In film, it doesn’t matter if the houses are LEED-certified or even have four complete walls. Barcelona, Spain-based architect and designer Federico Babina—the artist behind the 8-bit drawings of architects and their buildings—illustrated a series of buildings featured in films. He finished the series, called Archicine, in September, but says in an email that he would like to add others.
“ARCHICINE is a series of illustrations representing the spatial match between film and architectural space,” Babina said in an emailed statement. “Scenographies imagined, realized and built to tell stories and characters. The architectural space in the film is not just a background but is transformed as an added protagonist. Movies have the ability to transport us to different worlds and lives and let us live and breathe real or fantastic architecture.”
He says in an email he chose the films “for the quality of the movies and for the architecture treasure that they contain.”
Take Babina’s illustration from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” (1954). In the movie, a wheelchair-bound man watches his neighbors from his apartment window and believes there was a murder in a neighboring apartment, so the architecture plays a strong supporting role in that film. Looking at Babina’s illustration, it’s not hard to recall the scenes played out in those structures.
Or, as Babina said in his statement, “All people consciously or unconsciously connect a movie with the space in which the action takes place.”
That’s the luxury of architecture in film. It’s our experience of the structure, regardless if the entire thing is half-built on a Hollywood backlot, that gives it a sense of reality. It’s a suspension of disbelief that we’d just rather keep on disbelieving.
For the complete series, check out Babina’s website.
