ARCHITECTURaL FILM, as the meeting point of

CINEMATIc AND ARcHITEcTURAL PATH OF THE SPATIAL EYE.

Elyne Legarnisson / BA(Hons) Interior and Spatial Design / Year 3 / Thesis / Tutor: Ana Araujo.

CONTENT
INtROdUCtiON ................................................................ 02-05 PaRt 1 : PhysiCal SpaCe .............................................. 06-18 PaRt 2 : TeMpORal SpaCe ............................................ 19-29 CONClUsiON.................................................................... 30-32 BibliOGRaphy ...................................................................... 33

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To respond to those purposes, architecture has long been documented by photographers. This process is slowly being replaced by films and animations, which 24 frames/seconds are claimed to convey a spatial experience closer to reality. Great architecture usually exceeds the expectations generated by a photograph. Since our knowledge of

INTRODUCTION
Viewing architecture is a spatial experience by definition. Architecture is designed for people who will experience it physically, from the inside as from the outside. When we view a physical architecture, what we use to understand space is what Eisenstein calls the Architectural path of the eye, where the spectator moves through a series of carefully disposed phenomena which he absorbs in order with his visual sense 1. Nevertheless, this physical experience isnt always an option when someone wants to discover an architecture in particular. The reasons for that can be diverse: distance, accessibility, or even physicality of the architecture itself (maybe it doesnt exist yet, maybe it doesnt exist anymore).

buildings comes from seeing isolated facades ( the building as painting ) or forms ( the building as sculpture ), only filming can deliver the essential spatial dimensions of space and volume. To comprehend architecture one needs to move through its spaces. After all this is how we all experience buildings, inside and outside: we walk, we look, we pass through space. Perspectives are revealed. Corners turned. Scale changes. The depth dimension is revealed. Details can be explored. A combination of predetermined camera tracks and prearranged lighting plans offers a chance to reveal the unfolding of space and vista and show the movement of light and texture. 2 Murray Grigor. According to Eisenstein, what we use when we view space

Quoted in A.Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, 2002, New York, MIT Press, p 118.

Murray Grigor, Space in Time, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p19.

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through moving images is, by opposition to the Architectural path, the Cinematic path of the eye, where a spectator follows an imaginary line among a series of objects, through the sight as well as in the mind, diverse impressions passing in front of an immobile spectator . 3 Architectural Films are trying to reach the meeting point between Architectural and Cinematic path of the spatial eye to convey the physical experience of journeying through Architecture via film. If we could find the cinematic means to reveal something of the rich sensory experience that visitors feel as they journey through a building, such a film could be a revelation to a wide audience. 4 Murray Grigor. In this Thesis we are going to question the clear separation between Architectural and Cinematic path of the spatial eye claimed by Eisenstein. When does Architectural and Cinematic path of the spatial eye meet in Architectural Film? Namely that by Film, we only mean the power of moving images, and will let go of any soundtrack. This analysis will be based on two Films. The first one is House-

Life, by Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine, which treats of the House in Bordeaux, designed by the dutch Architect Rem Koolhaas and completed in 1998. The second one, is an extract of Infinite Space, directed by Murray Grigor, which deals with The Chemisphere, a house designed by John Lautner in 1960 in Los Angeles. The first reason why I chose to oppose and contrast those two architectural movies is that they both deal with architectures that one could call dream homes _ architectures specifically designed to accommodate the personalities, habits and desires of its inhabitants. The house in Bordeaux belongs to a man who was made disabled in a car accident, it is so designed to respond to the particular way of life that this involves, namely getting around in a wheel chair. He once said to Rem Koolhaas, Contrary to what you might expect, I do not want a simple house. I want a complicated house because it will determine my world. 5 Although the owner of The Chemisphere of J.Lautner didnt have such specificity, the house is still designed in response to his particular preoccupations. Being an aerospace engineer, living up in a house perched on top of a nearly thirty feet high concrete pole seemed like a dream come true for Leonard Malin. The second reason of this choice is that The House in Bordeaux

3 4

Quoted in A.Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, 2002, New York, MIT Press, p 118. Murray Grigor, Cinematic Scarpa, Architectural Design No 143: Architecture and Film II, 2000, New York, John Wiley and Sons Ltd, p75.

