Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

READING THE ARCHITECTURAL IDENTITY VIA CINEMA

Deeksha KO
1RW15AT018
RV College of Architecture
Bangalore

Akash Roger
1RW15AT009
RV College of Architecture
Bangalore

Abstract
Representation plays a major role in the way architects produce their designs. From the first ambiguous
lines to the technical constructive drawings, memory and personal experiences of space provide designers
with insight. Remembered places are meaningfully and emotionally embedded architectural spaces. Design
studios in architecture face difficulties when dealing with methods of representing subjectivity and emotion.
The representation of space in film is sculpted from the narrative, a meaningful construction of emotional
space within the context of the story. Similar to experiencing a real space, a film’s sophisticated language
has the ability to transport the audience to the time and place of the story. However, representation of filmic
space is highly arbitrary, and oftentimes contrary to what we assume from common sense perceptions of
real spaces. This paper first reviews how film commonly introduces the experiencing of space through
audience identification and narrative. Later, the paper analyses previous approaches to film in architecture
education focusing on the importance of film viewing. Finally, it analyses the representation of domestic
life in two scenes in order to illustrate how audience identification and narrative together communicate the
experiencing of space in film.
Keywords: Film, architectural representations, education, domestic space.

INTRODUCTION:

Representation is central to the way architects design. From the very first ideas to the final drawings,
architects engage recursively in “representing-thinking-representing,” refining the design at each cycle.
Through representations, architects are able to establish dialogues. During the design process,
representation develops from ambiguous and suggestive features into conventionalized and univocal
representations. Sketches are most commonly developed at the beginning of the process, since they allow
for fast, highly expressive, and open interpretations of the visualizations. Technical drawings are most
commonly developed at the end of the process when the design needs to communicate univocal and
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

monosomic information. Architectural education, therefore, should foster a student’s skill in articulating
their ideas by using the widest range of representations possible.
Several authors, mainly viewed from a phenomenological lens, point out the limitations of
architectural representations when it comes to expressing memorable and subjective impressions of space.
Vision became the way to acquire objective knowledge, predominant over the other senses. Nanda and
Soloyova (2005) refer to how “[w]e have created a growing gap between the real world, with its rich, real
experiences, deep understanding of matter, and complex translation of those experiences into new
experiences, and the world of architectural education, with its mediated, mostly visual experiences and
rearrangement of those experiences into new representations.” However, this synesthesia, or the innate
capacity to interconnect our senses, along with the continuous movement, the binocular vision and tactile
perceptions cannot not be concealed with the geometric reduction of world representation into the visual
(Pérez-Gómez and Pelletier, 1997). The reduction of architectural representations to visual elements has
deepened this sensorial gap. Whenever architecture is understood to be a visual trip that excludes
multisensory experience, it alienates the individual from the possibility of living in meaningful spaces
(Pallasmaa, 2006).
Merleau-Ponty (2000) claims we cannot consider space to be exterior and separated from our
body. On the contrary, space and our body define each other, and are united together in the act of
experiencing. The same way we cannot separate the perception of space from space itself, we cannot divide
the experiencing of space into the independent senses. Our senses are interconnected. We do not translate
into a solely visual language the information we get from our sense of touch or, inversely, we cannot gather,
one by one, our body’s separate senses; the translation and accumulation of all our senses are made at once
inside of us. They are what comprises our own body (Merleau-Ponty, 2000). Even though it is evident that
the experiencing of a space cannot be reproduced with conventional representations, developing designs
and representational strategies that contemplate subjective experiencing is no easy proposition (Pérez-
Gomes and Pelletier, 1997). Films share with the traditional Cartesian representation a monocular vision,
and the verisimilitude that accompanies the projective method. However, film introduces time into the
notion of design. The illusion of movement created by an image sequence, the introduction of the montage,
and the use of audio all open up a new horizon for architectural representation.

