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Does anyone contemplate science fiction architecture? I hope so, or this will be a very short thread. So, I have picked out two "themes" that are bothering me.
Exhibit A: Star Wars. My personal favorite, the "Huge gaping hole with no railing." Lucas loves these things. They're in every Star Wars movie so far. Now, the only one I can explain is Cloud City, where it presumably has to do with the mechanism for keeping the place floating like that. But what about the Death Star? What happens when someone really does need to shut off the power to the tractor beam? Admittedly, that was probably an auxillary access point, but do the technicians at least get safety harnesses?
Exhibit B: Aliens. It appears to be a law that all ships and installations will have two floors and two ceilings. The floor and ceiling people use will be covered by grating, leaving plenty of room for alien nasties to crawl around in above and below. Now, in some spots, that's fine. But everywhere?
So I ask you, what stands out in your mind? Favorite buildings? Least favorite? And can anyone explain a few of the ones I mentioned?
And wouldn't Dune have been a lot better if they had gone with Giger's designs for the Harkonnens? Not that that has anything to do with anything.
------------------ "Breath...keep breathing. I can't do this alone" -- Radiohead
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To reply to myself, I've rethought the Giger thing. While I like his stuff, I'm not so sure having a huge misshapen human blob with tubes sticking out of the bottom would make the best spicecrawler. Or would it?
------------------ "Breath...keep breathing. I can't do this alone" -- Radiohead
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You really should think about getting yourself a hobby.
------------------ Even as I speak, the scourge of advertising could be heading toward _your_ town! Lock your doors, bar your windows, because the next advertisement you see could destroy your house and eat your family! ~Kent Brockman
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And the other is your pathetic online attempts to take over the world!
------------------ Even as I speak, the scourge of advertising could be heading toward _your_ town! Lock your doors, bar your windows, because the next advertisement you see could destroy your house and eat your family! ~Kent Brockman
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The Star Wars galaxy suggests a human-based population apparently un-concerned with very long falls (also include the carbon-freezing pit at Cloud City, the Death Star docking bay elevator pit, the deeeeeep trenches located conveniently near the Emperor's throne in Death Star II, and the power core of Naboo)
Or, maybe the Star Wars universe just hasn't yet been over-run by accident-prone idiots and their litigious trial-attorneys.
True, their galaxy is full of pirates, bounty-hunters, crimelords, and fascist military structures...but if there aren't any lawyers, how bad could it be? {my local car repair shop has work pits in the floor, these CLEARLY marked lest some simpleton attempt to swan-dive into one.}
As for Aliens and the galaxy-wide Industrial Steel look, I guess they didn't get the memo that the future is supposed to be shiny and plastic.
On the subject of architecture, how about the city-scapes we've seen so far: Judge Dredd, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, SW:Episode One.
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Well, to post something else in here other than Sol bashing, I rather did like the concept of the changeable architecture in Dark City. The people in the experiment were effected by the city in which they lived.
------------------ Even as I speak, the scourge of advertising could be heading toward _your_ town! Lock your doors, bar your windows, because the next advertisement you see could destroy your house and eat your family! ~Kent Brockman
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I never could get interested in the Alien movies. I like Ms Weaver in just about any other role, and she must have done a good job with Aliens, but I aways get bored after 15 or 20 minutes, and turn it off.
The archittecture in Star Wars was my favorite of movie cities so far. Trantor come to life.
Of the other things mentioned in this thread, I've only seen Dune, and while I loved the book, the movie was way out there.
For TV Cities, I really liked Minbar. The crystal city was beautiful. Quo'nos for it's dark look.
Gotham city in the first Batman movie, now there was a dark forbidding city on Earth. Very well done, and never the same in the later movies.
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