Movies in Architecture II

Published on RTF: https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/art/a14934-movies-in-architecture-part-ii/

In the first part of Movies in Architecture, we explored how architecture already carries cinematic qualities through frames and storytelling. Just as a film uses a screen to focus attention, architecture uses openings, balconies, corridors, and thresholds to frame views and guide perception. Buildings do not reveal themselves all at once; they unfold through movement, much like a narrative progressing scene by scene. Circulation becomes sequencing, and spatial planning becomes storytelling. By looking at architecture not as a static form but as a series of intentional frames and orchestrated experiences, we began to understand how closely cinema and space are connected.

But we are not done yet; we still have a lot of elements to explore.

The Sound

In films, sound is never accidental. It is layered, edited, amplified, muted, and repeated. It speaks about the scene, the story, and the character. It builds tension before an event happens. It creates intimacy without showing anything. It can make a scene heavy or light without altering the visuals.

Take the example of Interstellar. On Miller’s Planet, the repetitive ticking in the background mimics a clock, each beat signifying the time being lost due to gravitational time dilation. You can feel urgency before you intellectually calculate it. When the space station explodes, there is complete silence. Just a void in space symbolizing shock. And when Cooper attempts docking, the music accelerates into intensity, mirroring the rising tension and stakes. Sound not only enhances the scene, but it also defines its emotional structure.

If we begin to look at architecture carefully, sound reveals itself as one of its most neglected dimensions. We discuss walls, heights, and surfaces in terms of structure and aesthetics, but rarely in terms of how they behave acoustically beyond basic compliance. Yet every material, every void, every proportion quietly shapes what we hear. A narrow stone corridor sharpens the rhythm of footsteps. A vaulted hall carries a whisper farther than expected. A soft, upholstered lounge absorbs presence and softens conversation. Even an open courtyard diffuses voices differently than a compact chamber. The building is constantly editing sound, whether we acknowledge it or not. Like cinema, architecture layers sound with intention, directing it through volume, surface, and geometry, allowing it to intensify, dissolve, echo, or disappear depending on the meaning the space is meant to hold.

Take Mandu as an example. The ruins are often admired for their symmetry, arches, and proportions, but those geometries were not composed for visual balance alone. When you stand inside Jahaz Mahal or Hindola Mahal and clap, the sound travels across the vaulted ceilings and returns with clarity. A voice carries effortlessly. The large volumes are tuned, not empty. Historically, these spaces hosted royal gatherings, poetry, and music, and their arches and heights supported projection and resonance across the court. What appears as symmetry was also an acoustic intention. The architecture was designed to perform.

In the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Mimar Sinan is believed to have embedded hollow earthenware jars within parts of the structure to help control acoustics. These jars acted as simple resonators, reducing excess echo and improving clarity inside the vast dome. The geometry of the space carries the Imam’s voice across the prayer hall, while the concealed jars help refine the reverberation so that recitation remains clear even at the far end. The architecture was carefully tuned so that prayer could be heard collectively without distortion.

A similar but inverse strategy appears in Indian temple architecture. The garbhagriha, the innermost sanctum, is placed deep within the temple mass, surrounded by thick stone walls and layered mandapas. As you move inward, outside noise dissolves. The heavy stone absorbs and blocks the external world. By the time you reach the deity, there is near silence. The acoustics are symbolic. You leave behind the chaos of the outer courtyard and arrive in stillness. Sound here is reduced intentionally, creating a psychological and spiritual transition from noise to peace.

In the Jewish Museum Berlin, in the Memory Void installation by Menashe Kadishman, thousands of heavy iron faces cover the floor. There is no silent way to walk through. Every step produces a metallic clatter that echoes harshly against the concrete walls. The visitor becomes part of the disturbance. The sound mimics a scream, fragmented, unsettling. Symbolically, this is intentional. The Holocaust is not meant to be experienced quietly. The hollowness of the void and the echo underfoot become reminders of absence and loss. The space refuses comfort. Sound becomes memory and a way to feel.

Across Mandu’s royal courts, Sinan’s calibrated domes, Temples’ silent garbhagriha, and the unsettling clatter of the Jewish Museum, one thing becomes clear: sound in architecture is never neutral. It carries purpose. It carries memory. It carries belief.

Sound does not merely occupy architecture; it reveals its character. The way a space holds, carries, absorbs, or echoes sound tells us what that space is meant to be. As we move through buildings and even through cities, architecture constantly edits what we hear. The sudden quiet inside a temple after the chaos of a street market. The softened murmur filtered through perforated screens. The echo beneath a flyover. The distant rumble of a train passing behind a housing colony. The familiar background sound of a television playing Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah drifting from a neighbour’s living room into the corridor. The muffled calm of a library. These are not isolated sounds; they are transitions. Soundscapes shift as we cross thresholds, marking changes in atmosphere, activity, and meaning as we move through our own story, our everyday film called life.

The Light and the Colour Palette

Light and colour palette shape how a space or a scene is emotionally received. Brightness or shadow, warmth or coolness, saturation or restraint. These decisions influence whether something feels tense, calm, intimate, distant, nostalgic, or severe. Before we process dialogue, composition, or detail, we register atmosphere. Light sets hierarchy. Colour sets the tone. Together, they guide perception quietly, without demanding attention.

