Architecture and film – Surrealism Lecture 5 11

MAY

Surrealism was concerned with the unconscious, with dreams, with personal and political
liberation, socially, sexually, psychologically. While it is possible to dream strange, swirling,
madcap forms of liberating architecture, it is difficult, if not impossible, to realise such forms in
the waking day, which is why, most arts which bring out this surrealism are in film and paintings;
but this isn’t to say that there isn’t any surreal architecture, quite the contrary.

Surrealism in film

__________________________________Salvador Dali – Un chien andolou

This is one of the greater surrealist films – where he creates surrealist spaces – spaces one
would not normally imagine
- They play tricks on the human mind, using sounds, spaces, perspectives, characters; all
to create a seemingly dreamlike world. However, it is perhaps the fact that this surreal
world is actually based on the real world is what makes the film even more surreal – in
other films, for example the one he did with Walt Disney – the film is clearly set in an
imaginary world. However, Un Chien Andolou – Is the world real or not?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU_f2vqEgGM

- plays tricks on perspectives, sounds, spaces. He creates a surrealist environment, seemingly

based in a dream-like world.

Marienbath is another surrealist film

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Surrealism in Architecture.
Le Corbusier

One of the high points of "surrealist architecture" was a Paris flat designed in 1930 for the
wealthy art collector Charles de Beistegui; it was designed by none other than Le Corbusier, he
of the famous dictum "the house is a machine for living in". Although the apartment is mostly
what you would expect of Le Corbusier, it featured a surrealist roof garden complete with a false
fireplace, incongruous living-room furniture and a mirror. The "carpet" of this living room was a
lawn, and the Eiffel Tower popped up over the parapet.

Surrealism is the key to late works of Le Corbusier. Most notable of all is the Chapel at
Ronchamp, France, 1950-1954 – also known as Notre Dame du Haut.
Architecture and film – Surrealism Lecture 5 11
MAY

This is a more extreme statement.

Characteristics of the chapel:

• Simple
• Oblong nave
• 2 side entrances
• Axial main altar and 3 chapels beneath towers
• Sited atop a hillside with access from the south
• Immensely powerful and complex
• Visual impact was what counted most to Le Corbusier
• Undulating forms – can be seen as a giant female with her face turend towards is in the
hooded tower

Cecil Beaton decorated the top floor of his Wiltshire country house, Ashcombe, with Jean
Cocteau sconces in the form of human arms reaching out from the wall, and papier-mache
versions of Victorian chairs. Champion of surrealism Edward James did his colourful thing at
Monkton House, his West Sussex hunting lodge, with its dog-print stair-carpet, breathing wall,
Dalí furniture and screaming colours. Yet perhaps the best surrealist architecture was in films;
best of all in the sets by Christian Berard for Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête

Some of the greatest work of surreal architecture wasn't actually by a card-carrying surrealist
but by a French rural postman, Ferdinand Cheval, who built a dream-like structure with his own
hands, stone by stone. While surrealists pontificated and analysed their dreams in Freudian
terms, Cheval made his come true
Architecture and film – Surrealism Lecture 5 11
MAY

Of course, many of the great surreal moments architecture has to offer were created without
the help of the surrealists. Witness what happens when rain falls through the great "oculus" in
the dome of the Pantheon in Rome: it disappears into a great decorative brass drain. It is
beautiful to watch, and quite surreal.

When US structural engineers investigated the enormous domed hall Albert Speer had designed
for Germania (as Berlin rebuilt for Hitler, post-victory, was to be called), they found that, when
the building was full of chanting crowds, clouds would form from their breath in the underside
of the dome, and a light rain would fall. How Wagnerian. How surreal.

1 Experience Music Project

From the air, this museum of music history - set up by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and
collector of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia - looks like a Fender Stratocaster guitar seen through
Dalí's eyes. Distorted and bent, the roofscape, too, is something like a floppy Dalí wristwatch. As
if to prove just how hard it is to realise surreal architecture (and this is about as surreal as it
gets), this Frank Gehry design, in Seattle, Washington, has not gone down well with US critics.
Herbert Muschamps said it was like "something that crawled out of the sea, rolled over, and
died". Crawled out of the sea? The surrealists would have loved that.
Palais Idéal
Architecture and film – Surrealism Lecture 5 11
MAY

A village postman from the remote Drome province of southern France, Ferdinand Cheval
(1836-1924) spent 33 years creating an "ideal palace" from stones gathered on his daily 32km
round. Poorly educated and with no knowledge of architecture, he shaped his surreal palace
from daydreams, without help.

Einstein Tower
Opened in 1924, this curious, boot-like building in Potsdam, Germany, was designed to test
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. A telescope in the observatory caught cosmic rays that
were reflected by mirrors to the "spectrographic" equipment in the basement.
Erich Mendelsohn (1887-1953) was the architect. Fascinated by the cosmos, he made dreamlike
sketches of fantastic buildings that owe nothing to conventional architectural logic or to
constraints imposed by existing materials. The architect, who worked in Britain, Palestine and
the US, said he designed the tower out of some unknown urge emanating from "the mystique
around Einstein's universe".
Endless House
Imagine a voluptuously shaped, womb-like house on stilts, with curved walls indistinguishable
from floors and ceilings; with sand, pebble, wood, grass and tile floors; with bathing pools
instead of baths; with coloured lenses and mirrors bringing light into organically shaped rooms.
This was Frederick Kiesler's 1959 vision of the Endless House, never built - it was far too surreal
for that - yet worked on in intriguing drawings until the architect's death in 1965. It remains a
house of endless speculation and possibilities.

Surrealist Architecture
Architecture and film – Surrealism Lecture 5 11
MAY

This is the name of a painting by Dalí, c1932, that hangs in the Kunstmuseum, Basle. What's it
got to do with architecture, you may well ask. But perhaps it makes its point perfectly well:
surrealist architecture cannot really exist; it's beyond reality. So it could look like this, a typical
Dalí swirling thing, with some fried eggs emerging from the top. If this could be built, it would be
a lot more interesting than most contemporary "iconic" architecture.

10 Scottish Parliament building

This great and controversial Edinburgh masterwork by Enric Miralles (1955-2000) is nothing like
a conventional parliament building. No wonder, cost aside, so many people were suspicious and
unkind about the design; it boasts shades of Gaudí and his contemporary Josep Maria Jujol,
overtones of Russian constructivism, and hints of something else altogether: a tendril-like
architecture that snakes from townscape to landscape. Scots will say the only thing surreal
about the building is its mind-blowing price, hopelessly over-budget, and there are plenty of
detractors hoping for leaks and other flaws. They deserve a concrete box.