No Figures in the Landscape: Post-Anthropocentric Typologies of Architectural Settings in Science-Fiction Films
Maciej Stasiowski
zibi46@o2.plindependent researcher (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3123-6027
Abstract
In the ascending age of automation factories, storage facilities, and server farms, intelligent buildings are becoming less dependent on human maintenance. These new and updated architectural forms do not comply with traditional typologies. From the Vitruvian Man to Modulor, our bodies were the measure of most constructions. Yet automation renders new constructions incompatible with patterns of human habitation. This article focuses on the iconography of buildings designed to operate with little to none human interaction, providing an insight into how such settings influenced recent (last decade) science-fiction films like Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2017), Captive State (dir. Rupert Wyatt, 2019), I Am Mother (dir. Grant Sputore, 2019), or Transcendence (dir. Wally Pfister, 2014). In each of them, artificial intelligence is an intrinsic composite of the environment, terraforming a post-anthropocentric reality of data centres, automated warehouses and drosscapes.
Keywords:
architecture, typology, film, science fiction, post-AnthropoceneReferences
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Authors
Maciej Stasiowskizibi46@o2.pl
independent researcher Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3123-6027
PhD in arts and humanities; graduate of the Institute of Audiovisual Arts at the Faculty of Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University in Krakow. His academic interests include time-based techniques of audiovisual representation (live action and animated film, installation art, new media), and their role in experimental architectural projects. He published articles in ARCH, Ekrany, TransMissions and Kultura i Historia; the author of a book on Peter Greenaway’s literary influences entitled Atlas rzeczy niestałych [The Atlas of All Things Inconstant] (2014).
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