September 2011, Blog: http://storiesofhouses.blogspot.com/2005/06/maisonbordeaux-by-rem-koolhaas.html.

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and the Chemisphere being inhabited architectures, the public is very rarely welcomed in or even around those houses. Architectural Film becomes the only tool which can bring the spatial experience to the spectator. And last but not least, although they both aim to depict homes, the two films do it in very different ways. When Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine chose to present the house in Bordeaux in a modest atmosphere by following Guadaloupe Acevedo, the housekeeper, Murray Grigor took the decision to show Lautners houses through extremely controlled shots of the architecture. This thesis will be punctuated by the following signs clarifying the main conclusions of our analyses. They will placed in the left margin of the concerned text.

Use of the only Cinematic path of the spatial eye. Use of the Cinematic path of the spatial eye fails to convey the Architectural one.
Use of the Cinematic path of the spatial eye conveys the Architectural one.

Use of the Cinematic path of the spatial eye supersedes the Architectural one.

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November 2011, Blog: http://newlandscapeworld.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-is-landscape.html

FIGURE 01 / Human field of vision.

.

November 2011, Blog: http://www.unique-photography-concepts.com/lens.html.

FIGURE 02 / Different lenses Angle of view

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have already been introduced earlier. Let us clarify now what they involve specifically regarding the understanding of physical space. The Architectural eye being the tool one use when experiencing

PART 1: PHYSICAL SPACE

space physically, is first of all defined by the human capacities. The angle of coverage is defined by the human field of vision, which is on average, as you can observe it on the Figure 1, 120 wide, and 150 high. We can notice that the closer we get from the centre of the vision field, the more precise the vision is. By default the human eye always focuses on the infinite, unless the eye is attracted by something in particular. Then regarding the height of the point of view, its limits are potentially the floor, and the human height. An interesting point is that the perception of space from the Architectural path of the eye is continuous, the vision is never stopped and follows ones movements through space. The change of angle of view will be executed more or less fast, depending of the movements of the human body and eyes. On the other hand is the Cinematic path of the eye, where the physical space is understood through Film, and thus through one or several lenses. According to the focal of those ones,

In this first chapter we will analyse the interactions between geography ( the science of space) and the two spatial arts, which are Architecture and Film. The understanding of space is indeed one of the most important points when experiencing architecture. How does Film gives us an understanding of the actual physical space ? It is hard to imagine a montage sequence from an architectural assemble more subtly composed, shot by shot , than the one which is composed by our legs walking among the buildings of the Acropolis. 6 Sergei Eisenstein. The concepts of Architectural and Cinematic path of the eye

Quoted in A.Vidler, 2002, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, MIT Press, p 118.

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FIGURE 03 / Scene 01 / Storyboard / Infinite Space, from 00:34:332 to 00:37:15.

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the angle of coverage will vary from 180 for a 8mm focal to 2,25 for a 1000mm focal. The lens also influences the depth of field. The movements of the camera as well as the angles of view have no limits except from the tools available during the shooting (tripods, dollies, steady-cams ...). Most importantly, the Cinematic path of the eye understands space according to the way it is montaged by the director. It digests the pieces of space shown on the different cuts to assemble them step by step to form an idea of how the space looks like as a whole. We will now analyse different processes used by film-directors to convey physical space through film, firstly in Infinite Space and then in HouseLife.

looks from the outside, the view on Los Angeles from inside, as well as a part of the house: the living/dining room and kitchen (the film wont actually show us anything more of the house). So we do get an overview of the space. We guess that the lens focal is the same on each shot and probably between 18 and 28mm, which gives us a rather large angle of coverage (between 75 and 100 wide) without distorting the space. As you can compare it on the Figure 01, it is quite narrower than a human field of vision, in width and even more in height. The all movie is framed in 16:9 and in HD quality. The depth of field is very wide, which reminds the human focus on the infinite. The space is so framed in an as wide as possible manner without distorting it. This wide framing can push the viewer to brush the picture rather than looking at it as a whole. So even though the only act of looking at space through a framing decided by someone else, by definition, uses a cinematic path of the eye, a lot of parameters are assembled here to make

