MODULE 6

Lecture Notes by Ar. Dhanya Shaji

MEDIA ARCHITECTURE
- Media Facades -
The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name lanterna magica, is an
early type of image projector that used pictures—paintings, prints,
or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or
more lenses, and a light source.

It was mostly developed in the 17th century and commonly used for
entertainment purposes.

It was increasingly used for education during the 19th century.

Since the late 19th century, smaller versions were also mass-produced
as toys.
The magic lantern was in wide use from the 18th century until the
mid-20th century when it was superseded by a compact version
that could hold many 35 mm photographic slides: the slide
projector.

According to media archeologist Erkki Huhtamo, magic lanterns

were used to project static images and advertisements onto public
buildings turning them in to giant projection screens.
Erich Mendelsohn’s Schocken
Department Store and
Warehouse, 1927.
To direct the people to shop,
the lights in the store are
integrated into the building.
First example of advertising
architecture, with street-level
storefronts, movable
staircases, and illuminated
signs.

This building has an important

place in advertising
architecture because of
creating a corporate identity
for the brand.
Moving marquee signs were used in 1930s
• Venturi clarified his vision of “architecture as communication,” by drawing
inspiration from the Byzantine mosaics (especially in Ravenna, Italy), which
were used to communicate religious stories.

• Similarly, he argued, we can communicate now through electronic media the

many stories and varied information of our multi-cultural, complex and
pluralistic society.
• Such an interest was particularly evident
in their 1967 competition entry for the
National Football Hall of Fame, whose
façade was an electronic billboard
designed to be visible from the highway.

• Like the era’s drive-in movie theatres, the

Football Hall of Fame was a building that
could be watched from the parking lot.

• The interior of the museum was spatially

subordinated to such a screen-façade;

• its vaulted hall, running behind its façade,

served both as a buttress for the façade
and as a linear exhibition space replete;

• with multi-media displays that included

film projections, objects, and illuminated
graphics.
• However much Venturi and Scott Brown played with the iconography of the drive-in, the
façade was not a movie screen.

• Rather, it adapted systems first used for advertising signs and news tickers and later
employed in stadium scoreboards.

• To be made up of 200,000 electronically programmable lightbulbs, it was to produce

‘moving sequences of naturalistic images, words, phrases, and diagrammatic
choreographies of famous football plays’.

• The desire was for a programmable face, one capable of consolidating control over
formerly distinct elements of letter, picture, and diagram.
• Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown tried to learn from the billboards, strip hotels, and dazzling, electronically
controlled ‘electrographic architecture’ (structures supporting electric advertising signs or sky-signs) of Las Vegas.

• It was about the different significances these façades acquired in the 1960s.

• Architects till then tried to integrate a vocabulary of abstract forms and rationalist structure with the culture of
news and publicity.

• The giant screen was particularly apt, they argued, for suburban post-war America with its dependence on
automobility.

• Such an argument was part of their larger critique of the modern movement’s subordination of façade to interior
organization, a legacy which, they argued, had given up the architect’s freedom to vary different façades in
relation to the specific requirements of urban context.
• One of the first attempts to implement moving images into the facade
of architectural buildings was described in the initial plans of the
winning proposal for Centre George Pompidou from 1971 by Renzo
Piano and Richard Rogers.

• The idea was to project moving images onto large projection screens
that were mounted on the steel frames of the façade.

• Due to budget cuts and the lack of a suitable technology, the idea had
to be abandoned.
Before the world had even seen large outdoor
screens, they were featured in the sci-fi movie Blade
Runner from 1982 as large hovering billboards
displaying commercial advertising.
• In 1985, Sony presented the first large screen device that was properly suited for outdoor use.

• The JumboTron, as it was called, was 40 meters wide and 25 meters tall and soon became a standard fixture in
stadiums all over the USA.

• During the 1990s, similar screens were installed at Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, and other commercialized urban
spaces.
What is Media Architecture?

• Media is an intermediary that disseminates information in the form of press, radio,

television, or other means.

• With the development of media technology, information can be communicated in various

ways and at different scales.

• Media Architecture refers to built structures that incorporate media -in any form- to
facilitate communication with the public.

