminiscent
of how one articulates time through a musical instrument even though one captures image and
the other gives out sound. The next stage in the process of defining and shaping an
architectural space within the screen lies in the editing process, both at transitions between
clips and special effects which transform or overlay the material.
When we talk about architecture and motion it looks at how architecture, outside of the screen
and the techniques of moving image rhetoric, has inherent qualities of motion. Architecture has
an ambiguous relationship to movement. The material of architecture - the building - occupies
one physical location in space, yet the function of architecture is
Characterized by the process with which it contains and directs the movements of its
occupants. In one respect it is static - an artifact - in another it is dynamic - a process.
Architecture can be described not purely as a spatial construction, but also temporal, and it is
the combination of the two that provides the basis for the discussion of movement in
architecture.
Architecture and motion, the conflict between the static and the dynamic, comes increasingly
into focus in the context of technological developments at the beginning of this century. The
mass reality of globalised instantaneous communications, and the increasing normality of travel
as a way of life, are driving the traditionally stable discipline of architecture to reflect this
attitude of flexibility and movement through time and location (Paul Virilio 1984, Sola Morales
1997) It could be said that the unifying feature of architecture today lies in the various
approaches to this central theme of change, fluidity, movement.

Architecture is about movement, says Bernard Tschumi.

“It’s really important to stage it as an experience, as being alive, whether it’s for 10 or 1,000
people, “To really appreciate architecture, you may even need to commit murder,”
in rear window
MONTAGE

Montage is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a
sequence to condense space, time, and information. The term has been used in various
contexts. It was introduced to cinema primarily by Eisenstein and early Russian directors used it
as a synonym for creative editing. In France the word "montage" simply denotes cutting. The
montage sequence is usually used to suggest the passage of time.
According to Film historian and critic Arthur Knight:-
‘’The word montage came to identify . . . specifically the rapid, shock cutting that Eisenstein
employed in his films. Its use survives to this day in the specially created 'montage sequences'
inserted into Hollywood films to suggest, in a blur of double exposures, the rise to fame of an
opera singer or, in brief model shots, the destruction of an airplane, a city or a planet.’’

When talking about cinema, the word path is not used by chance. Nowadays it is the imaginary
path followed by the eye and the varying perceptions of an object that depend on how it
appears to the eye. Nowadays it may also be the path followed by the mind across a multiplicity
of phenomena, far apart in time and space, gathered in a certain sequence into a single
meaningful concept; and these diverse impressions pass in front of an immobile spectator.
In the past, however, the opposite was the case: the spectator moved between a series of
carefully disposed phenomena that he absorbed sequentially with his visual sense.

The painted portrait, the photographic portrait, and the narrative cinema (excepting animated
narratives) are each constituted by the two-dimensional traces of ‘‘real’’ corporeal bodies.
Painting has remained incapable of fixing the total representation of a phenomenon in its full
visual multidimensionality. (There have been numberless attempts to do this). Only the film
camera has solved the problem of doing this on a flat surface, but its undoubted ancestor in
this capability is — architecture. The Greeks have left us the most perfect examples of shot
design, change of shot, and shot length (that is, the duration of a particular impression). Victor
Hugo called the medieval cathedrals »books in stone« (see Notre Dame de Paris). The Acropolis
of Athens has an equal right to be called the perfect example of one of the most ancient films.
I shall here quote in full from Choisy’s Histoire d’architecture5 in which I shall not alter a single
comma, and I would only ask you to look at it with the eye of a filmmaker: it is hard to imagine
a montage sequence for an architectural ensemble more subtly composed, shot by shot, than
the one that our legs create by walking among the buildings of the Acropolis (figure 2).
The Acropolis is a cliff, isolated on all sides, whose summit is dedicated to the worship of the
national deities.
At point T was the mark made by Poseidon’s trident, while near to it grew the olive tree sacred
to Athene. In immediate proximity to this sacred spot a temple was built to both gods. The site
being empty after a fire, it was therefore possible to build a new sanctuary on the very spot
indicated by legend. The temple was moved to point S and given the name of Erechtheion. The
highest point (P) was the site in this and another era (the time of the Pisistrades and after the
Persian War) of the great temple of Athene — the Parthenon. Between the Parthenon and the
entrance to the Acropolis was disposed a series of smaller temples, evidently relating to both
the ancient and the new Acropolis. ... In this same space the colossal statue of Athene
Promakhos (the Warrior) was erected in the fifth century B.C. The Propylaeum (M) formed the
frontal façade of the Acropolis (in both the old and the new layout). ...
The two layouts differed only in detail. The first, however, was a collection of buildings of
various epochs, whereas the second was laid out to a single plan and adapted to the site, which
had been cleared as the result of a fire. The apparent asymmetry of this new Acropolis is only a
means of lending picturesqueness to this group of buildings, which have been laid out with
more art than any others. ... This becomes clear from the series of panoramas that unfolded
before visitors to the Acropolis in the fifth century B.C.
View of the Propylaeum. The general idea of the plan of the Propylaeum can be seen in figure 3.
...
We see the symmetrical central block and two noticeably different wings —the right-hand one
broader and the left-hand one less so. ... At first sight, nothing could be more uneven than this
plan, but in fact it constitutes a completely balanced whole in which the general symmetry of
the masses is accompanied by a subtle diversity in the details. ... The optical symmetry is
impeccable. ...