FILM AND ARCHITECTURE: IDENTIFICATION, FILMIC SPACE, AND EDUCATION:

Have you ever felt after watching a good movie that you have been to another time and place? You
have been seated in the movie theatre in the quiet and in the dark. However, it feels as if you have been to
the place the movie sought to take you, enduring the hero’s misfortunes, and rejoicing in his victories.
Obviously, remembering a filmic space is not the same as having experienced a space in real life. Deleuze
(1984) points out the difference between the immobile and voyeuristic audience’s attitude when watching
a film and the attitude involved in moving and interacting with the world, actually embodied in a tangible
space. Different from the experience of real space, audiences elaborate upon the meaning of space via the
point of view of the narrator or the movie’s key characters. Film sculpts space through narrative.
It is the intimate and dynamic processes of identification that draw audiences into the film narrative.
Metz (2001), and later Aumont (1996), refers to a process of double identification. Primary film
identification relates to the spectator conflating the camera with his/her own gaze. The spectator experiences
the film as being the focus of the representation, positioned in a privileged place, at the center of the
omnipresent vision. Secondary film identification originates from the spectator’s predisposition to engage
with the narration. Aumont (1996) identified a psychological and primordial desire in the audience to
engage with the story. Similarly, Bordwell (1995) refers to how the audience engages with the narrative by
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

actively building hypotheses about possible outcomes throughout the viewing of the film. Identification
during the movie is not monolithic, stable or permanent. On the contrary, during the film the audience can
identify with the gaze of a variety of different characters or situations, from one scene to another. Therefore,
a film’s manipulation of the gaze, or gazes, is essential to triggering audience identification with the film.
Even though we can engage in film narrative without any effort, once we look at the film’s
planning of the scene, we realize how a film’s representational codes are distinct from real life perceptions.
The playing with gazes and audience identification is supported by nontrivial codes of manipulation of the
image sequences. Aumont (1996) points to three important features that intervene decisively in the
processes of identification with the film: (1) the manipulation of multiple points of view, (2) the variation
of the scale of the plane, and (3) playing with the viewer’s gazes. Having multiple points of view about the
same situation allows for the manipulation of the image sequence, creating of a hierarchy of subjective
relationships between the various characters. As an audience, we are used to the shot/reverse shot, where
following a shot via a character’s close up leads us to expect a shot of what s/he is seeing; following the
shot of an event, we can expect a shot showing the reaction of a character as reflected in their face. But not
all characters are on the same level of importance in the scene. We are lead to know their place in the
hierarchy by frame scale, duration, and composition. Traditionally, main characters are positioned in the
center and close up in the frame, and are on screen for longer periods than secondary characters. Moreover,
multiple points of view are combined with different scales of frame to allow for a play of closeness or
distancing, engaging or disengaging with the characters and their associated emotions. Therefore the
camera movement, insinuated by the montage or a shot sequence, plays a role of major importance in the
identification process of the audience.
Space as it appears in the film is subject to the narrative; it contributes to character definition, and to
the particular situation or story. Even though we cannot understand filmic space in a sense that is separate
from the film itself, we can analyse how that space is constructed. Vila (1997) mentions Eric Rohmer’s
delineation of space into three distinct types: (1) the architectural, (2) the pictorial, and (3) the filmic. As
part of the mise-en-scène, architectural space is the physical location where the film is shot; it encompasses
the set design and the decoration. Resembling how we traditionally work in the field of architecture,
pictorial space is related to the film image in terms of its similarities with painting, compositionality,
chromaticality, in paying attention to the type of camera lens used, the depth of field, height and tilt, etc.
Filmic space includes both the audio and the off-screen space. Creating an imaginary place through a shot
sequence or a montage suture, filmic space articulates both the pictorial and architectonic space within the
given narrative. Even though architects usually are not used to design spaces from a narrative, film and
architecture often have been linked from several different perspectives. One approach has been the study
of film set design and its inter-influences with architectural history and style (Ramírez, 1993 and Vila,
1997). Another approach has been an analysis of film as commentary or critic to architecture and the city.
Ábalos (2000) studied the subjectivity embedded into the domestic space of the modern architecture
featured in the film “Mon oncle” (Tati, 1958) through the film’s characters’ feelings.
The introduction of film into the architecture design studio is not novel. Cairns (2007) proposed a
studio where his students would recursively go back and forth between film and architectural spaces.
Filming a real space, the author described several exercises that would defamiliarize the student with real
architectural spaces by allowing the student to discover new space features through the film’s
representation. Mathew Knox (2007) proposed that his students look at the set of Rear Window (Hitchcock,
1954). His students modeled the set in 3D in order to animate original scenes, and later redesigned the set
for a 2006 remake of the film, thus creating an entirely new animated scene. Most cases involving the
introduction of film into architectural education use film screening and analysis in class as a foundation for
triggering discussions regarding how architecture is used to support the ideas in the film, or how filmmaking
techniques express the unique characteristics of the architecture. Film viewing can sensitize students to
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