• Media facades are layers of individually controllable lights, attached to or woven into the
exterior surface of a building to function as a dynamic palette for text, graphics and video
animations.
MEDIA FACADE

• A media façade is any external building surface with an integrated capacity to display dynamic
graphics, images, texts and spatial movement.
• Integrated into the building concept and planning process.
• It is guided by narrative content, which provides an identity for the structure and the environment in
which it resides.
• The media facade demonstrates the idea of transforming the facade into a public display with the aim
of interacting with the community through the use of technology, movement, colour, and light on the
surface of the building.
• It is defining a new relationship between media and architecture, where digital media becomes a
contemporary interface in architectural design.
• Text, graphics, or video animations are controllable light layers added to or embedded on the outer surface
of the building as a tool for transmitting.
• It can be summarized as a type of urban computation that integrates digital indicators into buildings.
• At the same time, it can interact with the environment in which it is integrated not only to the building
façade but also to the street furniture.
• These surfaces should be understood and interpreted as part of a continuous history of architectural
ornament.
• From another perspective, screens have become a dominant character in public spaces, ignoring the
building and the environment.
• OR? Media is not adapted to the urban area; it makes it a complex and image polluting environment.
• In this way, the building no longer represents its own identity or a new identity, but only to showcase the
billboard.
FILMS AND ARCHITECTURE
Architecture being the “mother of all arts”, there is mutual influence
from every art form.

o Painting
o Literature
o Dance
o Music
o Visual media

• Films have influenced in architecture in numerous ways and vice

versa.

• We shall see how these two can relate, understand how

architecture influences movies:

Modernism, Technology, Futurism, Science Fiction, Expressionism,

Horror, Humour, Happiness, Fantasy, Digital Technology
How can architects design architecture to be as compelling, moving, memorable and influential as films
designed by filmmakers?
• Most people narrowly view architecture as "90 percent utilitarian and 10 percent
decoration.”

• The average consumer of architecture overlooks its potential for sponsoring human
action, reinforcing rituals, transmitting messages symbolically, provoking emotions or
telling stories.

• For most people, architecture may be little more than a neutral, static framework in
which to stay warm and dry, place furniture and potted plants and act out tedious, daily
routines.

• On the other hand, consumers buy into movies expecting much more than just live-
action images of people, buildings and landscapes.

• They expect to be entertained, to be stimulated emotionally and intellectually.

• Designed environments and actions, momentarily seeming to be real and alive, can
make the movie-goer laugh, cry, feel anger or sympathy, become tense or cringe with
fear or disgust – EMOTE.
PARASITE (2019)
• In the movie, this marvel of modern architecture was designed by a fictional architect named Namgoong
Hyeonja.

• In truth, it was the brainchild of “Parasite” production designer Lee Ha Jun.

• “Since Mr. Park’s house is built by an architect in the story, it wasn’t easy finding the right approach to
designing the house,” Lee explained.

• “I’m not an architect, and I think there’s a difference in how an architect envisions a space and how a
production designer does. We prioritize blocking and camera angles while architects build spaces for
people to actually live in and thus design around people. So I think the approach is very different.”

• The Park family home is one of the most astounding pieces of production design and the story behind its
creation adds a whole new layer of complexity to Bong’s masterpiece.
• “When I was tutoring, I really felt like I was infiltrating this family, and that’s where my inspiration came
from, but ultimately I wanted to tell a story about people around me, who aren’t criminals, infiltrating a
particular home.”

• So this is a spoiler, but in the story, and no one says there should only be one parasite in a host, so the
story is about discovering that there are already parasites that settled down in the host, much before
them. (Who is the parasite?)

• I had to really meticulously design the house - its own universe inside this film.

• Each character and each team has spaces that they take over that they can infiltrate, and also secret
spaces that they don’t know.

• So the dynamic between these three teams and the dynamic of space, they were very much intertwined
and I think that combination really created an interesting element to this film.
• Director Bong already had specific blocking elements in mind while writing the script—the actors’ path
through the living room and garden, the path down the staircase from the second floor to the dining table, a
position that lets the actor discretely look over the kitchen from the second floor staircase, path from the
kitchen down to the basement, path from the basement down to the secret bunker, to the path from the
garage up to the living room, and so on.