First view of the square; Athene Promakhos. Passing by the Propylaeum, the spectator’s eye
embraces the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and Athene Promakhos (figure 4).
In the foreground towers the statue of Athene Promakhos; the Erechtheion and the Parthenon
are in the background, so that the whole of this first panorama is subordinated to the statue,
which is its central point and which creates an impression of unity. The Parthenon only acquires
its significance when the visitor loses sight of this gigantic piece of sculpture.
The Parthenon and its oblique perspectives. To modern thinking, the Parthenon — the great
temple of the Acropolis — should be placed opposite the main entrance, but the Greeks
reasoned quite differently. The cliff of the Acropolis has an uneven surface, and the Greeks,
without altering its natural relief, placed the main temple on the highest point at the edge of
the cliff, facing the city (figure 5). Placed thus, the Parthenon first of all faces the spectator
obliquely. The ancients generally preferred oblique views: they are more picturesque, whereas
a frontal view of the facade is more majestic.6 Each of them is allotted a specific role. An
oblique view is the general rule, while a view en face is a calculated exception (figure 6).
The central body of the Propylaeum is presented en face, just as we head straight for the
pronaos of the Parthenon, crossing the square of the Acropolis. With the exception of the two
examples given, where this effect is deliberately calculated, all the other structures present
themselves at an angle — as does the temple of Athene Ergane (H), when the spectator reaches
its precinct at point E. ...
The calculation of a [film-] shot effect is obvious, for there, too, the effect of the first
impression from each new, emerging shot is enormous. Equally strong, however, is the
calculation on a montage effect, that is, the sequential juxtaposition of those shots.
Let us, in fact, draw up the general compositional schemes of these four
successive »picturesque shots« (figure 8).
It is hard to imagine a stricter, more elegant, and more triumphant construct than
this sequence.
Shots a and b are equal in symmetry and, at the same time, the opposites of each
other in spatial extent. Shots c and d are in mirror symmetry, and function, as it were,
as enlargements of the right-hand and left-hand wings of shot a, then reforming again
into a single, balanced mass. The sculptural motif b is repeated through shot c, by the
group of sculpture d and so on and so on.

"The strength of montage lies in the fact that it involves the spectator’s emotions and reason.
The spectator is forced to follow the same creative path that the authors followed when
creating the image. The spectator does not only see the depicted elements of the work; he also
experiences the dynamic process of the emergence and formation of the image in the same
way that the author experienced it . . . . “So now we can say that t is precisely the montage
Principle, as distinct from the depictive principle, which forces the spectator himself to create,
and thereby releases that great force of latent creative excitement within the spectator which
distinguishes an emotional work from the informational logic of a plain exposition of events.”
SPATIAL MONTAGE

In recent architectural works a sense of “spatial thickness” in appearance of architecture is

provoked through explorations of many elements like transparency, reflection, gradation,
And sensation of weightlessness. A building can improve in sensual ways when designers are
conscious of different gradations of transparency and juxtapositions, by creating altered
thicknesses of spatial refinements and variations that have the sensation of movement and
light in them. This kind of positive experience of space as Pallasmaa points out bring place and
meaning more accessible and is a promising way of using interpretation of design. As a way of
understanding the importance of sensory architecture we can use filmic parameters in a spatial
design as temporal maps. In spatial analysis we use film as a methodology in research to divide
a space into basic elements then build high-level concepts based on organization of these
elements. “By establishing a logic that controls the changes and the correlation of values” in
spatialisation of digital moving image we create what Lev Manovich calls “spatial montage” [3].
Digital film helps us systematize spatial data and visualize them as digital information maps.
Pallasmaa complains that architectural discourses are mainly engaged in “mapping the possible
marginal territories of the art that responding to human existential questions” [3]. He is
blaming many unrelated augmentation of imaginaries as slowly taking the emotional content of
images and making them less meaningful, as just another commodity manufactured for another
boring experience; calling to attention that architecture has become an endangered art form in
this age.
Cartography is the process of converting reality into what we call maps and by way of using
abstractions this gives us an image of our space, place and cities. However, projection mapping
of multimedia transforms data maps into reality and information into physical space; so it’s a
reverse process. New media artist Pablo Valbuena expresses the interior as well as the exterior
of architecture by projections that transform architectural parts, urban furniture such as
concrete benches, tiles into mapping surfaces and augmented sculptures.
The spatial mapping projection on building’s facade and objects becomes an extension of the
facade, by ‘wrapping’. Both wrapping and unwrapping concepts can be valuable as cinematic
aided design methodologies sharing amodal characteristics that involve sensory and cognitive
realms of deciphering space using film as hieroglyphic medium of exploring the city and its
architectural appearances. Soft architectural enmeshment is a term I’d like to associate with
projections that are ‘trans-morphing’ filmic skin into facades. The cinematic effect of this
mapping is as if building is possessed, or entangled in a dream. The precision of the mapping
takes the viewer to an amodal state where it affects our perception. 555 Kubik (2009)
projections on Gallery of Contemporary Art for the client Kunsthalle in Hamburg was realised by
German company Urban Screen is an example of trans-morphed (‘act of temporal change’) on
the materiality of a building in direct relation to filmic space, time, as digital mapping
algorithms. The square gridded building is dynamically ‘wrapped and warped’ by geometric
data from structural analysis of the building into “newly interpreted freely conceptual and
geometric approaches.”
PROJECTION MAPPING AS DEGREE ZERO ARCHITECTURE