certain features of architectural design such that students can later develop them into their own architectural
projects. The following case studies center on two scenes of domestic life in order to contrast the various
approaches of film representation, as described in the context of a class. The first case focuses on audience
identification within the scene, and on how film constructs space through its representation of the gaze. The
second case focuses on filmic space as analyzed through Rohmer’s categories (Vila, 1997). Both scenes
start by analyzing the film’s enunciation, the concrete evidence of shot order and duration, in an effort to
understand how meaningful space is constructed in the film.
The identity and proficiency of the architecture has been defined since Ancient times. The status of
the architecture was defined clearly through social codes in the Greek and Roman ages. In his work in 25
B.C, De Architectura, which is considered one of the masterpieces of Architecture literature, Vitruvius
began defining the architect and architecture on the basis of education. According to Vitruvius (1993), the
architect is a person who is equipped withdifferent disciplines, possesses natural talents, is trainable at the
same time, can write well, well-versed in geometry, history, philosophy and philosophers, appreciates
music, has a certain knowledge of medicine, can grasp the notion of law and is even familiar to astrology
and astronomy. Vitrivius provides a detailed description of the job of an architect in those times. In Doğan
Hasol’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, too, it is emphasized, with reference to Vitrivius, that an architect needs
to have an overall knowledge of structure, heating, ventilation, lighting and plumbing. While definitions of
architecture covers technical drawings, plan plane, structure, building components, material, technology,
construction activity and the production process clearly, elements such as life, people, ideology, intuition,
pleasure and humanism have a covert reference in it. According to Tanyeli (2001), there are three types of
relationship-interaction between cinema and architecture. 1-“unbuilt” and virtual architectural area that is
not being used in reality 2-cinema reproducing the “real” architectural spaces in its own virtual universe 3-
cinema taking “the architects as a personality and his/her architectural activities” (Gençosmanoğlu, 2012).
This study makes mention of films as fourth group that deals with areas of work of the profession of
architecture. This study aimed to define the identity and proficiency of the profession of architecture via
characters of “architect”, “student of architecture” and “having ambition to become an architect” in various
films. The selected films do not focus on the director, date of shooting the film, the technique used in
filming and the context where the film takes place; instead, they focus on the architect that was included in
the screenplay. Undoubtedly, while these lines are being written and while they are being read by you now,
the question of “Why was the film “x”, in which the architect character is more dominant, not included in
this article whereas even the film “y” was analyzed?” is quite meaningful and appropriate. In fact, perhaps
the screenplay of a new film is being written at the moment, a film is being shot at a setting, or being
premiered. However, when the films analyzed in this article are looked at as a context, it is seen that the
holistic potentials of the films are important rather than their individual existence. In other words, what
matter is that films constitute a cinematographic level reflecting the architect within a system rather than
which films were included in the article and how they were analyzed (Table 1). The lead characters or side
characters in the films analyzed in this study are architects and the focus here is on the theoretical and
practical functioning of the profession of architecture. The films emphasize sometimes the architect’s
identity regarding their profession and sometimes their emotions. As is seen in the case of Truman Show,
we can feel the creative, supervisory and founding qualities of architecture in the background.
2. THE ARCHITECTS AND ENDEAVORS OF ARCHITECTS FROM FILM FRAMES

Conclusions have been drawn about the professional applications and architectural life from the
cinematographic level regarding the architect characters and their jobs via the seven films and a total of
eleven different architect characters studied. The sub-headings here have been determined on the basis of
the internal dynamics of the films.
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

2.1. HOW DOES AN ARCHITECT WORK?

It is seen that the architects in the films usually express themselves through sketches and drawings in
professional dimension. In The Fountainhead’, Howard Roak is seen throughout the film with paper and
pen in his hand making sketches and drawings at a white flat table. Although occasionally we see Roak as
a businessman in a suit at stressful business meetings with employers, a bureaucrat defending himself at
courtrooms making long defense speeches in the name of his profession, or as a worker with a tool he uses
to bore stones and dressed in dungarees, the general image of him is one of an architect engaged in sketches
and drawings. He prefers to make presentations to employers with elaborate and well-proportioned sketches
on which he put his signature.
The film also shows the latest forms of various buildings. Roak usually prepares his projects with
presentations of sketches containing technical drawings consisting of plans, cross-sections and façades.

