Towards an Architecture of the Cinematic

This dissertation begins to reconsider the theoretical and practical implications of notions of the cinematic in shaping the built realities and conceptual understandings of what architecture can be and can do. Through a combination of primary source archive research, interviews with a range of actors, original building analysis, and critical engagement with the secondary literatures, I examine a range of architectural case studies through a distilled notion of the cinematic, in order to begin to think architecture differently. The dissertation is structured in three main parts. Firstly, using primary archive research and secondary literatures, I reconsider the foundations of cinema through the successive image and moving-image work of Eadweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey, and Thomas Edison; from this analysis I construct a core set of qualities of the cinematic. Secondly, I critically review the existing architecture-cinema relationship as it relates to the discipline of architecture, using a combination of primary and secondary literatures, and architectural projects; I identify gaps and contradictions in the existing understandings of the architectural implications of explicitly cinematic approaches; I then introduce two contemporary architectural practices that engage with ideas of the cinematic – Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Bernard Tschumi Architect. Thirdly, I use the distilled notion of the cinematic constructed above to think and re-evaluate a series of case study projects of these two architectural practices; I analyse these projects in detail to reveal a different mode of understanding both these specific architectures, and the critical positions of these architectural practices more generally. Finally, I begin to explore the broader implications of these conclusions for thinking architecture and its possibilities anew.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Breeze, Mark

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Penz, François

• Architecture
• DSR
• Tschumi

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/0696df14-53e4-4e7c-a681-d4f608bfcc45/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.30237

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/282875