Film gives us privileges in cognitive and sensory investigations of architecture in the urban
environment. Can exploring film as spatial interface help to sensitize our vision towards the
space? We propose that film can be a degree zero in writing about spatial, temporal
phenomena that connects to sensory modalities and cognitive amodal perceptions; here
degree zero means that point where designers can freely cross synthesize, explore, deconstruct
and let their imaginations flow.
How does architecture reinvent its appearance in film and reality? Real-time mapping buildings
through multimedia projection on facades are a make-belief state of cinematic
(Georges Méliès) and augmented reality from the viewer’s (designer) vantage point.
The existentialistic qualities of film and architecture are in the freedom of expression of one
medium to another which is hampered by architectural rules and regulations. Putting all these
behind us we purely explore the meaning of architecture in mind as perception. This purity
gives us multimodality in multimedia where architecture’s plasticity is in its inherent
dimensions. Today the connection between visible and tangible needs to be addressed and
explained as separate dimensions, to have antithesis, an anti-architecture solution for testing
the stylistic boundaries of design.
In Writing Degree Zero Barthes talks about a mode of neutrality of a zero element in linguistic
term, a freedom from bourgeois style. Zero as a “style of absence which is almost an ideal
absence of a style” [2]; he describes degree zero as “disengaging” [2], a rebellion. Through this
‘degree zero’ lens a designer wants to communicate a sort of true purist and freeform
architecture; at degree zero creativity one will need to established connection with existential
nature of architecture when it becomes simplified into pure sensory and cognitive objectives as
a method of investigating as well as creatively conceptualizing the built form. As Barthes
suggests a “genuine appearance of many-sidedness” [2] and freedom should be associated with
this sort of design, temporarily disengaging architecture from its rules
AMODAL PERCEPTION
Amodal perception is the perception of the whole of a physical structure when only parts of it
affect the sensory receptors. For example, a table will be perceived as a complete volumetric
structure even if only part of it—the facing surface—projects to the retina; it is perceived as
possessing internal volume and hidden rear surfaces despite the fact that only the near surfaces
are exposed to view. Similarly, the world around us is perceived as a surrounding plenum, even
though only part of it is in view at any time. Another much quoted example is that of the "dog
behind a picket fence" in which a long narrow object (the dog) is partially occluded by fence-
posts in front of it, but is nevertheless perceived as a single continuous object. Albert Bregman
noted an auditory analogue of this phenomenon: when a melody is interrupted by bursts of
white noise, it is nonetheless heard as a single melody continuing "behind" the bursts of noise.
Formulation of the theory is credited to the Belgian psychologist Albert Michotte and Fabio
Metelli, an Italian psychologist, with their work developed in recent years by E.S. Reed and
the Gestaltists.
Modal completion is a similar phenomenon in which a shape is perceived to be occluding other
shapes even when the shape itself is not drawn. Examples include the triangle that appears to
be occluding three disks in the Kanizsa triangle and the circles and squares that appear in
different versions of the Koffka cross.

HAPTIC PERCEPTION
Haptic perception is the process of recognizing objects through touch. It involves a combination
of somatosensory perception of patterns on the skin surface (e.g., edges, curvature, and
texture) and proprioception of hand position and conformation. People can rapidly and
accurately identify three-dimensional objects by touch. They do so through the use of
exploratory procedures, such as moving the fingers over the outer surface of the object or
holding the entire object in the hand.
Gibson defined the haptic system as "The sensibility of the individual to the world adjacent to
his body by use of his body". Gibson and others emphasized the close link between haptic
perception and body movement: haptic perception is active exploration. The concept of haptic
perception is related to the concept of extended physiological proprioception according to
which, when using a tool such as a stick, perceptual experience is transparently transferred to
the end of the tool.
Haptic perception relies on the forces experienced during touch. This research allows the
creation of "virtual", illusory haptic shapes with different perceived qualities which has clear
application in haptic technology.
VISUAL SPACE
Visual space is the perceptual space housing the visual world being experienced by an aware
observer; it is the subjective counterpart of the space of physical objects before an observer's
eyes the perceptual world has a structure and is not an aggregate of scattered sensations.
This visual space can be accessed by introspection, by interrogation, or by suitable experimental
procedures which allow relative location as well as some structural properties to be assessed,
even quantitatively.
An example illustrates the relationship between the concepts of object and visual space: Two
straight lines are presented to an observer who is asked to set them so that they appear
parallel. When this has been done, the lines are parallel in visual space and now a comparison is
feasible with the physical lines' setting in object space. Good precision can be achieved using
psychophysical procedures in human observers or behavioral ones in trained animals.
The reciprocal experiment is easier to perform but does not yield a numerical read-out as
readily: show objectively parallel lines and make a determination of their inclination in the
observer's perception. Considering how it arises, visual space seems, as an immediate,
unmediated experience, to provide a remarkably true and unproblematic representation of a
real world of objects.

PARALLELS BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE AND CINEMA

All the art passes through a similar process of creation, the stages may be interchanged but
they are more or less similar to each other.
There are broadly three stages of creating: conceptualizing, designing and production and these
stages have many sub stages which contribute to the final design. Likewise in cinema and
architecture there are lots of similarities, in creation of architectural object and in creating a
film.
Architecture and film are close in depicting the reality, or creating the illusion of the reality of
the real world and also creating the fantasy world.
AMODAL MAPPING: FUSION OF SENSES
Amodal Perception and Completion is the spatial organization of objects in mind when partially
seen or hidden by obstacles; thus, amodality can be considered in a research as semantic
perception of architectural experience, and as representation of architectural regions as filmic
surface planes, transversely mapping surface form and its meaning. Artists projecting
augmented spaces as a real-time transmorphing act of change which takes place between skin
of the film and the skin of a building, revealing amodal maps that otherwise are permanently
hidden. For artists and designers amodal can link virtual to the physical; as a proposed
cinematic toolkit for design in digital moving image systems amodal research can bridge the
perception gap between deep space of filmic and physical spaces.
As Brian Massumi suggests amodal above all is a matter of philosophy which also lies between
fusions with psychology of perception, sensory, and thoughts. In mainstream films the narrative
is the most powerful mode of sensory control—if sound is stopped and viewed without audio
the usual modal senses create interesting amodal perceptions i.e. the off-theframe actions and
mise en scène become more pronounced.
“What lies transitionally between modes is amodal,” a symbolic representation of sensory
fusions [5]. Site-specific works of Raphael Lozano–Hemmer create amodal fusions between the
physical and virtual through connections between remote locations and users mediating his
installations by Internet. He called the series “Relational Architecture.”
Vectorial Elevation and Amodal Suspension are interactive installations transforming the city
sky at night using multiple robotics searchlight beams that respond to text messages sent by
people from a website. It was performed for the opening of the Yamaguchi Centre for Arts and
Media in Japan in 2003. Massumi writes Amodal Suspension “requires us to reassess our notion
of the analog and the digital, of language and code, meaning and force, human and non-human
communication” and Lozano–Hemmer does this by aesthetically connecting “communication to
its outside” [5]. In spatialising film we objectify it. In research we can combine perceptual with
sensual, amodal with modal, and relate “fusion of senses” [6] with blending of senses (e.g.
synesthetic, kinesthetic, and haptic).
SOFT CINEMATIC ARCHITECTURE

