Conference: “Architects’ BOOK: Fictional Architects in Cinema” – Giorgio Scianca

October 30, 2011 12:22 pm

4th november – 5 PM – Regional Museum of Natural Science – via Giolitti 36, Torino

Scianca has created the biggest database ever of movie clips focused on architecture and the figure of the architect. Starting from the consideration that one hundred years of cinema as a global medium means one hundred years of the architect as a modern figure, he has collected and set up in a database the stills, playbills and key sequences of around one thousand films (from 1908 onwards), produced all over the world, in which any of the leading characters portrays an architect. Surprisingly, the make-believe of the cinema captures the complexity of the profession, in both its popular understanding and elitist acceptation—from university life to professional success (or failure), from mid-life crisis to the acceptance of senility. A journey over time and space, looking at a profession so generously portrayed by the cinema.

The findings of a survey in 2003, co-ordinated by Giorgio Scianca, show that idea of what architecture is today does not rest on direct experience, but rather on second-hand information most likely garnered from the social groups one has contact with or from the mass media.
This study of films which “tell the story of an architect” has filled a gap in the research.