2.2 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ARCHITECT AND THE DESIGN :

It is observed that architects tend to identify their jobs with their profession. It is not possible to consider
the products made through creative work separately from their designers. Howard Roak in the film The
Fountainhead is a typicalexample of this. Roak perceives his designs as part of his identity. In his defense
against the public prosecution opened as he dynamited the project he himself had designed, he said “My
ideas are my property. They have been wrested from me by force in violation of a contract. They thought
that my work might belong to others as they wished. I designed Cortlandt, I made it possible and I pulled
it down…”, which clearly expresses the relationship between the architect and the design. While they are
making their designs, they bear, perhaps without being aware of it, on the visual, mental, emotional, tactile
and intellectual experiences they have gained throughout their lives. Indeed, in the film The Fountainhead,
Dominique finds it unbearable to live in the house which the architect she is in love has designed while she
is married to another man because she has identified Howard’s design with his identity and perceived the
design as part of the architect.
In the film The Lake House, Alex, who lives in the lake house, is the son of architect Simon
Wyler, the designer of the house, and is himself an architect, describes the house as “a glass box from which
you can see everything around but cannot touch. Beautiful but incomplete” and adds “it totally reflects my
father”. The lake house has been designed by architect Simon Wyler, but his son architect Alex has added
his own style to it. The transparent house built on the lake is a sign that the architect does not even draw a
line without a reason or move a stone again without a reason. It is emphasized that the reason why the tree
right in the middle of the lake house is there is linked to the building of dreams and concepts. The dialogue
in the film between Alex and Simon Wyler on the design of a museum needs to be dwelt on so that we can
understand the issues the architect of the design concentrates on. From the conversations between the father
and the son, who are at the same time two colleagues, one understands that it is the architects who, in pursuit
of the most beautiful, the best and the ideal, imagine the light, the material, the space and the people, and
hence make their designs accordingly.
The architect character in the film Life as a House, George Monroe makes models in an
architecture firm. After the shock he has got when he is dismissed from his job as computer modelings have
replaced models, he learns that he has only numbered days to live. He decides to realize the dream of
building his own house, which he has postponed for twenty years, and thanks to the construction of this
house that the pieces of his scattered life, including his son, who is grappling with the problems of
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

adolescence, and his ex-wife, all come together. He will demolish, with his very hands, the old house, which
he hates due to all the memories of his youth plagued by his father’s bad treatment of him, and again with
his own hands he will build the house of his dreams. The house comes to represent almost a reconstruction
of dreams once ruined. Even when he is in the grip of death, George Monroe defines, as an architect, this
house to his son as something he has himself designed and something he will leave behind proudly after
his death. George defines himself via this house, which he has designed and built, and the film ends with
the voice of George coming from the other world commenting on the house built on the edge of a cliff; ‘I
have always dreamed myself as a house...I have always become the thing that lives in it. I did not need to
be big. I did not even need to be beautiful. It only needed to be mine. I became what I needed to become. I
built myself a life… I listen on a hill. It is almost complete. If you were a house, Sam, you would like to be
built here. On a hill overlooking the sea, listening...’ George wants to “rebuild his life” as an architect. In
the film “A New Life”, in which the act of building in architecture is identified with the concept of uniting,
the architect serves as a keystone.

TWO CASES: REPRESENTATIONS OF DOMESTIC LIFE

FIRST SCENE
“ELIZABETH’S HOME”
The scene analyzed was the opening sequence of Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005) which shows the main
character, Elizabeth, arriving home after going for a walk1 . The scene introduces the protagonist by
presenting the context where she lives, her home and family – her sisters and parents. Through a shot
sequence, the camera takes us into her house and allows us to share a moment of family intimacy. Let’s
imagine the camera corresponding to our gaze: “Let’s suppose for a moment that our eyes are at the vertex
of the camera’s visual pyramid, as if the camera has moved, imitating what would be our way of moving.
In the beginning, we closely follow the protagonist through her home . As she passes by an open door, we
see at the end of a corridor a girl playing a pianoforte . Puzzled, we leave our protagonist and enter the
corridor alone. Suddenly a young woman steps into the corridor and, as surprised as we are, looks up to see
two young ladies noisily running down the stairs . We follow the ladies through to the end of the corridor,
and into the room were the girl was playing the pianoforte. There we stop to contemplate her, and calmly
look around the room . There is a disordered table covered with women’s lace and bonnets, and as we turn
we see through an open door , we witness our protagonist walking outside . She must have walked around
the building while we were inside, looking around the house. We go on to see her at what seems to be the
main entrance of the house, a porch with a colonnade accessed by a staircase. Our protagonist climbs up
the steps, onto the porch ,and stops to listen through a window to a couple having a conversation. As we
approach her she smiles, reacting to the conversation she has overheard, and we see her entering the house”.
Carefully choreographed and accompanied by slow-paced piano music, the camera follows the
movement of the actresses, pursuing them when they are running, hesitating when observing the girl playing
the piano, and finally joining the protagonist. “Making believe” that the camera corresponds to our eye
highlights what Metz and Aumont has defined as the primary 9 identification in the film. We connect with
the camera as if it corresponds to our own gaze. However, this identification is not constant over the whole
scene. At the beginning, we move like an invisible fly looking around freely throughout the house. But as
we get closer to our protagonist, and even though the camera is not positioned at the real position of the
character’s eyes (but instead is slightly off, over her shoulder,) we see what she sees, and how she reacts to
what she sees. We are directed to identify with her since we see closely her reactions, emotions and the
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

