Architecture of Film

Built Spaces.
The Cultural Shaping of Architectural and Urban Spaces | ___Gül Kaçmaz Erk Amsterdam / Istanbul | | Architecture as Symbol: Space in Wim Wenders’ Cinema | | | The relation between architecture and cinema began more than a century ago with the production of the very first films. There is architecture in almost every film. Consciously or not, architecture takes its position as an effective element in films; architectural space influences what is shot. If it is possible to argue that cinema is under the influence of architecture, then it should also be stated that architecture discovered cinema. Cinema became a domain of inspiration for architecture especially in the late twentieth century. Now we may hear an architect saying a film has been influential on his design or see some new notions brought by cinema integrated into a building.

Most of the art forms such as painting, theater, ballet, literature, poetry, photography, cinema, including architecture, try to describe or create space. While space is a tool in cinema and the other forms, architecture uses art to make space. Space, whose creation is an artful act, is the product of architecture. One significant difference is that space is the foreground in architecture since it is the purpose and the reason of its existence. In cinema, the purpose is not necessarily to define or create space, however space is one of the inevitable elements like script, music, light and actors. In architecture, space is what you design and build for. Despite different perceptions, space is a shared concept for both architecture and cinema. A novel, a piece of music, a painting and a photograph can exist without the concept of space but a film cannot. Cinema depends on space (some ‘abstract’, usually animated, films are excluded). Film, as Lorcan O´Herlihy says, tells “spatial stories”: “The idea that the movement of a body through a constructed space and participating in its