The Scene 01, represented on the Figure 03, is the middle part of Infinite Space which is dedicated to The Chemisphere. After a quite long serie of interviews, and footages from the past, we discover the house in this scene, composed of seven plans. At first sight when we watch this scene, we know how the house

this Cinematic path of the eye almost as close as possible from an Architectural one. The second point to analyse are the movements of the camera. When we refer to the Figure 04, we can see that Murray Grigor

08

05

02

01

FIGURE 04 / Scene 01 / Diagrams 01.

04 (+06)

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FIGURE 05 / Scene 01 / Diagram 02 / Infinite Space, from 00:34:32 to 00:37:15.

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unfolds the Chemisphere in two different ways: vertically or circularly, always from one single static point of view per shot. Each single shot slowly reveals a cinematic panorama. The points of view chosen are all at eye height and most certainly all reachable for everyone visiting the house (we cant make sure of that as the points of view of two shot from the outside are totally unknown). Then the fact that those points of view are all static makes the understanding of space totally rely on the cinematic path of the eye of the spectator. It is indeed in complete opposition with the architectural path of the eye which follows the movements of the visitor walking through the architecture. Regarding the vertical and circular panoramas, we cant deny that they work perfectly with their subject, The Chemisphere. This round house suspended on top of a mat is indeed all about verticality and circularity: its inside is composed in a circular way, and it imposes itself to the landscape, by being perched a tall and strong vertical pole. The director recorded the house in a very controlled and chosen ways, to not only show the space, but also convey its composition, its tempo. It is an interesting choice, when we know that Lautner architecture quest has always been to create An archi-

tecture that has no beginning and no end. 7 It appears that Murray Grigor tries to direct the path of our spatial eye to highlight this particularity in John Lautners architecture. This enable us to get even more spatial information about the space than a physical experience would enable us to. The Scene 02 (Figure 06), which is the scene just following the Scene 01, is a good example showing how slow the movement of the camera is during those shots. In 12 seconds, the camera only gets closer of a few meters, probably three, from its subject, a window placed on the floor. This movement seems very unnatural, as although the scene is shot from eye view, the movement of the camera is much closer than the movement of a visitor would be. The text point to analyse, is the way those seven vertical of circular shots are montaged together. We will base our reflexion on the Figure 04 and the Figure 05, which is a decomposition of the Scene 01. One conceives and reads a building in terms of sequences. To erect a building is to predict and seek effects of contrast and linkage through which one passes In the continuous shot/sequence that a building is,

7 September 2011, Website: http://infinitespacethemovie.com.

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FIGURE 06 / Scene 02 / Infinite Space, From 00:34:15 To 00:36:26.

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the architect works with cuts and edits, framings and openings 8 Jean Nouvel. When looking our two diagrams, we realise that we cant exactly understand how each space showed is physically related to the others in reality. Although we do get a general sense of the space, the cuts still leave us a bit of freedom as to how to understand the precise composition of the house. Namely that those shots only reveal a part of the inside of the house, the living room, the kitchen and a part of the terrace. Yet, he inspired thousands of architects (and architecture students) to realize that a building emerging from a dream could be built. 9 When the montaging of cuts could leave space for (mis)representation and distortion, Murray Grigor chooses to leave more of an abstract impression. Architecture is essentially, inherently different from film. Film is linear, fundamentally linear, an extraordinary process in which the director replicates and subverts the viewers actual existence, offers them, for a limited time, an alternative way of seeing, an alternative life. It does this through circumstances of extreme

control: the darkened room; total attention; provision of object, story, focus, idea, tone, argument, mood, dialogue, background music, resolution. Its creator, invisibly, provides and dominates the experience of the individual. 10 Kester Rattenbury. Here, Murray Grigor seems to manipulate the path of our spatial eye through his controlled shots to portray the somehow magic and sculptural particularities of the architecture. He detaches it from reality, rather than presenting the space as a place, a home. This completely distances the cinematic experience provided from a physical experience.