direction of her gaze. The camera pictures are close enough and last for enough time that we can observe
her up close. We can infer much about this film, even if we have only seen one minute of this movie.
The previously described sinuous camera movement, combined with the slow-paced, melodic piano
music, impresses upon the audience that this is a romantic movie. The genre is reaffirmed in the elements
of the mise-en-scène and their possible signification. For example, the ladies wardrobe offers the historical
context for the action. The disordered objects placed on the table in the room, and the noisy running of the
ladies through the house suggest that the women freely go about in their house – something unusual in the
gender-segregated, pre-Victorian era. Aiming at the architectural features of the mise-en-scène, we can see
the romantic abandonment of the building: x the uneven brick walls are partially covered with twining
plants x the decadent state and visibly missing column of the porch balcony. Finally, if we draw the floor
plan of the house according to the trajectory of the camera, we are able to understand the scene planning,
by marking the position of the camera within the space. Drawing the floor plan and the camera path, we
can observe also that at no point do we look backwards. Contrary to a real life perception of space where
we are surrounded and can observe the space from all directions, the path and camera always face one
direction. This restriction does not interfere with a coherent and homogeneous perception of the space of
Elizabeth’s home. We assume that what is not seen (positioned off screen, behind the camera) is “much of
the same” of what we see (on screen).

SECOND SCENE
“JACOBO’S APARTMENT”

The scene analyzed here occurs in the first half of the Uruguayan film Whisky (Rebella and Stoll, 2004).
The film tells the story of Jacobo, a Jewish, middle-aged male owner of a decadent sock factory, Martha,
his factory supervisor, and Herman, Jacobo’s brother. Jacobo’s mother died a year ago and Herman, who
lives in Brazil, is coming to the matzeiva – a Jewish ceremony. Jacobo and Martha have a formal co-worker
relationship. In a previous scene, Jacobo had made a proposal to Martha, but the contents of the proposal
remain unclear to the audience. In the scene studied in class, Jacobo shows his apartment to Martha, which
is when the audience discovers what his proposal is about: to simulate being married during his brother’s
visit. The visit to Jacobo’s apartment happens at night. Different from the continuous shot of Elizabeth’s
home, the directors of Whisky use fixed camera shots and montage to show Jacobo´s apartment. Entering
through the kitchen, Jacobo proceeds to show Martha each room. Mechanically he turns on a light, Martha
looks around, and before she leaves the room, Jacobo turns off the light and leaves her in the dark. A slowly
paced sequence of fixed camera details presents what Martha observes in each room. Martha holds the
audience’s gaze. The directors constantly use the shot/reverse shot to give hierarchy to Martha gaze in the
sequence. We can interpret this from her predominance within the shots: close up, central and for much of
the duration of the sequence. Observing carefully the mise-en-scène, we can infer how Jacobo´s life in the
apartment is. His apartment is messy and full of objects that belonged to his mother. He lives only in two
rooms – his bedroom and the kitchen. His room is full of “stuff,” which covers the armoires and the bedside
table, and his bed is unmade. He keeps his mother’s bedroom door closed and uses the living room as
storeroom. By carefully observing the objects spread over the apartment, we can imagine that his mother
suffered a long illness before dying. Besides the regular implements used by a sick person – a bedpan and
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