• Bong: The story just demanded all those things in terms of blocking, like if someone is in a certain position,
the other character had to spy on them; if someone’s coming in, another person had to hide behind a corner.

• So these very basic spatial relationships between the characters were already established – KEEPING CHECK.
'Parasite' tells a story of class through architecture
• The Japanese movie titled is “Heaven and Hell.” On the top of the hill is a rich guy and in the
bottom, there is the criminal kind of structure. It’s basically the same in “Parasite,” but with more
layers.

• Because the story is about the rich and poor, that’s obviously the approach we had to take in
terms of designing the sound and lighting.

• The poorer you are, the less sunlight you have access to, and that’s just how it is in real life as
well: You have a limited access to windows.
• Mr. Park’s house is minimal, uncluttered, large and orderly.
• It’s a large house with a large garden consisting of controlled colors and materials—a contrast to
the semi-basement neighborhood.

• In contrast to the rich house, Kitaek’s semi-basement neighborhood is more colorful.

• Instead, the textures are rough and the space is denser compared to the rich house.

• I wanted to show the increasing density that reflects the class difference between elevated areas
and lower ones as appearances change from the rich house to the semi-basement neighborhood.

• This is a story about co-existence, but both Director Bong and I were certain that we had to show
clear contrast as well.

• That contrast is maximized in how the appearance of the neighborhoods gradually changes when
the family endlessly descends from top to bottom.
• There are actual houses with high walls and large gardens in elevated neighborhoods of Seoul.

• But the staircase is one of the key visual elements of this film.

• Director Bong was very precise with his demand that everything must continue to descend from
top to bottom.

• The appearance of the neighborhoods had to gradually change.

• There had to be more rain and more water to complete the overall nuance and spatiality of the
film.
• And that’s why the protagonists are living in this unique structure of semi-basement homes. I
didn’t add that to just show a very Korean element of story.

• There’s a more specific meaning behind it, because the semi-basement is basically of the middle
of high and low.

• There’s this fear that you can fall even further below but you still feel hope that you’re still half
above-ground, so it really reflects this liminal space that they’re in, and the spaces in this film are
even more compartmentalized and all connected through a very complicated staircase.
• That was how the space was described in Director Bong’s script.
• I remember the script calling it the temple of excrement.

• In Korea, we have what’s called semi-basement houses and some semi-basement bathrooms are
structured that way.

• However, we did consider the camera angles to adjust the size and proportions of the space so
that the toilet could be as close to the ceiling as possible.
• Bong says he intentionally chose a minimalist home to reflect the “sophisticated and modern”
young family that lives in it.

• “A minimalist space makes you feel that all you see is all there is. To see that, you get the sense
that it's not trying to hide anything beneath the complicated layers. The simple planes and the
lines come together to make you feel like you've seen everything. And that's why when you see
the man in the bunker and the hidden parts of the house, it's more shocking for the audience
because you assume that you have seen everything and nothing is hidden.”

• The Parks’ modernist home, so convincing that it comes as a surprise to many that it is an
elaborate stage, is contrasted with the Kims’ tiny sub-basement, which has very limited light and
no views and cluttered space.

• Compare that to the Parks’ home, in which “the sunlight pours in like a waterfall,” Bong says.
“There are many scenes with abundant sunlight. And so it's class disparity shown through natural
light.”
• In an email interview, filmmaker and UCLA film professor Gina Kim confirmed that these semi-
bunker apartments were mandated in all South Korean buildings by a construction law
established in 1970.

• “If the building that Kim family lives was built during the 70s (which might very well be, noting
how dilapidated it looks), it was definitely built as a bunker, not by paranoia of an individual but
by the construction law,” Kim wrote.

• “Initially, it was illegal to use that semi-basement/basement space as residential unit but with
the expansion of the city, landlords started to rent them out surreptitiously. Semi-basement
eventually became a norm since the tenants preferred semi-basement to basement for obvious
reasons,” she added.
MODERNISM AND TECHNOLOGY

• In the 1930s, filmmakers expropriated and redefined emerging

architectural ideas, the -isms of architectural modernity - streamlining,
anti-ornament minimalism, techno-futurism.

