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International Locations: Modern and Contemporary Architecture
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Ever since King Kong’s climactic end on the newly-completed art deco Empire State Building in 1933, modern architecture has served to enhance a film’s individuality and place it into its historical and cultural context.
Europe
Europe’s rich artistic history, coupled with its concentration of diverse cultures within a relatively small area, makes it the obvious alternative to filming on home soil. The town of Zlin in the Czech Republic, for example, is the product of an enlightened shoe magnate’s experiment with urban planning and functionalist architecture. The city was the site of the Bata shoe factory during the interwar period where Tomás Bata generously built the infrastructure of an entire town in ‘ferro-concrete skeletal’ style. Smaller brick houses with gardens, built for the company employees, echo the town’s architecture, albeit surrounded by greenery. The whole concept had input from such distinguished architects as Jan Kotera, Frantisek L Gahura, Vladimír Karfík and even Le Corbusier.
In France, La Défense, on the outskirts of Paris, is a huge complex of over 900 contemporary office buildings which impose their abstract geometry over height-restricted neighbours. The white marble Grand Arche looks down the Champs Elysées in stark, yet elegant, contrast to its elderly counterpart.
Other contemporary structures in France which make interesting backdrops are of course the Pompidou Centre in central Paris; the Hotel du Departement in Marseilles; the Musee d’Orsay and the Pyramide du Louvre, by IM Pei, with its pyramid shape and mirror image below ground. Dan Brown thought it an atmospheric location for pivotal scenes of The Da Vinci Code, even before Ron Howard committed it to film. The purpose-built ski town of Flaine, a remote village in the Alps at Haute Savoie, was constructed entirely from concrete, an unexpected departure from idyllic wooden alpine lodges.
In Spain the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is an inspiring example of expressionist modern architecture. Designed by Frank Gehry, its swirling metal shape is a free sculpture of curvaceous titanium-clad form. Barcelona, of course, is well know for the fanciful influence that modernist architect Gaudi has had over it; and the Azca district in Madrid, known as Madrid’s Manhattan, has buildings of the stature you’d expect, given its nickname and the fact that the area is the financial district of the city.
Over in Germany there’s the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, an eclectic modern building of irregular forms and a tent-like sweeping main roof. Then there’s Einstein Tower near Potsdam, a curvaceous, streamlined form, currently used as laboratory and observatory. Hamburg has an area called the Neumühlen Hafenrand, an interesting succession of renovated and new buildings along six kilometres of shoreline.
The most interesting buildings of Polish modern architecture are situated in Warsaw, which is booming with new skyscrapers such as Norman Foster’s RIBA-award winning Metropolitan Building. The up-and-coming location of Romania has industrial landscapes and imposing buildings from the Ceausescu period.
Finally, the last building to be singled out, of the many hundreds of those in Europe which could be, is the HSB Turning Torso in Malmö, Sweden. A sculptural high-rise building consisting of nine cubes which twist towards the waterfront like an athlete stretching his back, it stands tall in a barren wasteland of industrial buildings and colourful houses bounded by the beautiful Oresund waterway on three sides.
The Americas
The USA is a strange one when it comes to locations. New York, for example, is famous for the multitude of films and TV series based there, yet these days, logistical difficulties make it just as likely that anything set there will actually be filmed somewhere else. Gangs Of New York was filmed in the same Italian studio as Ben Hur and of course Friends rarely left their apartments or Central Perk because they were actually 4,000 kilometres away in Los Angeles. Sometimes, even New York-bankrolled films, such as Focus, starring William H Macy and Laura Dern, have abandoned their New York setting for Toronto, Canada’s financial centre with enough big-city high-rises to fool the best of us.
Los Angeles itself is almost more famous for the facilities that are based there than the locations it provides but, nevertheless, it still has a presence in the architectural scene. The Ennis House by Frank Lloyd Wright is where some Blade Runner scenes where shot and Inglewood, California, is home to the Randy’s Donuts Building - the one with the giant doughnut on top that was featured in an episode of Arrested Development as well as a few music videos and movies.
