Some fifteen years before Il Sorpasso (Easy Life) gave him global fame, a young and still unknown Dino Risi, who in 1946 was barely 30 years old, signed a review of the Disney masterpiece Fantasia for Domus 215. It remains as evidence of a long flirtation between the magazine founded by Gio Ponti and the world of cinema, its mythologies and settings. After all, the seventh art has architecture and design among its essential traveling companions since its birth, with a long echo that reaches to the present day and finds its way onto our digital pages. Find here collected some of the many articles and guides that have recently been devoted to cinema and to that very contemporary version of cinema that are TV series. They range from the work of great directors such as Wes Anderson and Hayao Miyazaki to the world-building of the fantastical but very believable worlds of Avatar and Star Wars, to the atlas of the design objects we see in TV series, a project that is still ongoing in which readers are invited to send in reports.
Domus guide to films and TV series
From the role of architecture in the cinema of Wes Anderson or Miyazaki, to the atlas of design in TV series, to film selections suggested by architects: a collection celebrating the inescapable link between the moving image and the world of Domus.
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- La redazione di Domus
- 04 August 2023
Five cult movies to rewatch this summer, handpicked by Domus
Evening falls and a refreshing breeze blows. The summer heat begins to fade. It’s time for a movie: we’ve selected five that span from the iconic 1960s to the present, encompassing cult and classic masterpieces ranging from horror to comedy, to watch again or discover for the first time. Read more
The architecture of Star Wars
An exploration into the design of one of the most ambitious fictional universes, inextricably linked to reality, with brutalist inspirations, influenced by “spaghetti westerns” and the involvement of a key figure, Ralph McQuarrie. Read more
The world of Avatar is an incredible design work applied to nature
Nothing is left to chance in the creation of Pandora – the fictional world of James Cameron’s two movies. Everything is designed to be coherent. It is the masterpiece of one of the most visionary designers in contemporary cinema. Read more
A guide to the architecture of Harry Potter and the Wizarding World
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
J. K. Rowling, Harry potter e il prigioniero di Azkaban, Salani Editore, 2021
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Screenshot by the film adaptation of Harry Potter, Warner Bros, 2001-11.
Hogwarts first came to light on paper, got its endorsement from the cinema, and came back with the theater. A recent video game finally makes it explorable. But there are many architectures in the saga: we look back on almost thirty years of its evolution. Read more
Barbie, the design of the American dream
A Barbie doll is sold every three seconds in the world. This figure alone is enough to capture the significance, not solely economical but most importantly cultural, the American toy has held for over 60 years. With more than 50 jobs and hundreds of exclusive looks, Barbie is now a bonafide timeless icon. Read more
Hayao Miyazaki’s architecture: balancing humanity and nature
The world of Japanese animation is vast, covering a wide range of topics and exploring endless visual possibilities. Each product stands out as unique, with a strong identity that makes it memorable. This uniqueness extends beyond character and story design to the environments, architecture, and landscapes depicted, which often serve as backdrops and even protagonists in the long tradition of anime storytelling. Read more
The secret of The Last Of Us is the meticolous reproduction of anxiety architectures
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TLOU has become a cult video game because of its deep narrative in which post-apocalyptic environments play a key role. In the TV series, they have been reproduced with incredible accuracy and fidelity to the digital original. Read more
The myth of the Italian holiday home as seen through movies and TV series
From the unforgettable Casa Malaperte where Godard set Contempt to the to the recent encroaching into Italy of the American series Succession and White Lotus, here’s a collection of houses that are now part of our emotional landscape. Read more
A “forgotten” film from 1962 that can teach us a lot about modernism
Sixty years ago, Franco Rossi’s film Smog opened the Venice Film Festival with a completely skeptical vision of the modern architecture of L.A. Read more
The Strait of Messina Bridge and other imaginary architecture in The Bad Guy
The Amazon TV series does not tell a true mafia story, but a realistic one. And it also does so through architecture – such as the bridge that has been talked about for decades and a curious water park, which actually exists but is located far from Sicily. Read more
Wes Anderson’s uniqueness explained through 5 movie sets
There are elegant antiques, African artifacts, and bright '70s colours. The best thing in the movie, however, is the iconic Scalamandre zebra wallpaper in the ballroom.
And it is very interesting to see how Wes Anderson then recycled this experience for the short film Come Together created for H&M, all set on a train but clearly with H&M costumes.