Let us analyse now analyse how the physical space of The House of Bordeaux is conveyed in HouseLife. This Scene 03 (Figure 07) is the third scene of HouseLife. It is a 5min continuous shot, following Guadaloupe Acevedo, the housekeeper, walking through the House of Bordeaux, probably simply using a steady-camera. The scene offers an overview of the house from the beginning of the film. First we visit the living room, and its large glassed fa-

8 9

Jean Nouvel quoted Kester Rattenbury, Echo and Narcissus, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p35. Murray Grigor quoted in, Blog: http://designfaith.blogspot.com/2010/09/beyondgoogie.html, September 2011.

10

Kester Rattenbury, Echo and Narcissus, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p35.

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FIGURE 07 / Scene 03 / Storyboard / HouseLife, from 00:04:33 to 00:09:13.

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cade opening this floor to the outside. Then we take some stairs down, leading us one level lower on the floor ground. We pass quickly through the courtyard, then through the ground floor, to access what seems to be an open elevator platform surrounded by book shelves. This leads us two levels higher, on the top floor, where we go through different bedrooms and bathrooms, to finally take some spiralled stairs, leading us once again on the ground floor, but in the kitchen part.

First of all, the presence of Guadaloupe makes us understand the point of views from which we discover the house. As we can see it on the figure 08, the scene is shot from a human height, and the camera is orientated in a natural human eye direction when walking. All those choices makes the understanding of the perspectives of the house very natural. We only see the house from a very familiar point of view, the one of a visitor. Then, another information is the scale of what we see.

Being a continuous shot, the whole scene is obviously shot using the same lens, focal, and focus. The result is a quite narrow field of vision, probably shot by a 28mm focal lens, or even longer. The depth of field is extremely wide as the very foreground appears as clear as the background. The focus is on the infinite. Namely that the entire film is presented in a 3:4 format. Comparing to the Scene 1 from Infinite Space, this scene focuses a lot more the attention of the viewer on specific parts of the house, by framing the space a lot more closely. Then the main particularity of this shot, is the fact that we are following someone who is present on each frame. This helps us in two main ways to understand the space.

The importance of scale is also revealed in the connection between close-up and medium- and longshots. 11 Michael Dear. The presence of Guadaloupe on the shot acts just as a human figure on a drawing: it gives a instinctive information about the scale of what is shown. We know straight away if this is a closeup, medium- or long-shot, and as a matter of fact the scale of the space shown. As we follow the steps of Guadaloupe, we also know that we are experiencing the space at an average human speed walk. Being aware of the speed of the shot gives us an important indication about the scale/surface of the house. This is the theory of De Certeau which Micheal Dear explains here:

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Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p13.

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Ground Floor

First Floor

Second Floor

FIGURE 08 / Scene 03 / Diagram 01.

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FIGURE 09 / Scene 03 / Diagram 02 / HouseLife, from 00:04:33 to 00:06:13.

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In our transportation orientated culture, one important distance-related variable is speed... Boyer says It is speed that has erased the fragmentation and hierarchies of space and time, homogenized everything to an absolute present. But the absence of speed is also an element of space making. Michel de Certeau has drawn attention to the importance of walking as a spatial practice, constitutive of peoples life paths. Everyone and everything becomes part of the aesthetic of the commodity system. 12 Micheal Dear. It also forces a speed of movement to the cameraman, which is the speed of human movements. This choice of style enables the viewer, even though he is following someone, to analyse the whole space around him. He will look for informations is the format of the pictures passing in front of his eyes. The scene being shot in a continuous way, without any cuts, it literally unfolds the house before our eyes. This is what we can observe on the Figures 08 and 09. Although we cant understand the precise configuration of the house by watching it just once, we can still get a rough idea of it. We guess the number of levels in the house _three_ , the three different options to