In cinema, lighting is not just about visibility; it changes how we interpret a moment. In The Godfather, many conversations unfold in dim interiors where faces are partially hidden in shadow. The darkness is intentional. It creates moral ambiguity and makes power feel quiet, controlled, almost secretive. The room feels heavier because of what is concealed rather than revealed. In Schindler’s List, the world is largely stripped of colour. The black-and-white palette removes distraction and sharpens emotional intensity. When the red coat appears, it becomes overwhelming precisely because colour has been withheld until that point. In Dune, monumental interiors built of heavy stone-like surfaces are lit sparingly; narrow openings and controlled shafts of light strike mass rather than flood the room, allowing shadow to define scale. The contrast between solid material and limited illumination makes volumes feel larger and more powerful without excess brightness. In each of these films, light and colour not only enhances the scene; they structure its emotional reading.

Fig. 1.  A frame from Schindler’s List. Source: framerated.co.uk

Fig. 2. A frame from Dune. Source: Archdaily

Architecture operates with the same tools, though its duration is longer and its audience moves within it. The Pantheon in Rome does not flood its interior with daylight. A single oculus allows a circular beam of light to enter, and as the sun moves across the sky, that beam travels slowly along the dome and walls. The movement of the beam introduces awareness of time and sky, creating a feeling that is almost cosmic.

Le Corbusier treated light as something to be shaped and directed, almost like a material in itself. At Ronchamp, the thick south wall is punctured with irregular openings set at different depths, some fitted with coloured glass in red, green, and yellow. These openings are not aligned or symmetrical; they vary in size and position, allowing daylight to enter from multiple angles. As the sun shifts, light penetrates the deep wall cavities and spills inward as concentrated beams or soft glows, colouring the white plaster surfaces from within. The thickness of the wall frames the light, slowing it down, giving it depth. The coloured fragments do not decorate the interior; they animate it. Against the heavy concrete mass, the light creates moments of pause and reflection, turning weight into quiet intimacy rather than oppression.

Fig. 3.  Notre-Dame du Haut. Source: architecture-history.org

At the Kimbell Art Museum, Louis Kahn brings shape and light into a precise relationship. The galleries are formed by long cycloid vaults that guide daylight through narrow skylights at their crest. The light first strikes reflectors, diffusing into a soft, silvery glow that spreads evenly across the curved concrete surfaces. The vault shape helps distribute this filtered light without glare or harsh shadow. For a gallery, this balance is essential: artworks remain clearly visible, colours stay true, and visual fatigue is reduced. The architecture does not compete with the art; it creates a calm, consistent atmosphere that supports careful observation.

Tadao Ando reduces light to contrast and symbolism. In the Church of the Light, a cross-shaped opening cuts through a concrete wall, allowing a sharp beam to penetrate an otherwise dark interior. The geometry of light becomes the spiritual focal point. The simplicity of the material, raw concrete, makes the beam more intense.

At the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the layered perforated dome breaks the harsh desert sunlight into thousands of small fragments, creating what feels like a rain of light. The brightness of the exterior is moderated into a patterned, shifting glow inside. The structure filters intensity into serenity.

Fig. 4.  Louvre Abu Dhabi. Source: Archdaily

Material and colour are inseparable from these experiences. Rough plaster diffuses light softly, concrete deepens shadow, marble reflects brightness, and coloured glass transforms daylight into atmosphere. Architecture does not control light alone; it collaborates with material and surface to shape perception. The building remains still, but light and colour continuously redefine how it is felt.

In all these examples, what truly changes is the atmosphere. Light has the ability to transform the emotional reading of the same space throughout the day. A beam entering in the morning can feel sharp and awakening; the same beam in the evening can feel warm and reflective. When light is controlled, filtered, narrowed, or diffused, it alters mood without altering form. Light can make a space feel sacred, institutional, dramatic, quiet, expansive, or enclosed. It can slow you down or heighten your awareness. It can isolate you within the shadow or connect you to the sky. The physical walls may remain unchanged, but the emotional temperature of the space shifts constantly with light. Atmosphere is not added after design; it is constructed through the way light is allowed to enter, move, and settle.

Conclusion

Continuing from what we concluded in the first part, do not just write a story for your design. Begin to treat your design like a set design. Not in the sense of artificiality, but in the sense of intention. Every frame in a cinema is composed. Every source of light is positioned. Every shadow is considered. Architecture deserves the same awareness.

Think about how light will fall on the people who occupy your space. Will it be natural light washing in from above? A narrow beam cutting across a wall? A soft, indirect glow that makes faces calm? Or a sharp contrast that creates tension? Consider how materials will respond: will they absorb light and create depth, or reflect it and brighten the room? Will colour warm the atmosphere or cool it? Ask yourself how sound will enter. Will the space amplify voices, diffuse them, isolate them, or carry them? Is the intent to create silence, echo, rhythm, or collective resonance?

Light can be direct or diffused, volumetric or filtered, layered or minimal. Sound can be sharp or absorbed. Colour can be restrained or saturated. None of these are stylistic decisions alone; they are narrative ones. What atmosphere do you want to build? What emotion should remain when the user leaves? The story in architecture does not play for two hours like a film. It plays every day, for years, through changing weather, seasons, and occupants.

If we begin to design with that awareness of light, sound, material, colour, and human presence, then architecture stops being a static composition. It becomes experience. The question is not what looks good in a drawing, but what will be felt in the space. Because long after form is understood, atmosphere is what remains.