The Possibilities of a Digital Vision – The Architecture behind Science Fiction movies

Both cinema and architecture operate as languages communicating through a library of signs. These signs can be divided into two parts, the signifiers, which are the physical states of signs, and the signified, which are the thoughts, ideas and notions of what the signifiers embody.

Architecture is used as a communication tool through which directors and film makers send certain messages.

Architecture gives cinema its believability; setting the mood, character, time and place for the action.

Architecture plays an important role as a good signifier, signifying different aspects of the society (economical, political, sociological, ecological, technological, etc…).

Film provides architecture with an outlet for realizing visions that can never exist and entreats experiences that in reality have not occurred.

In the medium of film, architects can create ‘pure’ architecture, without worrying about such things like weatherproofing, contract bidding, or building codes. Cinemarchitecture is, thus, an ideal fulfillment of what architecture can be about.

In professional life, architecture can’t always act as a real mirror for its society or its context, this is due to the involvement of different factors in the design and building process, (financial, political, ecological, technological l, etc…).

Sometimes, these factors blur the message to be sent to the viewer or the user of the architectural work, resulting in a misunderstanding in the motives and significances of this architectural work. In the medium of film, this misunderstanding rarely happens.