Projecting film on 3D surfaces verses 2D screens requires a different spatial perception. The
audience point of view and the screen in 3D world is a semi-immersive experience that allows
our amodal tendencies to complete an imagined perception. A sort of soft data architecture is
revealed on the surface of the film and now on the architecture as haptic imagery. Plasticity
of architecture is returned to sensory grandeur between the texture of spatial screens where
the real and fictional boundaries are blended, reshaped and their plasticity become evident in
their visual forms. Pascal Schoning mentions Le Corbusier as having envisioned the spatiality
which was “constantly changing in its appearance – a cinematic experience” [9].
He relates this materiality as energy released. Perhaps this is why Le Corbusier liked film as a
way of visualizing architecture since it represented more closely his idea of plasticity in form.
As Schoning also points out cinematic architecture’s expressive language mediates between
perception and projection, in other words mental and physical.
It is in our minds that architecture synthesizes its plastic spatiality and in film architecture
becomes a representative of its space as energy. “Cinematic architecture confronts the stable
with the temporal” [9], it is a form of physical dialogue. Learning digital multimedia concepts
which involve programming complex architectural effects as Jean Nouvel says is of interest to
today’s architects; effects such as transparencies are common, it involves layers of light as
materials in design. Ephemeral effects are ways of programming buildings “differentially over
time and play with temporary effects” as traditional architecture Nouvel says, plays with the
idea of permanence [1]. Today’s designers want to take advantage of temporary and subtle
effects that can explore the sensory and sensual aspects of architecture by testing its physics,
its continuity in time space, as well as thinking of skin-like dynamics as in transparency, light as
ways of complex programming different appearances. Cinematic architecture experiments with
ideas like depth of field and other haptic senses of space that are drawn through our body. The
multimedia projection embodiment of space is spatialising film by connecting evolutions
between time and space, matter and light, sound and image, motion and emotion that
continue evolving.
FORM AND SPACE IN ARCHITECTURE
Architecture is an art. The elements of form and space are the critical means of architecture.
While utilitarian concerns of function and use can be relatively short lived and symbolic
interpretations can vary from age to age, these primary elements of form and space comprise
the timeless and fundamental vocabulary of the architect.
This section of the research emphasizes on the elements of form as primary tools of the
designer. It serves to lay out the classify the analysis and discussion basic forms of organizations
of space and their generic transformations in the typological manner. It is ultimately the
province of the individual designer to select, test and manipulate these elements into coherent,
meaningful and useful organizations of space, structure and enclosure.
Architecture is normally realized and conceived in response to an existing set of conditions.
These conditions may be purely functional in nature, or they may reflect, in varying degrees
social, economic, political symbolic or even whimsical.
The first phase of any design process is the recognition of the problematic condition and the
decision to find a solution for it. The designer must first document the existing condition of the
problem, define its context and collect relevant data.
The nature of solution is inexorably related to how the problem is perceived, defined and
articulated. The shaping of the question is the part of the answer. The depth and range of the
design vocabulary will affect both perception of the problem and the shape of its solution.
As an art, architecture is more than satisfying the purely function requirement of the building
program. Fundamentally the physical manifestations of architecture accommodate human
activity. However, the arrangement and organization of the elements of form and space will
determine how architecture might promote endeavors, elicit responses and communicate
meaning.
The basic elements, systems and orders that constitute a physical work of architecture can all
be perceived and experienced. Some may be readily apparent while others may be obscure to
our senses. Some may dominate while others may play a secondary role in building’s
organization. Some may convey meaning and images while some may serve as qualifiers or
modifiers of these images and meanings.
In all cases, however, these must be interrelated, interdependent and mutually reinforcing to
form an integrated whole. Architectural order is created when all these systems and Elements,
as constituent parts, make visible the relationship between the building and themselves as a
whole.
CINEMATIC SPACES AND CINEMATIC MAPPING
Body and mind work together to decipher the sensory affects, and mental maps from
environment to give us a sense of place. This chapter is concerned with methods of cognitive
mapping as filmic strategies to open up personal and emotional spaces through sensory
awareness, and identifying a new site for spatial consciousness in film audience termed
Cinesensory. The new augmented insight is the spatiality of the individual (Schoning 2006: 15).
A filmmaker can expand our spatiality in a designedly manner similar to an architect or a
geographer; to demonstrate this we look at two works of contemporary French new media
artist Pierre Huyghe Streamside Day (2003), and A Journey That Wasn’t (2005); This paper
emphasizes his approach as potentially analogous techniques to Kevin Lynch’s cognitive
mapping model of people’s sense of place programmed as creative geography, or more perhaps
a vision for filmic psychogeography. Cinematic processes can be specifically of interest to
architectural and city visualization as it can separate and track interaction and sensory response
with built form.

