Architecture and design play a fundamental role in cinema, not just through carefully constructed backdrops, either real or fictional; but also, as metaphorical elements that help the viewer to delve into the psyche of the protagonists. Films where space, lighting and photography work as tools to create ambiences, sensations and experiences, a few of which we have selected below to explore.
Directed in 1927 by Fritz Lang Metropolis is without doubt one of the pioneering films in its exploration of the relationship between architecture and the seventh art, with an elaborate lighting design that plays with representations of space, volume and chiaroscuro.
A utopia predicting a future urban reality in a city of 2026 that was already emerging at that time: a stratified urb where each of the architectural typologies represents a different social class, where intellectuals live in a city of skyscrapers and elevated structures while the workers live under them in an antagonistic setting, industrialised and underground.
Alfred Hitchcock is without doubt one of the greats in terms of the relationship between architecture, lighting and cinema, with films like Rear Window (1954) that explores its action through a quintessential architectural element filled with symbolism, the window.
With Psycho (1960) the director materialises different levels of Freudian psychosis over the three floors of the Bates House with a high contrast lighting, including the famous shower scene where the silhouette of the murderer, only seen as a shadow, helps to establish a less direct relationship, and in some ways empathetic one with the viewer.
1971 brings one of Stanley Kubrick’s greatest cinematic milestones to fruition: A Clockwork Orange. A film based on the novel by Anthony Burgess of the same name, conjured up through its brutalist buildings, like the Jaffe House (Skybreak House) designed by Sir Norman Foster, Wendy Cheesman and Sir Richard Rogers, the Thamesmead Housing Estate or the Brunel University London campus, that portray a violent and dehumanised society.
Years later Kubrick directed The Shining (1980) inspired by the eponymous novel by Stephen King, exploiting with the symbolism of the labyrinth to reflect on the psychopathy of its protagonist. The director decided on a completely realistic narrative approach to lighting in this case that morphs from a warm light at the beginning to bluer tones as the winter advances reflecting the cold exterior world and isolation of the characters.
Directed by Ridley Scott in 1982 Blade Runner is another must see. A dystopian, chaotic and hedonistic vision of the city of Los Angeles in the year 2019, based in part on the Philip K. Dick novella Do androids dream of electric sheep? (1968), where the skyscrapers and neon lights coexist with over-populated suburbs and industrial chimneys.
Taking German expressionism as his inspiration Scott chooses a hard lighting, with strong, marked shadows and contrasts that create a dark urban ambience and establish an intimate relationship with the inhabitant’s state of mind.
And we can’t conclude 20th Century films without mentioning Gattaca, written and directed by Andrew Niccol in 1997, which presents a bio-punk vision of future society, through minimalist architecture, rigidly geometric in its forms without any type of extraneous ornament, that perfectly reflects its dehumanised citizens.
The corporate HQ of the Marin County Civic Centre designed by Frank Llyod Wright, built posthumously after its author’s death was used to represent the futuristic city that the architect had imagined in his sketches.
The lighting temperature plays an important role in this film where warm and yellowish tones predominate, evoking the sun, the universe and the main character’s dream of travelling to outer space. Blue and green hues together with a more chiaroscuro lighting are interspersed between the warmer colours according to the unfolding emotional narrative.
Halfway between a comedy and a drama, the Argentine film The Man Next Door, directed and written by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat in 2009, narrates the conflict between two neighbours with two very different lifestyles. An interesting story line, where Le Corbusier’s Curutchet House in La Plata (Argentina, 1953) is the true star of the film, a faithful reflection of the dreams and frustrations of its inhabitants; where the light functions as a declaration of intent, that recreates two contrasting realities and ways of life separated by a party wall.
This relationship between architecture, lighting and cinema is also seen in streaming series with productions like Arkitekten (2023). A Norwegian miniseries directed by Karren Lumer-Klabbers presented as a satire on the real-estate market through the life of its main character: an architect who is struggling with the rising cost of apartments and who decides to convert a car park into a mega-community of residential units measuring 4 sq.m. each. There, as can be expected, the lighting is saturated with a melancholic and hopeless atmosphere that conditions the entire plot.
These films are only some examples of how through space and light the creative disciplines of architecture and photography not only help to build evocative settings, but also enter into the narrative and plunge the viewer into specific emotional states.