Some filmmakers become adjectives: after them, a certain way of being or doing takes on their name or that of their characters (Hitchcockian, Felliniesque...), Wes Anderson, on the other hand, is the first one who managed to modify the locations and furnishings that existed before him. Just like his visual style is clear and exact, maniacal is the way in which he chooses pieces of furniture inspired by precise periods (usually the ‘70s but often also the ‘60s or the ‘80s). Now those real furnishings are often described as wesandersonian. Read more
5 films suggested by 5 architects
“Almost forty years ago, this film dealt with very timely themes in a poetic and visionary way: the relationship with the other, the need to coexist and establish alliances with the non-human, to promote interspecies and intergenerational forms of inclusiveness, to accept, work with and theatricalize toxicity. In the face of the climate collapse we are experiencing, Nausicaä is almost a manifesto, as much as the writings of Donna Haraway from which it draws inspiration”.
We asked a selection of studios to tell us about the films that have most inspired their professional practice. Here are the recommendations of 2050+, Bovenbouw Architectuur, Enorme Studio, Jean-Benoît Vétillard and Plastique Fantastique. Read more
When Italian design was science fiction
Photo courtesy of Fratelli Longhi
Photo via italian Vintage Sofas
Photo: frame from film
Photo courtesy of Artemide
Photo: frame from film
Photo corutesy of Kartell
Photo: frame from film
Photo courtesy of Artemide
Photo: frame from film
Photo: frame from film
Photo courtesy of Artemide
Photo: frame from film
Photo courtesy of Artemide
Photo: frame from film
Photo courtesy of Zanotta
Photo: frame from film
What are Joe Colombo and Vico Magistretti doing in Space: 1999? In the Sixties and Seventies sci-fi sets, from the most expensive TV series to the cheapest of B-movies, were furnished with the icons of Italian design, which at the time looked as something coming straight from the future. Read more
An atlas of the design objects in tv series
Tv series turn design into a fundamental element of their narration, making it part of the collective imagination. Here’s an updated list of all design pieces, thanks to the contribution of Domus readers. Read more
8 TV series every architect or designer should watch
It evokes the contents of the film directed by Bon Joon-ho, director of the award-winning Parasite, who, in turn, reworked the graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob and Jean-Michel Charlier. Set in a dystopian future where the world is uninhabitable due to a new ice age, the series sees humanity’s last survivors forced into a high-tech train, the Snowpiercer. In the train there is the fiercest classism. It is a reign of terror. A constant tension between the righteous and the brave who want to overthrow the dictatorship established by the evil lord and inventor of the train, Mr Wilford.
The NYC neighbourhood of the Deuce is the set for an extraordinary succession of metropolitan overviews of drugs and prostitution. Written by the genius David Simon, the film stars James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, with some Method Man’s titbits. The rising porn industry becomes a chance for the neighbourhood lowlifes to make ends meet, economically and artistically, but the spectre of AIDS begins to take over New York nightlife. The number of people infected with HIV is constantly increasing and the spread of cocaine generates recurring waves of violence. An endless alternation of emotions between outfits and super cool locations with incredible references on today’s pandemic.
Top boy is a dark and necessary set-up of a powerful drama about “how people behave when institutions fail”, this is how the Independent describes the series. The absolute protagonist of Top Boy is the London crime, the child of suburban poverty and social exclusion. It is scripted by Ronan Bennett, a former IRA militant and now successful author. Thanks to a superfan, the rapper Drake, Netflix has brought this drama of London’s drug gangs back to life in the form of a searing indictment of our times. Many of the scenes seen in Top Boy are inspired by news stories that have the streets and courtyards of Summerhouse – a London apartment building-ghetto – as their privileged settings and a full-on trap soundtrack. In an original way, Top Boy fits into the footsteps of other TV series, of which Gomorrah is perhaps the most famous.
It is a violated body that of Michaela Coel, extraordinary author and performer of one of the tougher series of recent years. It all begins in Ostia. A place chosen for its Pasolinian drifts, but also more recently the privileged set of Claudio Caligari’s cult film, Don’t be bad. This is where the story of the protagonist Arabella Essiedu/Coel starts, a London writer of Ghanaian origin who, in the midst of a creative crisis, goes on holiday to the Roman coast in search of inspiration. On her way back to London, during the celebrations for the delivery of a new work, something goes wrong. Arabella finds herself with foggy memories and thus begins a dramatic and gripping reconstruction of a traumatic violence. Michaela Coel experiences this process as a personal catharsis and above all as a report of pink washing.