At the same period as the invention of the cinema by the way of modernisation a rapid
“spatiovisual” revelation accrued among big cities as railroad, bridges, stations, pavilions and
other fixed sites were the locus for mobility and transit (Webber, Wilson ed., Bruno 2008: 12);
hence motion of the city became a visual fantasy of early cinema. As Giuliana Bruno points out
a shift in spatio-temporality of our bodies towards daily urban life and this perceptual shift in
people’s sense of movement and place is also pronounced in early cinema. The early so called
city symphony films by Vertov, Ruttmann and others during the early nineteenth hundreds
showed the fascinations with motion and visual sensory experience of the film, from those
early stages the topographical qualities of film where explored. A genealogy of film,
architecture and design relationships can be established in historical, theoretical, technological,
psychological, and more recently topographical sensory investigations. These were part of
recent UK conferences in the converged fields of film, architecture, and the city; amongst them
were 2004 conference at Trinity College, Cambridge University, 2005 Visualising the City,
University of Manchester, and 2008 City in Film, University of Liverpool which were specifically
dealing with areas questioning relationship of film, architecture, city and design. These types of
questions have “redefined the condition of culture across variety of forms and sites” (Bruno
2008).
Film works as a sensory portal to lived experience. In any environment or city spatial and
temporal fragments stories can be examined, expanded and conceptualised through
multiplicity of spatio-temporal possibilities as in filmic manifestation of a new topographic
representation, situations, signs, possible stories, and sensory fragments by Huyghe and
Greenaway. How can transensory spaces in film be recognised and then further visualised as
new topography? In film similar to geography a time-space is continually reinvented. According
to Bruno movie going in urban culture is essentially signified through challenges put by
modernity; in another words movie going is an imaginary “form of flânerie” (Bruno 2008). If we
consider a flâneur one who walks the city to spatio-temporally experience it, in the context of
architecture and urban planning, flâneur views represent issues regarding “psychological
aspects of the built environment,” in particular psychogeography. In city symphony type early
films, François Penz argues that the creative geography notion is an essential (time-space)
montage technique. He points to the research done in continuity editing experiments by
Kuleshov and later through audience studies conducted by Levin and Simons (1997, 2000). They
discovered that small perceptual inferences in film can be missed by the viewer and as in real
life similar to Kevin Lynch's cognitive mapping results in real world which he discovered people
have gaps in their memory and mental images during different spatial interaction with their
environment (Webber, Wilson ed., Penz 2008); hence, a topographic journey in film can be
compared to Lynch's mental image concerned with how flexible we imagine our real space and
time? One of the earliest and most significant contributors to the notion of juxtaposing filmic
time-space was Lev Kuleshov in the 1920's. He conducted continuity editing methods or
creative geography experiments as a subset of montage to artificially create landscapes, scenes,
and various locations that were combined to give the appearance of a continuous place in a
continuous time (Penz 2008). Perhaps the movie goers as Bruno suggest have always been
“travellers” in a psychographic journey in the time “architectural montage”—A memory
walkthrough with temporal and spatial network connecting disjunct architectural spaces. In
other words the filmmaker situates the spectators as cognitive geographers, bending and
linking large intervals of spatial and temporal reality in a single film. Can experimenting with
creative geography in filmic concepts be reinvented and newly utilised in deciphering sense of
place from new cinesensorial ways of visualizing the (affects of) environment?

Film maker and cognitive mapping

The environment is perceived on individual basis, where we carry individual mental maps of the
world to aid us in spatio-temporal cohesiveness of the world. Cognitive or mental mapping is
concern with how we think about a place. Kevin Lynch's real world experiments for testing out
perception about our lived space use mental mapping techniques. One of his research methods
was asking participants to imagine detailed descriptions of various trips they take in the city and
by “listing and brief description of the parts felt to be most distinctive or vivid” (Lynch 1960:
140). Through these and other experiments he identified and revealed a new image of the city
and a way to describe city’s “legibility” through study of peoples’ own images of their
environment; the notion of identity and visual legibility in Lynch work is what Penz shows as
analogous to film audience experience of creative geography, and “topographical cohesiveness”
(Penz 2008). A topographical cohesiveness perhaps can be compared to continuity editing in
unifying the filmic space as a new geographic space where time-space can be violated and
disrupted; through Lynch’s findings we can say through mental and emotional mapping of
cognition, films can have significant impact on “legibility” of city and the “imageability” of its
environment perceived through filmic time-space as geography as in the real world.

In Bruno’s Atlas of Emotions (2002) psychogeographical mapping of emotion has been

described as a variation of cognitive mapping, alternative ways of mapping and breaking from
the totalizing concept of modern cartography. In her chapter M is for mapping (2002) Bruno
exemplifies Welch filmmaker Peter Greenaway as an artist-painter-filmmaker “obsessed by
architecture” and topography. Bruno says he requires us to think about mapping cultural space
and a new “geometry of passion” as a mode of “tender mapping” or cartography of emotion
(Bruno 2002: 285). In Greenaway’s work such as The Pillow Book (1996) Bruno shows his
obsession with “proximity of consciousness and sensibility” (2002: 286), and his using of
drawing, and maps among other sources to induce an aesthetic of sensitivity in a cross-cultural
and cross-topoi creative film making. In Huyghe’s work a similar shifting of places as geometry
of passion and identity is present both in terms of visual art installations and his films. Likewise,
Greenaway’s artistic approach to film surface with multiple mobile screens and numerous
urban installations are collapsing filmmaker, designer, and participant boundaries. Both artists
are types of hybrid topo-filmmaker, with roots in avant-garde and reflexivity. Both artists’
multiple topographies are comparable to layered geometries of emotion and “a cumulative
spatial flux.”
Film surface has flattened them to form unify yet expanded geography, a type of “mobilized
cinematic architecture,” which is organized, and packed by these filmmakers for audiences to
expand. Greenaway uses imaginary fictive art work, graphic design, and set design when
Huyghe uses more subtle natural artefacts. By sharing the painterly and designerly visions
appropriated from history and a fixation with aesthetic, form, and mapping of emotion to
spatial geometry, Greenaway’s filmic vision intertwines with forces of desire and emotion. In
comparison Huyghe’s works are fixed on conceptual situational representation of reality via
fictive events.
Film is a vessel for imaginary geography of emotion that maps spaces of life with the flux and
motion, thus a “geographic vessel” for movement of emotion in duration of space. Imaginary
can be another way of describing fiction and utopia, but in reality imaginary is invented by
mental afterimages of our own psychic and emotional desires spatially contested against the
real representation we perceive daily from the environment. This is another documentary film
quality which is concern with sight and sites of “contestation and change” (Nichols 1991: 12).
Bill Nichols describes imaginary as a “physic realm of significant images around which or sense
of identity form” (1991: 8); however, to avoid this imaginary realm in design, building, and
learning is to neglect, or to undermine the “dependencies of ideology” of image and imaginary.
Nichols sees the cognitive map concepts as “inescapable,” since it cannot exist outside of its
“conceptual envelope.” In another words an inquiry into imaginary and a blend of it with reality
in filmic sense is necessary because we need to study the conceptual realm of ideology and
subjectivity to reveal our sensory environment from diverse cultural representations; this is
why film is important in understanding the environment because of the scope in which, image,
ideology and utopia are essentially related.
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY: MAPPING TRANSGRESSIVE SPACE

