12 minute read
Reason for Movie Selection
from ArchiMovie Magazine
by lavaravi27
Fig 4,5 & 6. Frank Loyd Wright, The Elrod House, & Mies van der Rohe respectively
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Why?
One of the main motives for this movie to be selected is due to the shooting at the famous Elrod House. Represents as one of the most successful architecture of the era
The James Bond Film, Diamonds are Forever explored a variety of architectural buildings, scenes and settings. In the film, Bond ventures to various location that describes and the arrchitectural era of the 70's.The decade of the 1970s was a study in contrasts: austerity and hedonism, sombre earth tones and garish colours, hippie love of nature and high-tech futurism. Beginning in the 1970s, architecture continued the movements started by designers like Frank Lloyd Wright
and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Geometric design, pop art, postmodernism, brutalism, and early deconstructivism were also experimented with at this time. An architectural style known as "70s architecture" was popular from the 1950s to the 1970s. Architecture from the 1970s can be categorised as brutalist.
Elrod House
The Arthur Elrod House, was designed by American architect John Lautner. The building was featured in the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever and boasts a concrete roof in the shape of a dome and a half-moon swimming pool.
The home is situated on an elevation site in the Araby Cove neighbourhood of Palm Springs,California overlooking the city and Coachella Valley to the north. Five bedrooms and five bathrooms too over the 8,901. sq. ft. of living space within this iconic build. For American designer Arthur Elrod, who designed the interiors of the house himself, Lautner finished it in 1968.
John Lautner, a Frank Lloyd Wright trainee early in his career, rejected the calm, stern geometry of his midcentury minimalist contemporaries. Instead, he lived a lifelong iconoclast, alternatively misjudged or overlooked by reviewers. The renowned Googie coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard and the Elrods House at Palm Strings are a couple of his most well-known works. "Instead of being inspired by Space Age futurism, Hollywood glamour, or virtuoso engineering, Lautner's obsession with novel shapes and constructions stemmed from his desire to humanise the built environment and produce an infinitely varied organic poetry. There was a very serious agenda here "In a foreword to the book that accompanied a retrospective exhibition of Lautner's work at the Los Angeles museum last July, Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum, wrote.
"To me, architecture is an art, naturally, and it isn't architecture unless it's alive. Alive is what art is. If it's not alive, it's dead, and if it's not art. "
-John Lautner
His Architecture an
Only after Lautner passed away in 1994 did his pioneering designs begin to be acknowledged as having influenced modern architecture greats with an organic, earthy bent, such Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid. Lautner designed over 200 architectural projects during his career, but many designs for larger buildings were never realised.
Fig 8. Arango Residence, Marbrisa, Acapulco, Mexico by J.Lautner
nd Influence
The transition by Lautner to using concrete as his main structural material and the folds of the earth coincides with his stylistic departure from Wright's exacting stone-and-wood geometries; the concrete "shell" became the metaphor and the medium for man's flight from civilization into the shelter of nature.
Fig 10.Bob Hope's House in Palm Springs by J.Lautner
D r a w i n g s D e t a i l e d
P L A N F L O O R G R O U N D
A challenging site, a modest entry hiding a lofty space, and spaces that toe the line between inside and out are all features of one project that bears several of Lautner's signatures. This design exemplifies the discrepancies between his ideas and how they were initially received. The 1968-constructed Elrod House on Southridge Drive in Palm Springs, which belonged to interior designer Arthur Elrod, is renowned for its enormous concrete roof with wedge-shaped openings cut out for skylights and indirect lighting.
Guest Building
Pool
Cupola
Rocks
Owner's Space
Main Entrance
Garden ( Below the outside staircase )
Entrance from the street
The alley Leading to one of the two garages this one flankes by a kind of small grenhouse
P L A N R O O F
Construction Drawing
B
A
C D A
Existing Rocks
B
Glasss curtain wall near the pool
Slate Flooring
Exposed Concrete
C
D
SECTION
Fig 12. Section Drawing of Elrod House
The roof is supported by curving concrete walls that are intended to protect the house from the harsh desert sun. A swimming pool that is both within and outside, as well as a collection of stones in the living room, provide drama. When Lautner noticed that there were rocks exposed on the 23-acre site due to grading, he gave the contractor instructions to dig ten feet deeper, exposing enormous rocks that would later be used in the interior design.
Lautner continually came up with answers whether confronted with difficult locations, hostile environments, or both. For instance, the pavilion-like living room in the Elrod House originally had a curtain wall made of
floor-to-ceiling glass that was organised in a zigzag pattern. The windows were broken by a desert sandstorm not long after the house was completed. In response, Lautner did something even more outrageous: He put in two 25-foot-wide hanging glass curtain walls that can be pulled back at the push of a button to totally open up the living area to the outside.
Fig 12. A photograph of Lautner making drawings and his sketch on the section of the building (Right)
Fig 13. Enlarrged photograph of John Lautner's Sketch on the Section
Draft Section
The layout is centred on a 60-foot (18-meter)-diameter circular living room with an indoor/outdoor pool. The room is covered by a massive wheel-shaped ceiling made of alternating parts of glass and concrete that are edged with a metal band.