Luca Guadagnino draws a suspended world, a generational cross-section focused on the American military base in Chioggia. The appointment of a new commander upsets the patriarchal balance that sustains every military dimension. Commander Sarah Wilson/Chloë Sevigny is a woman with a wife, Maggie/Alice Braga, and a son, Fraser/Jack Dylan Grazer. It is Fraser himself, with his adolescent anxieties, who guides us through a miniature America with all its nuances and paradoxes. The drama is the conflict that revolves around the clash between the superficial calm of the homologation of military life and the vibrant sense of diversity that simmers in individual subjectivities. In this wandering, exploring, with headphones fixed on his ears and the (extraordinary) music blaring, Fraser meets a girl of his own age, Caitlin/Jordan Kristine Seamón. A creature without a defined gender, fluid in search of her own identity, just like Fraser. This search for self becomes poetry and drama, but such is life.
Ethos investigates the Freudian concept of the uncanny, the unheimlich. The house where you do not feel at home. Istanbul, a metropolis of a thousand contradictions, is the backdrop to a story where bridges do not alleviate the inequalities between the European and semi-rural Asian shores. The unheimlich hits Anatolian veiled women, displaced Kurdish families and the westernised bourgeoisie. The protagonist is Meryem, a religious, veiled maid, afflicted by fainting spells of psychosomatic origin, who begins a tormented therapeutic relationship with a lay analyst, Peri. Thus, a sequence of relational events is born, revealing human complexities on both sides of the Bosporus, beyond the differences in lifestyles.
Created by the artist and activist Katori Hall, P-Valley is set in the fictional town of Chucalissa, located in the depressed and flood-prone Mississippi Delta. The Pynk strip club is the epicentre of a dramatic property speculation operation. Gentrification also arrives in imaginary countries. The lives of the strippers and the extraordinary protagonist Uncle Clifford/Nicco Annan are turned upside down. The club is transformed into a political space where the bodies of women and Uncle Clifford are at the centre. Liberated, glittered and wigged bodies are framed and told from a different perspective, from the point of view of the women themselves, to the rhythm of a deep, blues-infused rap. Everything is feminine, the writing, the direction and the extraordinary choreography do not just show the characters as bodies to be desired or profited from, but as universes with their nuances and weaknesses, with a story to tell.
One of the most acclaimed series and commented by critics and audiences for its content and especially for the presence of the social and teen superstar Zendaya. It is a generational overview suspended between redemption and fall, in short, the unveiling of the fragilities of being young. Created and directed by Sam Levinson, Barry’s son, director of Good Morning, Vietnam and Rain Man, Euphoria seems to be a lysergic journey through friendships and experiences that burn with an aesthetic made of fluorescent colours, strong contrasts, neon nights and glitter. Everything is psychedelic, even the music, suspended between techno accelerations and vaporwave sounds. The two young women give life to a painful and intense succession of failures and rebirths. Losing and redoing everything. Is not this how you discover your own truth and the world?
Ranging from Snowpiercer to Top Boy, a selection of productions that can't be missed on a designer's favorites list. Read more
10 masterpieces of cinema in which architecture and design are fundamental
Less is more, and in this case the absence of delimitations becomes an opportunity not to deny the spaces, but to create new ones by exploiting the spectator's perception.
And in the end, when it all ends, we're in a cottage in the woods. The landscape changes, the materials change, the design changes, the organization of the interior changes, and that’s the way the film tells us that everything has changed. Finally.
The past, together with the present and the future.
Movies that talk about architects and architecture, but also in which design plays a fundamental role. From Bertolucci, to Greenaway, to Spielberg's Minority Report. Read more
12 workplace designs from the movies and TV series
image by Scott Smith (SRisonS) licenced under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The workplaces seen in cinema and television are manifestations of a visionary creativity, ironic, refined and almost always an implacable instrument of condemnation of customs and society. Read more
8 great TV shows told through their homes and offices
The whole series aims at digging deeper into Bojack’s heart to see, under the many layers of cynicism, wickedness, meanness and alcohol, what is left in this terrible, frustrated and full of trauma person, suffering from toxic self-worship and loss of fame. The house very much reflects the “Bojack mystery”.
As I said, it does not resemble him, but rather the successful image he has of himself. It looks bare and minimalistic while he actually is a hoarding maniac, he even has an office with a desk that he absolutely does not need. This is a house perfect for maintaining the appearance but is lacking all the warmth of a home furnished with passion. It is just a very expensive object.
It’s the ’80s, but it looks like the early ’70s. It looks like the house she lived in with her mother, with blankets on the armchairs, ugly wallpaper and almost nothing on the walls.