There are similarities in Lynch’s reflexive study “imageability” and psychogeographic methods
of reading transgressive space. Psychogeography can produce critical and political explanation
of ordinary space. Most academics are perhaps familiar with Situationist International, Theory
of the Dérive and Guy Debord’s rather obscure definition of psychogeography, which is “the
study of the specific effect of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on
the emotions and behaviour of individuals” (Debord 1958). Psychogeography is interested in
emotions such as fear, love and boredom. It pinpoints appealing and repelling forces of some
characters in a city12, and it encourages experiencing city in unusual ways. Comparable to
Lynch, Debord was interested in sudden changes in city visual modes and ambiance within
small area; through this expanded sense of awareness he sees a city’s sensual, emotional and
atmospheric sides as a new playful geography; the psychogeographic maps can be produced
from city walks (dérive), which are events and for interpretive reading of the city desires and
emotions activating a sense of place. Is this one recipe for scripting filmic psychogeography?
Transgression is what psychogeography does, Alastair Bonnett continues, because it’s
interested in developing political critique of the lived environment as interventions, in
themselves conceptual transgressions that yield knowledge about the lived space.13 An up
todate definition of psychogeography exists in the textual realm elucidated by Merlin Coverley
the writer of Psychogeography (2006). Peter Ackroyd, Ian Sinclair, Charles Buadrillard, Michel
De Certeau, Steve Home and Will Self are indentified by Coverley as contemporary writers
specifically dealing with psychogeography. His book tries to illuminate a fresh new picture of
psychogeography through literature that is not based on Debord’s depiction of it although he
admits Debord’s was the one that established the popularity of the concept. Coverley
successfully traces origins of psychogeography as far back as Blake’s Robinson Crusoe and
Defoe’s “urban wandering.” Part of the psychogeographic experience is chiefly through
travelling to link the city parts together. For instance Sinclair’s writing is interested in the almost
forgotten histories that a journey can bring to life, and In Patrick Keiller’s films London (1995)
and Robinson in Space (1997) he is “concerned with the search for location of memory”
(Coverley 2006: 8). Keiller and Huyghe alike want to make bridges between imagination, reality,
and the sense of memory. He creates a brand of psychogeographic films allowing the viewer to
linger on urban scenes slowing down the city and inviting us to look at the lived space with a
different eye by giving us time and space to gaze at the city and not glance. What is the
possibility of filmic psychogeography? Possibility of “transgressing the space and producing
identities,” 14 and a flexible modeling means for depicting lived space and its flux.

12 Driftnet project, Manchester Metropolitan University, www.sociology.mmu.ac.uk/driftnet.php

13 Trip: Psychogeographic Conference 2008, Manchester Metropolitan University, 19-21 June 2008.
14 Ibid.
A Path for Cinematic Architecture
“The creation of environmental image is a two-way process between observer and observed.
What he sees is based on exterior form, but how he interpret and organises this, and how he
directs his attention, in its turn affects what he sees. The human organism is highly adaptable
and flexible, and different groups may have widely different images of the same outer reality.”
Kevin Lynch (1960: 131)

A type of flexible architecture is revealed on the surface of film and screen; it is perceived
mentally as a haptic experience. These are sensory impressions from “across the texture of the
screen” where the real and fiction boundaries are blended and reshaped. Sergei Eisenstein in
his writing Montage and Architecture (1930) suggests that there is a genealogical connection
between the two (Webber, Wilson ed., Bruno 2008). In his text he guides the reader on
architectural walking paths moving “across an imaginary path traversing multiple sites and
times.” Soft cinematic architecture therefore is an ensemble of real and imaginary “montage
from the point of view of moving spectator” (Bruno 2008); Bruno insists that film allows the
viewer of architecture to “take unexpected” and flexible “paths of exploration” (Bruno 2008).
When we change our environment, our views are forever change with it, and film as memory
can help retain some of our spatial history as memory. “Buildings are erased at the cost of
erasing memory” (Marcus 2007: 84). According to Victor Burgin film of memory represents
experience to itself; in other words, if we could step inside a mind and see how the
representation of the lived space is cognitively perceived as image. As memory is often
fragmented and lacks wholeness missing information and gaps in the memory is often common.
The Cinematic architecture proposed above can be also defined as skin-like forms, spatially
layered to generate plastic movements that fluidly reveal edges and corners, bits and pieces of
facades, and blending colours to form the true temporal and continuity of a built form. Tempo
and rhythm offer types of softness and elasticity for use in visualization. Architecture that is in
films becomes a soft architecture; it does not exist in reality as soft matter until the images are
put to motion. Editing and montage make this soft/flexible architecture into a matter flux,
which only lives in temporalities. It is only through film that we can transform the rigid
physicality’s with notions of soft reality. An example of soft filmic connotation is the term Soft
Cinema coined by Lev Manovich as database driven cinema where one can choose and pick the
narrative and images from a depository therefore creating flexible reality called soft cinema
thus, the film is different every time it is viewed (Manovich, Kratky 2005).