move from one to the other _ two set of stairs, plus one elevator platform _, and the programme of each floor _ kitchen and other function rooms on the lower floor, living space on the first floor, and finally en-suited bedrooms on the top one. We also get an idea of the general atmosphere of the house, a modern architecture which with the strong and rough material which is concrete and glass, to create a house widely open on the outside, surrounded by trees. This continuous shot enables us to grasp as much informations about the House in Bordeaux, than we would if were visiting the house ourselves for 5min, forced to follow the same person on the same path. It presents the house as a space but also as a place. To put it in a nutshell, we can say that the specificities of this shot (continuous, shot by a steady-camera following someone), enables us to have a very similar spatial experience as if we were discovering the space physically. It gives us the same amount of information (spatial configuration, scale and atmosphere), and shows us the house in a very close-to-real manner. It seems like Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine manage to portrait the house in such a way that cinematic and architectural path of our spatial eye naturally meet.

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Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p13.

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The physical experience of an architecture, which in most cases doest last more than a few hours, will only disclose two parts of the temporality of an architecture: its rythm through shapes, and its activity. This are therefore the temporal informations about space that the architectural path of the eye is used to get. If the

PART 2: TEMPORAL SPACE

Architecture exists, like cinema, in the dimension of time and movement. 13 Jean Nouvel. Architecture in the dimension of time and movement is what we will call here the temporal space. For Parameters define the temporality of an architecture.The first one is the way the architecture is attached to a time and context and how it evolves with it. Then the three others give its tempo to the architecture in the present. First we have the activity inside the house, what makes it alive. Then we have the movements of the architecture itself. And last but not least, the changings of light that time inposes through day and seasons.

physical experience was to last for a 24h then it would also show the changings of lights. The cinema incorporates time to space. Better, time, through this, really becomes a dimension of space. 14 Elie Faure. According to Faure, a cinematic experience would convey more informations about the temporality of space. The film camera is indeed also called the time-base tool, which isnt neutral. This is what we will question in this second chapter. Which informations about the temporality of architecture can the cinematic path of the eye grasp in comparision to the architectural path of the eye, and how. We will do this through the analyses of four scenes from from HouseLife and Infinite Space.

13

Jean Nouvel quoted in Kester Rattenbury, Echo and Narcissus, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p35.

14

Quoted in A.Vidler, 2002, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, MIT Press, p 118.

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FIGURE 10 / Scene 04 / Storyboard / Infinite Space, from 00:31:37 to 00:33:42.

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FIGURE 11 / Scene 05 / Storyboard / HouseLife From 00:32:30 To

00:33:14.

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So first of all lets analyse how each portrait attaches its architecture to a period between past, present and future. We will base this analyses on the Scenes 04 (Figure 10) and 05 (Figure 11) severally from Infinite Space and HouseLife. In the scene 04, opening the cinematic portrait of the Chemisphere, we see a mix of drawings, pictures and films from the past. They reconstruct the evolution of the Chemisphere as an architectural project as well as its construction. Architecture and cinema are always situated within a context _ a site, a landscape, a room, a time. Consequently they are always framed by that context and set among the circumstances that environ them. Wether situated within natural or urban contexts, in a wilderness or suburb, in deserted spaces of abandonment or in a vibrant city, architecture and cinema always take place in a milieu, in relation to themes and ideas, objects and spaces, times and occasions, people and communities. 15 Micheal Tawa. By the quality and format of the videos and pictures (grainy, black and white or recoloured, 4:3 format), as well as by the outfits of the characters appearing, the viewer is very quickly

able to place the Chemisphere in its original context, the 1960s. Once he is aware of that context, he wont see the architecture with the same eye. This scene also gives us some clues about the complexity and monumentality of the construction of The Chemisphere. The power of the film image to (mis)represent the material and social world lies in its ability to blur the boundaries of space and time, reproduction and simulation, reality and fantasy, and to obscure the traces of its own ideologically based production. Jeff Hopkins 16 By choosing to include this scene at the very beginning of The Chemispheres portrait, Murray Grigor actually chooses to convey a real picture of the Chemisphere. Rather than using film to detach the Architecture from its context, and so to misrepresent it, he attaches it so its original social and material time. Andrea Kahn is equally blunt: to attend to the work of architecture we must first seek out what we do not see- that the art of construction goes beyond appearances our work is not simply a matter of drawing and following the line . 17 Those images definitely go beyond the informations that we would get by a physical experience, they show us what an

15 Micheal Tawa, Agencies of the frame : tectonic strategies in cinema and architecture, 2010, Newcastle, Tyne : Cambridge Scholars, p42.

