Final MArch Project - Bartlett School of Architecture

IN SPECULO MARIS

In the Mirror of the Sea

Overview

The project explores a speculative design process through animated capriccios and filmmaking, with the fictional city of Atlantis as the narrative setting for a film within a film.

The phrase “The City as a Jungle”, from the studio brief, evokes more than just a dense Forest of trees. It imagines the city as a chaotic web of interconnected entities, layered and weathered by time to become more than the sum of its parts.

Using this as the departure point for my research, I began by looking at the representation of cities over history and this led to the idea of a capriccio.

It can be argued that the art of world-building in cinema is a form of capriccio, and so a narrative built around the city of Atlantis provided a test bed for a design methodology through film, capriccio and CGI.

A Film Within a Film…

The project is framed as a film within a film, following the journey of a visionary director in his attempt to create his version of Atlantis; a fictional utopian city, made entirely for the screen.

His vision for the city shows a dazzling collage of beautiful architecture on the surface, but also deliberately shows the dark, hidden underworld beneath the city – a reflection of society’s inclination towards hubris, negativity and corruption. The intention is that to truly show off a utopia, one must also show the hidden structures that prop it up - and those that lead to its eventual collapse…