Two examples of flexible uses of film are in relation to external and internal modes of filmic
representation. Projection or exploded cinema turns anywhere any-screen into adaptive
experiences and site-specific filmic spaces. The experience is sometimes achieved by getting
close to the screen as if touching it for a haptic experience; thus, mentally and physically
exploring external flexibility of the filmic form used as architectural skin. The other is internal
mode for example database cinema or as of Manovich calls it “information aesthetics” is where
the material used in building is made of databases and their visual time-space, which its
organizational system process is resembling architectural arrangement and structure. Manovich
database sampling cinema is to “represent the subjective experience of people living in a global
information society” (Ibid); thus, the database becomes “new representational form in its own
right” (Ibid) and a dynamic visualization tool. According to Manovich soft cinema is film without
pre-planned narrative; therefore, the space of database cinema is a parametric and structural
space that represents the qualitative as well as quantitative possibilities of filmic form. In
contrast Huyghe’s external exploration of film as art, through the use of projection deals with
intervals, assembly, and interstitial spaces in between possible cuts that can be altered in a
flexible path. The idea of multi-screen projection also tries to divide the narrative space and
bring filmic process to distinction. Huyghe explored this in a diptych projection called the Third
Memory (1999), which is the remake of Dog Day Afternoon (1975) by Sidney Lumet. In it he
hires amateur actors doing some of the same scenes as the original film making a commentary
on cinema and exposing the cinematic techniques by creating new flexible relationship
between fiction, reality and the audience (Rush 2005: 200). In a triptych video projection
installation, L’Ellipse (1998), Huyghe creates a place for storing memory as repository for
stocking and recollecting famous cinematic narratives that are “jump cut” and are interlayered
with present narratives involving same original actors but many years later. His projection
reconstructs the scene of the original film juxtaposed with present time-space, thus questioning
the perceptual spaces between a film montage and the narrative it creates. He builds
“repertory cinema,” cinematic annotations that concurrently become a new place and a new
topographic path, a multi-geographic space.
Kevin Lynch’s initial research inspired many planners and architects to change the way they
looked at “legible” cities, it emphasized the cognitive picture of a city questioning its
impressions and distortions that are left on memory as mental pictures of places. It emphasizes
the haptic and sensory engagement with surroundings. Films of cities also have contributed to
changes in perception and the way we look at the cities; consequently film augments our sense
of experiencing the city. Although Lynch’s study was relying mainly on mental pictures and
people’s perception of the city parameters which made it memorable, this connection of
Lynch’s study and understanding the cognitive map can help understand, plan filmic ways of
conceptualizing the city and its spatial forms as architecture. In another words Lynch could
instead asked his participants how haptic do they remember their city? And what does it look
like? Soft architecture is one way to see and perceive architecture through flexibility of the
film’s spatial and temporal relations. A filmic representation of urban flux can be a city’s spatial
choreography as a new adaptive soft architectonic, animating and activating a particular haptic
semiotic, a cinesensory. That is a flexible blend of reality and fiction which can concurrently
render sensual perceptions of the physical.
Cinesensory: Haptic Ways of Seeing a Space

Cinesensory is a term designed to represent haptic essence of filmic matter in motion, the
perception of its flux as sensory representation that we can experience. The visual space in the
film is constantly reinventing itself as the body changes in space and as it experiences
architecture. Film can transport the spectator through space creating a “multiform practice of
geopsychic exploration” (Bruno 2002: 15). The space of one’s lived experience narrated by
body, motion and occupying space. According to Bruno film and body arts are haptic dynamics
as well as mobile maps of spectator as a voyager rather than a voyeur in the case of film; “as a
body changes in space creates architectural and cinematic grounds” (Bruno 2002); in other
words film is creating a sort of transport for the viewer to travel through space. Cinesensory is
able to depict one particular sense better than others and that is motion. Motion leads
cinesensory to tempo, and will help in analysis of city rhythm as a categorisational and a
designedly method of sustaining a higher level of consciousness and sensory filmic
comprehension.
Among early writers recognising the haptic connections of film and architecture were Walter
Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer. In her writings Bruno says Benjamin points out that film like
architecture is appropriated by the mode of “touch and sight” therefore the filmic space is
touching space, as is space of architecture. Our understanding of environment is through our
contact and sense of touch, Bruno's argument is very palatable as a way to understand filmic
space, its hapticity and possible its connection to other sensory realms, thus cinematic notion
carries with it the haptic “topographer of affect” in a mental form a conceptual cognitive map
of “cultural memory” (Bruno 2008). This is the same cognitive map as Lynch's map and mental
image of one’s environment, here Bruno points out that both film and architecture are
production of “space if ones lived experiences” which means “narratives of place” which in
sequences are mobilised into new spaces for living, subjective sites. A combination of various
narrative methods gives film its difference senses. The notion of narrative or non-narrative adds
the significance of arrangement and design to the sense of vision creating an emotive (haptic)
bridge between film and a place.
Laura Marks in her book The Skin of the Film (2000) gives other subjective descriptions of filmic
sensory experiences for viewers “caught between pain and pleasure.” Marks points out that
specific intercultural films take advantage of the haptic images and qualities which refuse
“visual plenitude” (Marks 2000: 177). These haptic qualities according to her prevent viewer’s
easy connection with the narrative, hence détourned them to engage through their memory.
She explains that ethnographic films have been using haptic images as counter expectation
methods for the viewer’s typical anticipation for “informative and exotic visual spectacle.”
According to her this is a protection technique towards the original images; therefore the
intentions are to engage the sensory, then memory prior to typical visual focus. One of Marks
important comments is the discovery of haptic and optic ways of seeing in film; changes in focal
and distance of objects are optical effects, cinesensory is concern with the shift between these
optic and haptic visuals, which can shape a creative geography and filmic psychogeography.
A cinematic representational method as a process of continual enactment of cognitive
dynamics; The duration time-space that the mental realism of Huyghe’s films persist on is a
temporal, and has its own spatiality; it is discontinuous with multiple topographies that can be
perceived as different geographies juxtaposed to give a new articulation of filmic space.
Creative geography is combining reality and fiction in one film to create multiple sites that is
not disjointed. Huyghe and Greenaway’s films and images outline possible methods for a
topographic cinesensory that makes the experience of hapticity measurable and scriptable,
thus helping to identify, categorise and evaluate the ideologies shaping today’s environmental
sensory sphere and its perception.
EPILOGUE
To recapitulate the discussion so far, how are cinema and architecture related? From the most
basic point of view both are artistic processes as opposed to natural ones.
As instrumental processes they are used to produce deliberate changes, resulting in works that
have expressive qualities and exhibit a predetermined order. However the fact that both result
in tangible human artifact the first results in the production of a motion picture, the second a
building and both are employed to achieve same ends, thus do not connect any other art form
as music, painting or ceramics. Because of their abilities to incorporate other arts - cinema can
include theatre and dance while architecture can include both carpentry and landscaping – and
their overt connection to function, they have been difficult to categorize.
As we see cinema and architecture are both included in fine arts, their purpose is just not
aesthetic. Technical and utilitarian aspects are integral to both of them, although both of them
share this with other forms of art.
Architecture and cinema have at least three connections, the first being the most significant. If
we were to consider only narrative films as products of cinema and prototypical buildings as
products of architecture - then they would form the two polar opposites of a scheme.
Using a dialectical method, the synthesis of architecture and cinema is a perfect illusion.
Because of their relationship to space, cinema is a representational art, while architecture is
presentational. Because of their relationship to time, cinema is a dynamic art while architecture
is a static one. Because of their relationship to action architecture regulates immediate action,
while, cinema depicts action promoting mediated reaction.