• Originally these were European ideas, part of the Bauhaus movement,

the invention of socialist, reformist, utopian theoreticians dedicated to
creating workers' paradises.
METROPOLIS (1927)

• Metropolis (1927) is a German expressionist, epic, science fiction, silent

film directed by Fritz Lang.

• Made in Germany during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in a

futuristic urban dystopia, and follows the attempts to overcome the
vast gulf separating the classist nature of their city.

• Its value lies in the allegorical metaphors of the social conditions and
on its technical achievements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdtZv3XROnc
• Metropolis is symbolically divided in two parts:
i) the upper city where the inhuman ruler and wealthy people are
placed, and
ii) the underground city where the nameless workers, identified by
numbers, live among huge machines, that swallow up their lives in a
repeated time frame – the 10 hour working shift.

• “now and forever the architect is going to replace the set designer. The
movies will be a faithful translator of the architect’s boldest dreams”.

• Metropolis is a film that shows a future where the city is structured in

vertical layers according to the different social strata.

• Something that could be recognized in the current situation of several

cities today.
• John Fredersen’s office table is a curved oversized piece of furniture, representing emphatically his dominion
over Metropolis; and in front of it stands two visitor’s armchairs accompanied by an equivalent coffee table with
a model of the new Babel Tower - the office building, on it (Figure 2).

• These pieces characterize the space’s scale compared to the office: the oversized table, which is identified with
John Fredersen, as well as other architectural elements, such as the oversized entrance door and window
through which the city is shown to its master.
• The furniture’s curved forms, combined with a series of futuristic machines of dynamic forms, including a board
that shows production data, another token of machine power.

• It is also interesting to mention the absence of art pieces in this futuristic environment, which during that period
were an indicator of affluence and wealth, a fact that points to the choice of materialistic symbols of dominion.

• The story shows the employees working under hard pressure, while John Fredersen oversees from his office
space, imposing silence and stillness, even upon his son arrival.

• The analysis highlights the office’s scale, the space and machinery design, as well as the use of materials,
connecting them with the circumstances and social behaviors revealed through them.
MON UNCLE (1958)
• By imparting a kind of "gilded" look to the new modernism, American
film set designers created high-fashion, Art Deco restaurants,
penthouse apartments, shipboard cabins and dining rooms that
became architectural symbols of sophistication, affluence and savoir-
faire - a long way from workers' paradises.

• Through film, the architectural icons of socialist theory turned into

the icons of American capitalism.

• And like television today, 1930s films had far greater effect on the
public's beliefs about architecture, and what it represented, than any
of the manifestos produced by architects.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHJcwMrqnJo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE9t98Gox60
• Mon Oncle ("My Uncle") is a 1958 film comedy by French
filmmaker Jacques Tati.
• Tati is the star/director/producer and co-writer of this project.
• Mon oncle- The moral is that technology has its place but there is a point
at which such progress becomes more of a burden than a benefit to
mankind.
• Technology for its own sake (such as the fully automated kitchen which
resembles a dentist’s surgery) is a sterile, meaningless development, its
main function being to allow you to impress your neighbors.
• The theme of 'Mon Oncle' is the inability of one man to adapt to new
technology.
• And also the fun had by a child in a more practical world rather than with
his house with advanced technology.
• Technological elements are combined in Villa Arpel to showcase the modern lifestyle that Tati is critiquing. The
people who live in houses like these, according to Tati are not only wilfully ignoring inconvenience, but not living
life at all.
• In fact, Tati goes as far as to say that “geometrical lines do not produce likeable people.”
• He brings this claim to life by contrasting the people outside the walls of Villa Arpel with those within.
• The people outside are chaotic, boisterous, messy, and generally fun-loving.
• The people within, on the other hand, are obsessed with work and status.