16 17

Jeff Hopkins in Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p11. Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p11.

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architectural path of the eye wouldnt be able to see: the original context of The Chemisphere, and enable us in this way, to understand the Architecture more accurately. The Scene 05 (Figure 11), included in the middle of the portrait of The House in Bordeaux, shows us what happens in the house when it rains outside: it rains inside. This is one of the numerous examples during the film where the viewer get to see the reality of the house and its architecture, as well as the way it is quickly ageing. There is a time dimension, since place is a complex amalgam of past, present and emergent forms coexisting simultaneously in a single landscape. 18 Rather than attaching the architecture directly to the past, the directors choose to show the evolution of the architecture in time, in other words the effect time had on the architecture from its original context to the present. There again, it proves a will to realise a honest portrait of the house. Maybe even more honest than the Chemisphere one, as it unveils negative features of the architecture, where Infinite Space only shows the good ones. Nevertheless, the access to those temporal informations being still physically possible, we cant really say that the cinematic

experience brings here an added value regarding the amount of temporal informations that the viewer gets. The cinematic experience will just equal the physical experience.

After the attachment of the Architectures to the past, and evolution from it, we will now analyse the way both portraits treat of the second temporal parameter of an Architecture: its activity. In the portrait given of the House of Bordeaux, this activity is obvious, as we discover the programme of the house during a whole week day. We know that during the day the house is left to its two housekeepers, Guadaloupe and her husband,and what their activities are. During the evening it shelters the life of a woman and her two children, which we only observe from the outside. Thus, we are as aware of the life inside the house as Guadaloupe herself is. The cinematic choice here is simply to portrays honestly in what we could physically experience by spending a day inside the house. Nevertheless, the interesting point is that the portrait of the house is entirely attached to the activities of Guadaloupe. The

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Micheal Tawa, Agencies of the frame : tectonic strategies in cinema and architecture, 2010, Newcastle, Tyne : Cambridge Scholars, p133.

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FIGURE 12 / Scene 06 / Storyboard / HouseLife From 00:00:02 To

00:00:50.

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film being filmed by a steady camera, it enables the directors to let Guadaloupe move freely in the house without having to choreograph her. The camera is either following her when she moves, or filming her at a fix angle (examples in Figures 2 and 4 ). Following the steps of Guadaloupe, we know that we are experiencing the space at an average human walk speed. In our transportation orientated culture, one important distance-related variable is speed... Boyer says It is speed that has erased the fragmentation and hierarchies of space and time, homogenized everything to an absolute present. But the absence of speed is also an element of space making. Michel de Certeau has drawn attention to the importance of walking as a spatial practice, constitutive of peoples life paths. Everyone and everything becomes part of the aesthetic of the commodity system . 19 Micheal Dear. Being aware of the speed of the shot gives us an important indication about the scale/surface of the house. This is Michel de Certeaus theory, which Micheal Dear explains above. It enables the cinematic path of the eye to get closer to the extremely complex informative level of the architectural one.

On the opposite, in infinite Space, the Chemisphere is portrayed without any trace of its activity. The house we see is perfectly tidied, the space is empty. The camera is filming it very slowly from different fixed point of view. All of this makes us forget that it is actually more than a space, but a place, a home. The camera seems to distance us from the temporality of the architecture in terms of its activity. The house seems like frozen, out of time.

We will now analyse the third parameter which gives their rhythms to Architectures: the movements of the architectures themselves. The figures 12 and 13 shows us the mechanism of the two architectures in action. This is actually a similarity of the two houses, they both move on their own, their shelter mechanisms. Erwin Panofsky announces the unique possibilities of film, defined as dynamization of space and accordingly spatialization of time. 20

19

Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p13.