Secondly, within the visual arts, art and architecture form opposite ends of hierarchy. Cinema is
incomprehensible without sight, although cinema is viewed over time, like all pictorial arts its
meaning entirely depends on visual perceptions. Its understanding also relies on more aspects
of vision than of the still representation. On the other hand, the understanding of architecture
can rely on visual precipitation among other sources of sensory input. A bind person can
perceive a building but not a motion picture.
Thirdly, cinema and architecture are processes of design. They rely on design, meaning, desire
the drawing of preparatory sketches. All works of arts embodied the preconceived ideal. Design
came to be used as a noun meaning the model for work or the underlying order of its formal
elements.
Literature review

After researching through different texts and book on this particular topic many new
unknown similarities and connections between the two disciplines have come to light.
Especially through the text ‘’Montage and Architecture’’ of Sergie Eisenstein. The
relationship that is established between the existing space and conceiving of space
through the cinematic tools and techniques.
Eisenstein tells us--the word path is not used by chance.... Nowadays it is the path
followed by the mind across a multiplicity of phenomena, far apart in time and space,
gathered in a certain sequence... in front of an immobile spectator.
The immobile film spectator moves across an imaginary path, traversing multiple sites
and times. Her navigation connects distant moments and far apart places. Film inherits
the possibility of such a spectatorial voyage from the architectural field.
The filmic path is the modern version of the architectural itinerary and the geographic
exploration. Film follows a historical course. It ventures to draw on the multiple
viewpoints of the "picturesque" route, reinventing this practice in modern ways. It does
so by leaving it up to a spectatorial body to take unexpected paths of exploration.

An architectural ensemble is read as it is traversed. This is also the case for the
cinematic spectacle, for film is read as it is traversed, and is readable insofar as it
is traversable. As we go through it, it goes through us. A "visitor" is the subject of
this practice--a passage through light spaces.

The language of cinema was born not out of static theatrical views but out of
urban motions.

Cinema has certainly renovated the perceptual experience of art. The path
followed by the mind across a multiplicity of phenomena, far apart in time and
space, gathered in a certain sequence into a single meaningful concept,”

Cinema is an art of perception. The sequence by which stories unfold hold true
only by virtue of the experience of reality. In other words, the sequence of cinema
only seems to unfold a plot because its experience mimics that of the experience
of space.
City and architecture unfold and identify space within the mind through the
experiences of the body, while film unfolds and creates spaces through the mind.
Film, travel or not, does not build or create a pre-existing city or structure, but
builds upon experience of.
I believe that Eisenstein’s approach to linking architecture and cinema offers a fruitful
approach to start the discussion on cinema and architecture. He refers to film as
montage since moving images are applied to each other and, thus, links cinema and
architecture. In Site-seeing: Architecture and the Moving Image Bruno (1997) highlights
the feature of mobility which links the moving image – cinema – and architecture and is
a central theme throughout her article. In this regard she mentions that “[c]inema—the
‘motion’ picture—inhabits modernity’s moving urban culture.”
Cinema frequently depicts our society and since it is an audiovisual experience it affects
various other forms of arts, such as architecture. With the advent of the cinema
architectural forms, such as arcades and department stores have originated, but
especially transportation is of particular significance influencing not only architecture
and the urban space, but urban culture in general. Bruno emphasizes architecture’s
strong influence on cinema.
According to her “architectures of transit prepared the ground for the invention of the
moving image—an outcome of the age of travel culture and the very epitome of
modernity”. Bruno also refers to the significance that the movie house possesses for
urban areas and highlights that film is a manifestation of the metropolis. In this regard
she refers to “film’s material attraction for the street, the pavement, feet walking over
stones.”. Hence, the strong link between architecture and film results in the fact that
both are heavily dependent on mobility.
With reference to Le Corbusier as well as Eisenstein and Choisy, Bruno points out that
architecture is mostly perceived while moving. Moreover, urban areas are strongly
influenced by architecture which manifests itself in part in a city’s character. Since film
often deals with society and culture, urban areas are often an integral part in film and
therefore architecture cannot be ignored.

Jacques Tati’s Playtime gave me a chance to actually receive a greater understanding of

the connection between architecture and film. In this regard both cinema and
architecture are received “’by a collectivity in a mode of distraction’”.
However, film in contrast to architecture is limited insofar as the viewer stays in one
location and cannot actually dive into the experience; at least not physically although
mentally. In contrast architecture can not only be perceived but it also offers a haptic
experience. One major noticeable fact was that during the advent of film, this medium
not only visually but also technically symbolized the industrialized age, urban
metropolitan areas as well as modernity; metaphorically, the cinematic medium
translated the impact of industrialization into the realm of aesthetic reception”.

I was especially intrigued by the way in which Tati’s film Playtime highlights on the one
hand how strongly American Culture influenced Europe after WW2 and on the other -
hand also reveals the bureaucratic and consumerist nature of modern society.
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DEEP SHAH, 09 – ARG – 38, 8TH SEM, B.ARCH, COA- SVIT – VASAD