• Of course, not all hope is lost for the inhabitants of modern architecture.
• Instead Tati believes that we need to pay more attention to promoting life and living in the moment rather than
planning and living for the future.
• He wants us to take life a little less seriously just like Mr. Hulot and the inhabitants of old Paris do.
• Towards the end of his career, in an interview, Tati said “I am not at all against modern architecture, but I believe it
should come with not only a building but also a living permit.”
• As we rush around our gleaming modern cities, that’s a piece of advice that more people ought to hear.
The modern villa The place where the The uncle puts the sofa
uncle stays upside down and has a nap

The plumbing line of the Friends moving from Uncle slips inside the
fish fountain has been one place to another. fountain
broken
 The irregular pathway The automatic car shed Guests invited to the
modern villa

The uncle sits on an The automatic cabinet Friends tea party-

uncomfortable chair messed up.
BLADE RUNNER (1982)
• The Oscar winning director, Ridley Scott’s 1982 cult sci fi movie, Blade Runner, has become the
most credible cinematic futuristic manifesto of the 20th century.

• The film portrays a future Los Angeles and offers a deep insight into the future of architecture and
urbanism, while also providing information on contemporary realities and trends.

• Syd mead, production designer of Blade Runner talks :

• “I took the two world trade towers in New York City and the New York street proportions as today’s
model, and expanded everything vertically about two and a half times. This inspired me to make
the bases of the buildings sloping to cover about six city blocks, on the premise that you needed
more ground access to the building mass.”

• The Los Angeles of 2019 is essentially a city of contradiction; high rises, pyramids and glass towers
intermingle with revival architecture, historical buildings, and the debris of past urban sprawl.
• The visual layering of architectural typologies from various cultural pasts creates a post-modern
image of a globalized world.
• Due to the drain of wealth that accompanied the mass immigration, the city becomes a place
where the whole economic process is slowed down.
• The removal of old buildings begins to cost far more than the construction of a new ones.
Instead of tearing down buildings or dismantling established technologies, modifications and
additions are thus added to existing structures.
• What results is a deeply layered city, where new use has grown over and subsumed Los
Angeles’ architectural history.
• New structural elements extend through old buildings to support new construction above;
while ducts, signs and service pipes run, snake like, over the old façades.
• As the cables and generator tubes delivering air and waste go up the old buildings, the street
level becomes nothing more than a service alley to the Megastructures above.
• “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” Syd Mead.
• As metropolis and blade runner work on similar themes, a comparison between them seems
appropriate.
• Metropolis (1927) and Blade Runner share a sense of urban gigantism and geometrical form.
• While the “New Tower of Babel” dominates the skyline of Metropolis, here it is the pyramid of
the Tyrell Corporation headquarters that serves as the city’s nucleus. The building’s presence is
overpowering, in it evokes a strong sense of financial power. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982)
like Metropolis (1927) reveals class structure through its vertical architecture.
• Le Corbusier (1930) believed that movies were the perfect medium for representing modern
architecture.

• Dietrich Neumann (1996), on the other hand, perceived cinema’s space as a medium that consists of
“a testing ground for innovative visions, and as a realm in which a different approach to the art and
practice of architecture can be realized”.

• Cinema movies among other means of visual narration build a strong visual mechanism of
understanding and communication in design education.
What are the other movies you guys know which has lasted an impression in you
with the story it tries to tell?
ARCHITECTS AND FILM MAKERS - PROCESS

• Viewers, drawn in by plot, characters, dialogue, sets, lighting and sound,

often retain impressions and memories of films that long outlast the
impressions and memories of most of the buildings they see.

• Some films may even change moviegoers' beliefs or behaviour. Few

buildings can make such claims.

• "The filmmaker must design the events of that world while the architect can only
imagine the experience of the space he is designing."

• Plot, dialogue, characters, feelings - the architect is limited to speculation about

what these might be, hoping that reality approximates the narrative imagined.

• The narrative potential of architecture with its ability to communicate today, it

seems odd that the still photo, carefully composed and shot, continues to be the
primary method for documenting and studying architecture.
• But by imparting a kind of "gilded" look to the new modernism, American film
set designers created high-fashion, Art Deco restaurants, penthouse
apartments, shipboard cabins and dining rooms that became architectural
symbols of sophistication, affluence and savoir-faire - a long way from workers'
paradises.

• Through film, the architectural icons of socialist theory turned into the icons of
American capitalism.

