Projections for the Urban Night: A Film-based Exploration in the Design Studio

Abstract

Film inspires the spatial and societal imaginations of architects and urban designers, and thus, design teachers have long been experimenting with films, filmic techniques, and filmmaking in the studio. Building on the course design and student output of an undergraduate architectural design studio entitled Projections for the Urban Night, this essay aims to demonstrate how film can be utilized as a pedagogical tool to examine the built environment and for imagining possible futures. The studio drew upon cinematic techniques of collage, storyboarding, physical model animation, and film essays for the development of individual proposals. Based on a discussion of student projects, the essay makes an argument for film to serve as more than representation, highlighting its potential as instigator for what to design. The essay begins with a review and analysis of past experiments, examining how architects, urban designers, and design teachers have invoked film in relation to design. Contemporary pedagogic experiments using film tend to display an enchantment with the application of technology and digital media at the expense of critical reflections on the ideological frameworks that undergird the designs. The essay then moves on to the discussion of the specific studio in which the focus on the technological aspect was circumvented by asking students to develop scenarios for the near-future commoning of the urban night—drawing on the interdisciplinary research area of “Night Studies.” This discussion is supported by references to students’ explorations and the essay argues that the thematic intervention, asking students to design for the night, to develop programs that take into consideration social and physical activity after dark, opened up new possibilities to critique hegemonic practices.