Through angled metal fins that serve as frames for the windows, light enters from above.The front half of the living space is surrounded by curved sliding glass walls that lead to a terrace and a swimming pool that both face the view. These elements are seen when Bond enters into the front entrance of the building looking for Willy White
Fig 14.& 15. Picked from the Movie; James Bond enters the building
The Review
Fig 16. A diagram to analyze James Journey into the building
The movie did an excellent job at emphasiing and capturing the essence of the Elrod's House and the architecture in that era. For instance, James enters the house from the main entrance where he finds the 2 beautiful woman, Bambi and Thumper in the living space. This where the combat scene between the 3 takes place as James tries to determine the location of Willy White
Here we see the open wall feature where the young woman jump into the pool in attempt to drown James. Natural stone elements and concrete elements brings out the naturality and warmth to the surrounding nature.
Fig 17. Picked from the movie; Bambi jumps into the pool to drown James
Inside, two large benches coloured light creme are also shaped to follow the geometry of the space. A matching rug mirrors the round ceiling overhead, with a fireplace along one wall.
Fig 18. Bambi waiting for Bond in the living space
The flooring have a herringbone pattern, while accent walls and cupboards are
made of dark wood, and other surfaces have board marks from when the concrete was laid.
Concrete pillars in the form of squares surround the building and offer structural support. From the water, floating concrete steps descend to a rocky slope.
The interiors prominently display the San Jacinto Mountains' native rock, and the main living room and stairs both display exposed rocks.
Fig 19. Outdoor Appearance of the building
A Touch of Brutalism
Certain elements of Le Corubuiser's belief was deeply embedded in the building. One of the early symbols of 5 Points Of Architecture
Usage of Complex Curved Forms
Fig 20. Shooting scene when Bert ties to kill Willy
Beton Brut
Floating concrete steps lead from the pool down to a rocky path.
Opening to the landscape and incorporating natural elements into its concrete structure.
The use of Ornamentation and exposed dark wood for the cabinets
Fig 21. James Bond finally meets Willy White
Brutalism Architecture is heavily seen when James Bond gets closer at finding Willy White. In the movie, when Willy White steps of out the bathroom, a glimpse of the interior is captured which showcases the use of ornamentation .
The "Arthur Elrod House" blends modernist and organic design flawlessly, opening to the outside world and blending elements of nature into its concrete framework. In my opinion, the house was able to invite the elements of Raw Construction Material, Nature and Wind into the builing. Thanks to its Panaromic View, it gently accentuates the view of the external nature.
Known as an example of organic architecture, a branch of modernism that is characterised by more organic designs than the style's typical rectangular planes, and by incorporating elements of the landscape into the buildings, Lautner emerged as a major player in California modernism.
Behind the Scenes
Gallery
The structure of a movie is its architecture of meaning. It utilizes built psychology, spiritual settings, and spiritual landscapes in statements and visuals. Walls with light and shadow make up the emotional space of a movie. The atmosphere's impact on a movie is amplified as it grows more intense and bright.
It is simple to understand why movies have been one of the preferred media when it comes to depending on information given the powers of simulation they possess. And it comes as no surprise, that the co - star is architecture, the means by which, for centuries before the printing press we have left for posterity the synergy, zeitgeist and hopes of the era it was built in.
Even more so than the other major provider of narrative, the novel, architecture shapes the stories that films tell. In the novel, the reader is involved through the description of the characters, innermost thoughts. But in films as in our experience of everyday life, you can't hear what people think but you can hear your own voice. Your own thoughts and perception of the movie. Your mind speaks to you as it interprets what the journey of the movie leads to.
I believe as the young generation of architecture students, it is a truly an important skill for individuals to capture architectures in films as it doesn't only portray the story of the movie but also reveals the revolution of architecture and how modernism has transformed it, the realization of architecture evolves through time.
1. American Luxury (2016, May 3). Elrod House Was Featured in a James Bond Movie, and Now It’s Up for Grabs for $10.5M.https://www.amlu.com/2016/05/03/elrod-house-was-featured-in-ajames-bond-movie-and-now-its-up-for-grabs-for-10-5m/
Cogley, B. (2018, February 21). John Lautner's concrete domed Elrod House overlooks Coachella Valle
https://www.dezeen.com/2018/02/21/john-lautner-arthur-elrod-house-concrete-dome-palmsprings-modernism-week/
Elrod House. (2022, November 15). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elrod _ House
Engel, A. (2009, January 21). The Elrod House epitomizes John Lautner’s go-for-broke philosophy. https://www.palmspringslife.com/daring-design/
Flannagan, R. (2018, July 3). John Lautner’s Modernist Masterpiece. https://www.ignant.com/2018/03/07/johnlautnersmodernistmasterpiece/#:~:text=American%20arc hitect%20John%20Lautner%20was,Elrod%20House'%20in%20Palm%20Springs.
Iqbal, M. (2022). FOOTLIGHT MUSEUM Architecture through Motion Picture (1st ed., pp. 4-8). Issuu. https://issuu.com/marriamiqbal/docs/footlight _ mueseum
John Lautner. (2022, December 16). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John _ Lautner
(2010). Sean connery 1971 [Photograph]. Getty Images. https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/sean-connery-1971