Carpeting reigns supreme. It has the classic Spielberg’s cinema layout: a small house in the suburban centre, with a round table in the middle of the kitchen and small rooms filled with objects that make them look even smaller. Objects piled up without a particular style, from art-deco-looking lamps to consumer electronics displayed as furnishing elements. The most imaginative details are those that shouldn’t be, like the cushions. An endless sadness in a house that is a means of communication with the upside down.
The house isn’t inhabited by the owner, but by a large family whose parents are renovating the whole villa.
In a certain sense, however, the house tells a lot about the series: it tells us what we are going to find there and, already from the first episodes, it sort of foreshadows what is going to happen. The statues, the inlays, the embellishments, the columns, the wood and even the very heavy handrails of the large staircase that looks like the one in “Gone with the Wind” or the massive balconies (the only thin and light detail seems to be the wrought iron spiral staircase, main protagonist of the finale) infuse a looming sense of tradition and connection with an ancestral world.
Contrary to the usual apartments we see in TV shows, Hill House does nothing to look mundane, and everything to look exceptional. It does nothing to seem really lived by someone, but rather rejects any intrusion. It is furnished in a perfectly consistent way as if it were a painting and looks as if it exists in a time that is not that of the story. And those who have seen the series know that this temporal detail is fundamental.
Abundance and above all heaviness. We’ve gone beyond the baroque style, as the golden fangs details on the back of a sofa tell us. Gold is everywhere, and most importantly on old-fashioned pieces of furniture that don’t really look like old-fashioned pieces of furniture. It’s simply all wrong, but it goes very well with the costumes and traditions of the Anacleti family.
Mirrors, crosses, inlays, tapestries... It is already incredible that the large reception area, the large living room from which you can see the dining room and the kitchen, looks like an underground floor. The very low ceiling helps to give this impression and the few windows combined with the abundance of columns almost confirm it.
On the walls, a collection of improbable and colorful paintings; on the floor, old carpets. Spadino and his gaudy outfits seem to perfectly match the upholstery and the reflections of the many lights.
Gypsy mafia is very rich and at the same time totally uncomfortable with this wealth – lots of money coming from loan-sharking – and it doesn’t know what to do with it, it doesn’t even know how to spend it, it just knows that it can spend money, and that’s what gypsy mafia does: it would like to live in a place that tells its rise, but it only manages to accumulate pricey objects, more than precious furnishings.
There isn’t such thing as “the” office of Don Draper, there are many: we go from the very bare and essential (but very tastefully furnished) one of the very first seasons, to the change of agency and then to the quality leap with a studio furnished in a more fashionable way and with colors that match the colleague’s offices. Don Draper was unique, BUT now he has become like the others.
If in the beginning everything was essential and minimalistic, with ironed shirts kept in the desk drawer and the alcoholic beverages in the bar cart, at the end there are drawings of his children on the walls, a much better equipped living room, objects given to him and the signs of a life lived at its fullest, even though at first there was only a man who had stolen the life of another man, and still did not have one of his own.
Great table lamp though.
The house will be used as a safe, a threatening place and a façade. What for Gus is Los Pollos Hermanos, for Walter is a cottage made for a perfect wife and humble life.
Claire’s office seems freezing cold. The desk looks like one of those you could find in a luxury suite of a 4-star hotel, with the same cheap but tasteful furniture, with a lot of steel and all the cooler tones. In line with the dark photography style of the series, which bans all bright colors, even CWI’s furniture is designed to tell the story of a character who has no interest in the superfluous. A place conceived by a luxury bureaucrat, someone who’s more interested in knowing the rules in order to exploit them to her own advantage rather than to do something kind.
Probably the least fun furniture ever, even Ikea’s office showrooms manage to look a little more welcoming.
Monica and Rachel’s house is a mock-up full of heterogeneous elements, with a beautiful window wall that the show exploits for the recurring gag of the naked neighbor, sofas and armchairs, purple walls and a green door, tables in one style and armchairs in another, small decorative lamps... Everything seems impersonal and does not speak directly about those two girls, but the density of the pieces of and its arrangement actually communicate the comic confusion of their life. This is well explained by the kitchen, which seems crammed beyond belief (especially for a TV show in which the characters hardly ever cook), a delirium of utensils, ingredients and broken shelves.
But in addition to this, Friends’ furniture is the most traditionalist furniture you could imagine. All the details tell us “American mid-west”, and yet the show is set in busy New York. Traditional America is preserved in the decor of a TV show that wants to tell the story of the new “youngsters”.
Even more than in films, the settings and in particular the interiors play a key role in television and serial storytelling. And it's even more evident in masterpieces like Breaking Bad, Mad Men or... BoJack Horseman. Read more