• And like television today, 1930s films had far greater effect on the public's
beliefs about architecture, and what it represented, than any of the manifestos
produced by architects.

• On another front, the 1930s also witnessed increasing use of film to convey
movement through space, or what the architect Le Corbusier called
promenade architecturale.
• Thus, architects perhaps can learn from moviemakers about making
architectural settings that profoundly affect people's thoughts, feelings
and actions.

• Indeed, architects could envy the filmmaker's control of a film's setting,

story and audience.

• In addition to controlling totally the composition of a given scene - set,

positions of actors, camera angles, lighting - film directors could move
cameras through sequences of spaces or scenes, heightening for the
viewer the simulated effect of participating in the film's reality.

• Architects likewise invent and construct spatial sequences to be

experienced "en promenade" -- for example, from approach to entry,
from entry to foyer to stair, from stair to corridor, from corridor to
vestibule to room.

• They hope that the holistic experience of the promenade itself, not just
the details of the structure and functions within, will be inspiring.

• Still, our formal constructions might be more memorable if we

occasionally pretended to be filmmakers.
CINEMA AND ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Cinema images are manufactured images –

• including the spaces used,

• and aim for an approach that reflects their creator’s ideas through
the predefined performance of the characters into a whole space,

which serves the script’s needs and is placed in a certain period:

past historical, present contemporary, future idealistic.

• Eric Rommer (1970) points to the distinction of space function into architectural, narrative and artistic
- narrative and scenario and the artistic elements of the image.

• The use of cinematic spaces:

- even those the story imposes stereotypical forms on or overemphasizes their symbolic
characteristics in order to support the script’s characters or even the imaginary dimensions of
ideal configurations
- could lead to spatial comprehension through the immediacy of the cinema picture in a visual
topography.

• The description of the natural background in the picture, involving the materialistic aspects that
characterize it:
- understanding the form,
- the social function,
- the cultural codes,
- even the historical and memorial representations
and creates the conducive ground to compare and analyze differences in size, use, period, symbolism or
other, spatial forms.
• The camera’s position in a given frame and the un-continuity of cinema space, which co-exist with
several viewing points, could be identified with the position of a viewer, who as a pedestrian walking
along, observes the space through which he moves in a fragmentary manner and mentally connects the
different views in order to construct the perception of the whole space he has walked through.

• The same goes for a designer, who mentally reproduces a noncontinuous space, starting from his
original idea to arrive to his final project, and composes a “whole” consisting of separated fragments.

• Within this procedure we could argue that cinema films are the imaginary vision of the real world and
design is the realistic vision of imagination.

• The audience in cinema sits across observing realistic objects that are presented on the screen and
builds the meaning of narration, which helps them to understand the film’s ideas with the objects true
dimension.
• On the other hand designers come up with their ideas to produce real projects by connecting the
different phases of the creative process – from the first idea to the scenario, the drawing, the schedule,
the project, and finally its use.
The Grand Budapest Hotel’s Post War Era

• Color palettes are one of the first things that made people excited when it is heard that Wes Anderson is
directing a new film, and they are also used effectively in this film.
• The exterior shooting of the Grand Budapest Hotel, which is also featured on the movie’s poster, made the
hotel and movie identified with pink color, which represents innocence, goodness, and nostalgia.
• Scenes shot in 1932’s The Grand Budapest Hotel contain colors like pink, red in the exterior and interior,
while the color gold on the embellishments contributes to the hotel’s atmosphere. These colors represent
the prestige once the hotel had.
• However, the rest of the world does not contain bright colors as the hotel does, and the scenes outside of
the hotel usually appear monochromatic.
• Dark greys and blacks were seen when evil characters appeared on the scene.
• Scenes in Madam D.’s mansion where it was filled with relatives who are rushed to share her legacy, and
prison, where dangerous criminals are punished, are great examples that show the hardwired evilness in
the spaces.
• The usage of vivid colors is also associated with Mr. Gustave’s bright personality; therefore, wherever he
and Zero go, they bring the hotel’s colors or aesthetic to the scene, or the color of their uniform shows that
they are not proper to fit the dark-colored places.
:D