an infrared lamp - we see a wheel chair and an oxygen tank. In Uruguay, nobody buys such expensive
equipment unless they are going to be used for a long time. Jacobo endured his mother’s death alone, since
his brother was in Brazil, and after one year of her death he still kept all of his mother’s belongings. The
above analysis of Elizabeth’s home was approached through the processes of audience identification (the
gaze), and through an analysis of the mise-en-scène. Now I propose deconstructing analytically the space
into architectural, pictorial and filmic spaces. Architecturally, the scene presents a path, in a fashion similar
to that of Elizabeth’s home scene. First it shows the kitchen, then Jacobo’s room, his mother’s room, the
living room, and finishes back in the kitchen. By the way the rooms are distributed - articulated by a
corridor- the elevator, the good quality of the parquet floor, and the metal window frames, we can infer that
the apartment is of a modern, early sixties construction. Probably, this apartment belonged to Jacobo’s
parents and he lived there all his life, remaining stuck in the past. The pictorial space can be analyzed by
studying significant photograms (keyframes) of the scene. It presents three features. First, there is a
persistent distancing of the camera from the characters, showing them in medium to long shots and
disengaging the audience from the characters’ reactions and emotions. Second, there is a closeness to the
objects, showing them in detailed shots and imposing upon the audience an uncomfortable familiarity with
otherwise vulgar objects. Third, through the pictorial space revealed through the framing, the audience
witnesses the inadequacy of Jacob and Marta’s relationship. They cannot not fit inside the frame
harmoniously. Either they are compositionally unbalanced and constrained by vertical lines or darkness, or
one of them is cut off in the frame – decapitated In the only sequence where they are harmonically placed
within the frame, the last shot in the kitchen, they are absolutely uncomfortable with each other .Finally,
let’s analyze how architectural and pictorial spaces are articulated in the filmic space. The scarce
conversation and silence enhances what the fixed camera carefully shows. The slow pace and rhythm of
the montage forces us to detain our gaze and observe carefully the details of Jacobo’s apartment.
Traditionally, films present a coherent space by starting shot sequences with a long establishing shot of the
space, and later offering more detailed insets of the long shot. In that way, the audience can place the details
spatially. In Whisky, however, the montage presents us with a variation of this rule that subtly destructures
the comprehension of space. Every time Martha enters each room, we see a long establishing shot .
However, the next shot sequence is not necessarily a detailed inset of the long shot. Instead, the montage
presents a detailed shot of something that is in the room somewhere ; we know it is the same room because
it has the same wallpaper, but it is not spatially referenced by the long shot. Therefore, the directors very
subtly destroy the coherent comprehension of the room. The montage creates an unsettling feeling of
disorder, and contained emotion. We see how Martha feels about Jacobo’s apartment. Reinforcing this
confusion inside each room, the directors weaken also the connection between the rooms by creating a
rhythm of lights turning on and off. They repeat the same cycle for each room sequence: lights on, show
the room, lights off, next room. The corridor disinherits its function of spatial connection and becomes an
uncomfortable space of body closeness between Martha and Jacobo.

FUTURE QUESTIONS

This paper presents two film scenes which express daily life through different representational approaches:
a shot sequence and a montage sequence. The first case focuses on understanding how filmic representation
manipulates an audience’s identification. The second case reviews analytically a filmic space into three
categories: architectural, pictorial, and filmic. Both scene analyses depart from studying the filmic
enunciation and move towards including an experience of the space. Each example begins by relating to
the film’s language codes as formalized into photograms, and develops towards an understanding of how
representation is used to express the subjectivity of one’s gaze. A student’s understanding of how
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

subjectivity can be represented throughout a filmic space could potentially facilitate the expression of their
own experiences. Elizabeth´s home, as represented in the first scene, is perceived as one where she moves
about freely and unconstrained. Martha’s visit to Jacobo´s home in the second scene shows rooms as cells
and the corridor as a constrained des-articulator. Such scene contrasts are not meant to imply a connection
between film enunciation and the experiencing of “shot sequence-fluidity” and “montage-constrained
space.” These cases are meant to illustrate how film expresses meaningful spaces through the subjective
gaze of its characters, and an approach for analyzing filmic space. Future work should foster students’
implementation of their own subjective experiencing of spaces into their designs. This paper aims at
understanding the issues involved in representing emotive and meaningful spaces through narrative.