20

Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p9.

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FIGURE 13 / Scene 07 / Storyboard / Infinite Space, From 00:26:42 To 00:27:42.

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The scene 06 (figure 12), from HouseLife, is a 50 seconds continuous shot where we can see the elevating platform of the house in action from beginning to end. This is the introduction scene in the film. This elevator is the heart of the house, this is what enables its handicapped owner to go from one level to the other, and the whole architecture revolves around it. The continuity of this shot gives us an idea of the architecture in the dimension of time. We understand the time it takes to go through it, and its extremely slow rhythm when it comes to going from level to the other. Ansel Adams said Its not what you see, its how you look. 21 The fact that this scene is shot from a fix point of view highlights this particular rhythm even more, and give you 50 full seconds to analyse the process and get really immersed in the slow tempo of The House of Bordeaux. Also by choosing this scene as an opening scene the directors direct the cinematic path of the eye of the viewer towards the heart the house from the beginning, to then show what revolves around it. By doing so they help us to then understand the rest of the house in line with in spinal column: the elevating platform. The is where the Cinematic path of the eye supersedes the Architectural in this scene. It explains its programme without even

using words. In the Scene 07 ( Figure 13), from Infinite Space, we can see the mechanism which enables people to reach the level of the house, which is indeed inaccessible by car, because of the choice of its design. The scene is divided in three cuts, where we can see the elevator from the car park, then we see the view on the house from inside the elevator in movement, and finally the people inside of it. This scene tells us the speed at which people can reach the house, but as it is cut in three shots, we cant really tell how much time it takes. Nevertheless something interesting happens in the second shot, as we understand the rhythm at which the people discover the house, and the way the elevator is placed to unfold and slowly transform the perspective of the house that its visitors get. In a way, we understand how Rem Koolhaas designed the introduction to its architecture. Namely that this is the scene that the director chose as well to introduce the house.

We will now focus on the last temporal parameter of architecture, which is the way light transforms it as the day passes.

21 Quoted in Murray Grigor, Space in Time, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group, p19

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FIGURE 14 / A day in a house 1 / Stills from Infinite Space.

FIGURE 15 / A day in a house 2 / Stills from HouseLife.

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The figures 14 and 15, are small collections of stills from each film. They both show us that the two directors chose to show their subjects under different lights. In the figure 14, from Infinite Space, we can see that the film shows us the Chemisphere at different times of the day, one during day time, the other during night time. The light seems to have a very strong impact, as the house is very open to the outside, with a whole panoramic view on Los Angeles from the living room. So as the skyline of Los Angeles transforms itself, it also transforms The Chemisphere. This could of course be noticed during a physical experience of the place, if staying long enough to observe the house during day and night time. What is interesting is that the director chose to shoot the space from the exact same point of views but under different lighting. The fact that the points of view are similar, and only the time parameter changes enables us to have a very clear idea of how the architecture is transformed by light. It shows us the house a bit as a sculpture under different lighting. This choice uses our cinematic eye to absorb more informations than our architectural eye would get. In the figure 15 , from HouseLife, again the space in shown

in different lights. The portrait actually attend to show the programme of a full week day in The House of Bordeaux. We can so observe the effect of the smooth changing of the natural lighting during the day, to pass to the artificial one in the evening. There again, this could as well be observed by a visitor. The directors didnt choose here to show the same point of views. During the day, the film focuses on the inside of the house, when the owners are away. Then at night, when the owners come back, the camera captures the house from the outside. The viewer is not able to have a clear understanding of the way the light changes the space, as he cant make any real comparisons.

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HouseLife Part 1: Physical Space

Infinite Space

Part 2: Temporal Space / Architecture between past and present Part 2: Temporal Space / Activity Part 2: Temporal Space / Movements of the Part 2: Temporal Space / Light changing

FIGURE 16 / Conclusions in Statistics.

