Christophe Gérard: "Film + Architecture"

Christophe Gérard, "Annotations" (film still) UK, 2001, 35mm, B&W, 14 minutes
Image source: Criticalspace 

Christophe Gérard is the founding director of Criticalspace, an academic specialist on the subject of film+architecture, an architect, a filmmaker and highly experienced scenographer of ground breaking, critically acclaimed and extremely popular exhibitions including Bruce Nauman: A Retrospective (1998), Sonic Boom (2000), Eyes, Lies & Illusions (2004), held at the Hayward Gallery. The work he has done as a director has been shown in a long list of festivals around the world and has had theatre release in the UK. Since 2000, Christophe teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He is currently working on a feature film, on a second animation short and is developing an exhibition which draws on his extensive practical knowledge of the media of film, architecture and scenography.

AC: How would you define Film + architecture as a discipline?
CG: As a discipline between two disciplines and a discipline of the in-between. It deals with the pollution, the contamination of each discipline, film and architecture, by the other. It looks at the way architectural-space and film-space collide, inform and reconfigure one another.

AC: There is a minority group of formally trained architects who operate as film-makers and set designers . What has this got to say about the future role/potential of the Architect?

CG: I cannot speak for others, but it is undeniable that we are living in a world of media where the reality of architecture seems to lay increasingly in its image than rather than its physicality. As architects we cannot ignore this phenomena...

AC: How do you as a practitioner move between these disciplines?

CG: With difficulties. Commissioners in each discipline are naturally nervous at the idea of someone working in between two disciplines. So my work tends to be, at times, purely architectural, at others, purely filmic. Having said that, I have a filmic approach to architecture and an architectural approach to film - my knowledge in one domain enriches the other. There are also projects like exhibition scenographies which are entirely about the mise-en-scene of space and people experiencing space.

AC: What do you see is the potential for Film + Architecture as an expanded field of Architectural activities?

CG: Are we talking of films in architecture, architecture in films or this grey area where film and architecture blur, which all are very distinct subjects? Each are already expanded field of architectural activities, but they are, by no means, the reserved domain of architects.

AC: How could the link between architectural space and film space inform the critical revision of spatial thinking and spatial intelligence? 

CG: Baudrillard reminds us that architecture is not what fills the space but what generates it. And space is ultimately generated in our mind : it is a combination of our perception, our experience of space, altered or pondered by such things as our personal knowledge, memory and our state of mind… The real space, like the filmic space you reconfigure in your mind from irreconcilable snippets, different view points, is ultimately a mental space! That is where film and architecture meet up, where film in generating space, in a sense, becomes architecture, and again why as architects we have to look into films. 

AC: There is an obvious relationship b/w- the temporary nature of architectural exhibits and the techniques and materiality of film set construction. How do you think these qualities might translate to more enduring spatial conditions in architecture, beyond just the superficial level of Props and Special effects?

CG: Architecture is extremely ephemeral. I find reassuring that the life expectancy of a building is getting shorter, that architects have to think about degradation and recycling. But the décor has many other qualities which translate well into architecture, amongst which the fact it is built to support and provoke the action whilst remaining unnoticed – to be both present and absent at the same time. The décor is built for the event. The décor, unlike its definition would lead us to understand, uses an economy of means.

AC: How can "film as a medium develop the conception (both the mental picture and the act of conceiving) of architecture?" I am referencing part of the SG 1 Film and Architecture programme description that you are involved with at The Bartlett, Faculty of the built Environment, UK.

CG: Film provides a very rich representation of architecture. The filmic space confronts us with specific aspects of physical space that as architects we are contributing to (and physical space has to be taken here in its broadest meaning : the sensorial space, the social space… etc). In film, space is experienced through sounds, motions and e-motions, and we comprehend its invisible boundaries. Film is therefore a good material of study to expand our understanding of architecture and change the way we go about making it.

AC: How can this knowledge be used to rethink the way in which architecture deals with spatial sequence and spatial narrative in cities?

CG: I feel the subject goes far beyond sequences and narratives, which are two concepts that architects like to toy with. What about a phenomena like adaptation, appropriation, blurring and time? What about acknowledging that film has shaped the way we relate to architecture - Mr M., for example, age 35, living in a block of flats in Paris, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, describes the courtyard in reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window? Understanding what is at play in architecture is the first step in rethinking it. 

Many thanks to Christophe Gerard for participating in this research project.