CONCLUSION
This study aims to revise the questions of; What does an architect do? How does an architect work? What
are the tools that an architect uses? How does an architect create their works? What is the mental map of
an architect like? In short, who is an architect? through the cinema. The following conclusions have been
drawn, via a total of eleven different characters of architects in seven films, about architects and architects’
job from the cinematographic level to professional practice and architectural life:
ARCHITECTS’ METHODS OF WORKING AND TOOLS
Desk job-in the office
• Sketch
-The image of an architect making sketches at a white, lighted, wide and flat table is common.
-The sketch is a way of thinking and communicating for an architect.
-Architects make sketches on every surface where they can express themselves in the course of daily life
-By drawing the skyline of a city, architects express their visual ideas via sketches.
-Thinking via sketches, creating sketches and communicating with sketches is a way of existence for an
architect
• Drawing
-An architect produces presentations of sketches accompanied by plans, cross-sections and frontal technical
drawings
- An architect stands opposite the space, sees it, feels it and speaks through his drawings.
• Model -The model is an important expressive technique for an architect that provides perceptual ease
-For architects, architectural models are sometimes a way of getting rid of worldy and ordinary burdens
imposed on them by life.
-For architects, models can be a source of passion created with patience.
-Three-dimensional digital models can be more effective than hand-made models
-Telling the employer about alterations to a design on models is an effective method that architects use
-Architects use models by breaking, adding and subtracting in three-dimensional thinking.
• Construction Site
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

-Architects offer solutions of design at the time and place of application

-Architects, when necessary, demonstrate their knowledge through use of tools during a project application
at a construction site
-Architects perform the job of work schedule, coordination, selection of materials and distribution of tasks
thereby enabling smooth flow of work.
• City
-Architects like walking in the streets of a city, watch the buildings they like, focus on their details and
making observations on buildings
-Architects may stand on the roof of a building all day long, and watch buildings in the ever-changing sun-
light.
-Architects hang around in the streets of a city on a day when the light is crystal clear and “touch” the
details of buildings
- Architectural observations of cities where architects live and thus feeding visual memory is a working
method often used by architects.

OTHER METHODS OF WORKING

Apart from the partially traditionalized work of architects involving sketches, drawings, models, and desk
job as well as their lives at construction sites, we also see contemporary and highly predictive architectural
methods and conditions of work in films. Architects possess the skills to design a mental world and even
spaces of dreams. -Architectural characters can be film producers and directors.
-Architects design not only buildings and the shape of the island but also lives of people.
-Architects are writers as well as directors.
-Architects are people who write books and convey their works, sketches, ideas and sources of inspiration
to future generations.

THE RELATIONSHIPS OF ARCHITECTS WITH EMPLOYERS

It is observed that architects establish relationships with employers in four different ways;
-Architects may display a contentious relationship with employers for whom they work; they may avoid
making concessions to clients even at the expense of losing a job saying, “I do not make drawings to gain
customers; I gain customers to make drawings”, which shows that they take the process as seriously as they
do the result. -Another architect character is one who has voluntarily submitted himself to the wishes of the
employer. He copies historical buildings, and performs his job with a focus on fame and wealth rather than
design.
-Another attitude taken by architects involves a conciliatory relationship they establish with employers.
Architects present his ideas to the employer in the form of drawings, listen to the customers’ ideas and
demands and consider it a virtue to make alterations in accordance with their wishes. It is emphasized that
Reading the architectural identity via cinema Deeksha KO|Akash Roger

architects work to ensure people’s happiness. -Some architects can accept jobs defined sometimes as “pure
creativity” for the sake of the process rather than the result.

ARCHITECTS’ RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEIR DESIGNS

-Architects perceive their designs as part of their self. It seems that architects tend to identify their job with
their identity. It is not possible to consider products manufactured as a result of a creative process separately
from their designers. While they are making their designs, architects, perhaps without being aware of it,
make use of their visual, mental, emotional, tactile and intellectual experiences.
-In the films, as a creative activity, architecture is shown to be a source of life and a cure against love pains
and depression. Architecture is seen as a way of recreating one’s self. -The fact that an architect has
dynamited his own building as they have not remained faithful to his design is associated with respect for
one’s design and the self.
-Architects and architecture are presented in such a way as to touch upon the realities of life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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FILMS
Hitchcock, A (1954) (director), Rear Window [film], Paramount Pictures.
Rebella, J. P. and Stoll, P. (2004) (directors), Whisky [film], Control-Z Films.
Tati, J. (1958) (director), Mon oncle [film], Gaumont.
Wright, J. (2005) (director), Pride and Prejudice [film], Universal Studios.