Cinematic Starchitecture

The Celebrity Status of Urban Architectural Structures in Film
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-60213-4
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Routledge Advances in Film Studies

Cinematic Starchitecture explores how examples of famous architecture have circulated throughout cinema history across diverse genres.

Building on the term ‘starchitecture’ – coined in 1997 for dramatic, monumental structures designed to gain international attention and economic advantage – the authors demonstrate that a crucial part of an architectural structure’s iconic star status emerges through its engagement with (and codification by) the media, and with cinema in particular. The book explores how iconic architectural structures have performed a myriad of roles and functions that exceed buildings' everyday uses or identities as aesthetic objects, location markers, or spatial settings, to show that countless films globally have featured famous buildings as inimitable components of narrative exposition, character development, and/or identity construction.

This unique volume will appeal to students, scholars and researchers of Film Studies, Media Studies, and Architecture and Architectural History, as well as those in the areas of Media and Cultural Studies; History; Popular Culture; and Urban Geography.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schleier, Merrill

Newland, Paul

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Gebäudetypen Öffentliche Gebäude, Gewerbliche Bauten
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: what is cinematic starchitecture?

Part 1: Starchitects and Cinema

1. Gaudí: Starchitecture, Iconicity, and Barcelona

2. The Iconicity of Architectural Decay in Detroit: The Posthumous Cinematic Re-mediation of Albert Kahn

3. Traces of a Proto-Starchitect: Erich Mendelsohn’s Architecture on Screen

Part 2: Iconic Starchitecture in Cinema

4. Plaza and Fortress: Screening Lincoln Center’s Ambiguous Iconicity

5. La La Land’s (2016) Griffith Observatory: Through the Nostalgic Lens of Rebel Without a Cause and the Studio-Era Musical

Part 3: Lofty Towers and Vertical Views

6. Tokyo Tower on Screen

7. The Nearest Thing to Heaven: the Empire State Building as romantic icon

8. Millennial Global Starchitecture in the City of London and its Cinematic “Other” in Rocks

Part 4: Cinematic Starchitecture and Genre

9. Hong Kong Starchitecture and Action-Sci Fi Cinema

10. The Icon and the Grid: North by Northwest, the United Nations Building, and the Thriller Genre’s Media-Architecture Complex

11. Building Dystopia: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Marin County Civic Center in THX 1138 (1971) and Gattaca (1997)

Part 5: Architectural Typologies and Styles in Cinema

12. “Concrete Stardom”: Brutalism’s Cinematic Iconicity and the Spatial Imaginaries of London

13. Pensive Spectacles: On Museal Gazes in Cinematic Starchitecture

14. Poetic Referentiality: The Ocean Liner as Film Star

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Merrill Schleier is Professor Emeritus of Art and Architectural History and Cinema Studies at the University of the Pacific, USA, specializing in the relationship of urbanism, identity, and cinema.

Paul Newland is Professor at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. He has published widely on representations of cities, landscapes and architecture in literature and film.