Cinematic Starchitecture: An Introduction

Part1: Starchitects and Cinema

1. Gaudi: Starchitecture, Iconicity, and Barcelona

2. The Iconicity of Architectural Decay in Detroit: The Posthumous Cinematic Re-mediation of Albert Kahn

3. Traces of a Proto-Starchitect: Erich Mendelsohn’s Architecture on Screen


Part2: Iconic Starchitecture in Cinema

4. Plaza and Fortress: Screening Lincoln Center’s Ambiguous Iconicity

5. La La Land’s (2016) Griffith Observatory: Through the Nostalgic Lens of Rebel Without a Cause and the Studio-Era Musical


Part3: Lofty Towers and Vertical Views

6. Tokyo Tower on Screen

7. The Nearest Thing to Heaven: the Empire State Building as romantic icon

8. Millennial Global Starchitecture in the City of London and its Cinematic “Other” in Rocks


Part4: Cinematic Starchitecture and Genre

9. Hong Kong Starchitecture and Action-Sci Fi Cinema

10. The Icon and the Grid: North by Northwest, the United Nations Building, and the Thriller Genre’s Media-Architecture Complex

11. Building Dystopia: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Marin County Civic Center in THX 1138 (1971) and Gattaca (1997)


Part5: Architectural Typologies and Styles in Cinema

12. “Concrete Stardom”: Brutalism’s Cinematic Iconicity and the Spatial Imaginaries of London

13. Pensive Spectacles: On Museal Gazes in Cinematic Starchitecture

14. Poetic Referentiality: The Ocean Liner as Film Star

Index