Further inland, land-locked Chicago was rebuilt after the great fire in 1871 and has rebuilt itself to become a modern metropolis. One of the most famous buildings in the world, the Sears Tower, is actually nine framed elements incorporated into one skyscraper. At 110 storeys high it is still the tallest building in North America and far and away the tallest kid in the class on the windy city’s modern skyline.
Down at the other end of the supercontinent, there is a wide range of buildings in the private and public domain. Argentina has a great diversity of architecture and a wide variety of buildings worth using as locations, including mansions, theatres, glass skyscrapers and luxury hotels as well as sophisticated interiors. In Brazil, the glittering, soaring skyscrapers of Rio de Janeiro have the benefit of providing modern cityscapes with access to the experienced support of local film services, available for a fraction of the cost of those in the USA and much of Europe.
Africa
The architecture throughout Africa is very specific in its style, but has an awful lot to offer, despite being a lot less dense than most other continents. The north was strongly influenced during colonial times by European design movements. In fact, Le Corbusier was one of the architects particularly interested in the northern regions and built, amongst others, the Durand apartment building in Morocco.
Egypt has an extraordinarily beautiful example of modern architecture in the Biblotheca Alexandrina at Shatby, not only a home for over eight million books but also a modern landmark. The walls are of grey Aswan granite, carved with characters from 120 different scripts – ancient and modern. These walls support a massive glass-panelled roof, which creates a spectacular display of light through the ultra-high ceilings.
Further south, the continent also proves to have rich pickings if you’re looking for monumental architecture. Good examples are the Angwa Centre and the Causeway Post Office Building, both in Harare Zimbabwe. In South Africa, Cape Town has the Metlife Centre, the tallest building in the city at 150 metres high. One façade of the construction is built in several sections climbing out on top of each other, while the other side maintains a smooth wall, divided by a spine-like staircase which emphasises the height of the building. Cape Town is a bustling and modern city which is growing in style and confidence. South Africa in general is very well endowed with location service companies and costs here are so low that there are more reasons than just the view to take your production out there.
Asia/Australasia
This part of the world has some of the most extraordinary constructions. Singapore, in particular is notorious for its elevated skyline with skyscrapers mounting over this multi-cultural, yet still very oriental city. The architecture itself has sometimes been described as ‘brutalist’ in its almost overpowering effect on this diminutive nation. The amazing Temasek Tower, built in the late 1980s, reaches up over 230 metres and is a creation reminiscent of an elegant tube, or chimney.
Japan is, of course, notorious for its innovative and technically advanced architecture. In particular the Kansai International Airport in Osaka has a roof in the shape of an imperfect, undulating arch which is comprised of another series of arches of differing sizes. The airport was built under the strict regulations you would expect in a modern area as prone to earthquakes and tidal waves as Japan.
The Peak Tower in Hong Kong is a unique example of East-meets-West architecture. Heavily influenced by traditional Chinese proportions with its wok-shaped design, the building is the number one tourist attraction in the city. Like Singapore, Hong Kong is a wonderful mix of oriental tradition and modern architecture, with tall imposing buildings set against the scenic hills of the city, overlooking the junks on the harbour below.
In Australia it’s hard to think of a building more universally recognisable than the Sydney Opera House which Danish architect Jorn Utzon designed, based on segments of orange peel. The city has street after street of attractive contemporary buildings built on the edge of glorious Sydney Harbour.
Further north The Gateway Bridge, Brisbane, is another amazing piece of construction, monumental in design, as is the Magistrates Court, the Brisbane Entertainment Centre and the rest of the South Bank, built on the site of the World Expo which was held here in 1988. High-rise buildings are certainly not the only ones you’ll notice as the post-war international style in the West evoked an interesting response in Australia, with its many unusual smaller houses and buildings. A beautiful example of this low-pitched, gable-roofed style with large glazed areas is The Fenner House at Red Hill in Melbourne as well as the Manning Clark House, outwardly very different yet both following the same movement.
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