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choices (continuous shots, presence of human figure in action, narrow focal, points of views, montage ...) they succeed in offering a spatial experience which is almost as rich in the amount and quality of informations than a physical experience would be. We can notice that they manage to even supersede the Architectural path of the spatial eye when it comes to convey the

CONCLUSION
The Figure 16 synthesises the different conclusions made during our analyses regarding our two case studies: HouseLife portraying The House in Bordeaux, and Infinite Space, portraying the Chemisphere. It appears that they both play with Architectural and Cinematic path of the spatial eye to convey their architectures, but in different ways. In HouseLife, the boundary between Cinematic and Architectural path of the eye is undeniably crossed. The cinematic path of the eye reproduces the Architectural one as much to convey the physicality of the space as to convey its temporality. It seems that the main goal of Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine was the manipulate the cinematic experience to make it as close as possible from a physical experience. Thanks to their cinematic

movements of the architecture, by choosing a continuous shot from a fix point of view, and placing this scene of the elevator as an introduction of the movie. In Infinite Space, the boundary between Cinematic and Architectural path of the eye is crossed a lot less often. It seems like the director had a preference for a pure Cinematic path of the eye to convey the space of The Chemisphere, particularly regarding the understanding of the physical space. Through very controlled movements of the camera and montage of his shots, he manipulates our spatial eye to make us absorb the informations that he, as a director, wants to convey of the space. He seems to show us the space the way he sees it. Nevertheless, this doesnt stop the film from making Cinematic and Architectural path of the spatial eye meet several times. There again, it becomes the most interesting when the qualities of the Cinematic and Architectural path of spatial eye meet, by a

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choice of recurrent static points of view for example. We can finally say that it is a question of choice wether the director chooses to put an emphasis on a very Cinematic path of the spatial eye or to try to get as close as possible from an Architectural path of the eye. Our analyses actually demonstrates that both Cinematic experiences can be very rich in terms of the amount and quality of informations about space that they give. The pure cinematic path of the eye will impose the point of view of the director on the space, using controlled shots and montage to convey the specificities of the architecture that he is wishing to highlight. When the Cinematic path of the eye tries to imitate the Architectural one, the viewer will feel a bit more free, as the way he will absorb the informations is much more familiar to him. This familiarity enables the spatial eye to digest a big amount of informations about the space, although they dont always seem to be controlled anymore by the director. Where making Cinematic and Architectural path of the spatial eye meet becomes the most interesting is certainly when they manage to combine the informative thickness of both spatial eyes: The Cinematic path of the spatial eye is manipulated to

mimic enough of the Architectural path of the eye _ using the familiarity that the viewer has with this spatial experience _ but still imposes some strong cinematic choices _ which will convey additional informations through the creative and critical eye of the director. This ideal combination of the Cinematic and Architectural path of the spatial eye conveys cinematic moments where the thickness of the spatial experience is multiplied. The Cinematic experience of Architecture no more attend to simply imitate the Physical one, but supersedes it.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Films
- Murray Grigor, Infinite Space, The Architecture of John Lautner, 2009, The Googie Company. - Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine, Koolhaas Houselife, 2008, Rome, BekaFilms.

BooKs
- A.Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, 2002, New York, MIT Press. - Micheal Tawa, Agencies of the frame : tectonic strategies in cinema and architec ture, 2010, Newcastle, Tyne : Cambridge Scholars.

Articles
- Murray Grigor, Space in Time, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group. - Murray Grigor, Cinematic Scarpa, Architectural Design No 143: Architecture and Film II, 2000, New York, John Wiley and Sons Ltd. - Kester Rattenbury, Echo and Narcissus, Architectural Design No 112: Architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group. - Micheal Dear, Between Architecture and Film, Architectural Design No 112: architecture and Film, 1994, London, Academy Group.

Web
- September 2011, Blog: http://storiesofhouses.blogspot.com/2005/06/maisonbordeaux-by-rem-koolhaas.html. - September 2011, Website: http://infinitespacethemovie.com. - September 2011, Blog: http://designfaith.blogspot.com/2010/09/beyond-googie.html.

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