SATURDAY FILM FEST / 8 ARCHITECTURAL FLICKS WITH DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS

The Afrofuturist design of Wakanda and its capital, Golden City. Marvel Studios.

GUEST BLOG / By Karen Anderson and India Block, Dezeen writers--The latest edition of Dezeen Weekly, one of the world's most influential architecture, interiors and design magazines, includes the following pick of 8 architecture films to stave off boredom during Coronavirus isolation.

Black Panther, 2018. Marvel's superhero film Black Panther takes places in the fictional country of Wakanda – a secret high-tech African kingdom. Set designer Hannah Beachler looked to the work of architect Zaha Hadid to create an atrofuturist vision of a city free from colonialism. "[Zaha's work is] what I wanted people to feel for the modern architecture in Black Panther," Beachler told Dezeen. "Very voluptuous, very curvy, no hard edges and the spaces feel both very large and intimate at the same time."

Boris Bilinkskin's poster for 1927 film Metropolis.

Metropolis, 1927.  Metropolis is a silent science-fiction film from the 1920s directed by director Fritz Lang, where a story of robots and class war takes place in a sinister city of skyscrapers. Art directors Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut and Karl Vollbrecht created a visually arresting city for rich businessmen, powered by underground machines manned by oppressed workers. Buildings in art deco, gothic and the Bauhaus style are layered to create an arresting vision of the future.

Director Stanley Kubrick’s minimalist sets remain modern since its 1968 design.

2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. Adored by architects and designers everywhere, Stanley Kubrick's sci fi journey to the moon 2001: A Space Odyssey has minimum dialogue and maximum visuals. Spaceship interiors feature glowing white grid floors studded with cherry-red modernist furniture, and the film's distinctive aesthetic has launched a thousand homages and exhibitions.

Fake house, fake architect, cool design from Korea

Parasite, 2019. The rich family's house in Korean director Bong Joon-ho's Oscar-winning dark comedy about society practically steal's the show. Sleek modernist lines and expensive furniture betrays little hint of the leech-black darkness below the surface. Built by the fictional architect Namgoong Hyeonja, the mansion was actually the work of production director Lee Ha-Jun and was made up of multiple sets, cut together to look like one building.

Blade Runner 1982 is set in 2019 future, which is now the past. Artwork John Lieu.

Blade Runner, 1982. Set in the future – Los Angeles in 2019 – Bladerunner's sci-fi story of a bounty hunter tracking robot replicants is set against a neon backdrop of a dystopian city that pays homage to Fritz Lang's metropolis. Other visual and architectural influences on British director Ridley Scott included the sketches of futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia, the industrial north east of England where Scott grew up, 1980s Hong Kong, French Métal Hurlant comics, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawk.

Ghost in the Shell, 1995. Mamoru Oshii's anime cyberpunk tale of a cyborg hunting down a hacker in 2029 Japan takes its architectural cues from 1990s Hong Kong, the most futuristic Asian city of the day. Art director Hiromasa Ogura visited the city and produced scores of photographs, sketches and paintings that formed the basis of the moody landscape fictional of the finished animation.

 High-Rise, 2015. Based on JG Ballard's 1975 novel of the same name, High Rise charts the descent into chaos of a 40-storey luxury tower block in London, where the residents lose touch with the outside world as class war erupts. British director Ben Wheatley told Dezeen the film isn't a critique of the country's post war architecture, but was informed by his dislike of tower blocks – and a bad night in a Danish hotel. "In the architectural plan they had to put these pillars in to make the structure worked but they didn't give a fuck about that room, so someone was going to suffer and it was the poor bastard who had to stay in that room," Wheatley said. "That kind of thinking went in to the rest of the High Rise building – it took no prisoners."