inception and architecture

An idea is more than a thought. It’s a virus, a cancer of sorts, that can spread until it completely takes over a person, until it defines the person. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. – Inception

as an individual embedded in the field of architecture, the wake of the movie Inception certainly does provoke my thought. I think the writing of this piece comes in a good time where everybody have seen the movie; if not don’t read this onwards. though I’m not going to recite the plot, I’m going to relate how Inception is deeply rooted with architecture, not in obvious sense – but in a much more thought-provoking manner.

It all began with architecture. “Whether it’s through the manipulation of structures to show the power of the dreamers, as in the folding streets of Paris, or in the crumbling towers of Limbo, which symbolize the advancing collapse of Cobb’s mental state [played by Leonardo DiCaprio], the design of the built environment is always significant,” explains Paul Franklin, the overall visual effects supervisor, who collaborated with Dneg’s Pete Bebb, the CG supervisor, and Andy Lockley, the 2D supervisor, among others. – Bill Desowitz

Greek labyrinth and Inception

Christopher Nolan certainly have put forward of how architecture have shaped our surrounding environment; and where architect’s drawings of mazes (plans in architectural term) – resulting in us being inside the maze, finding our way in and around the walls. In one scene, we are shown how Dom Cobb examined the capabilities of Ariadne as a dream-architect to design a series of mazes. this idea of the maze in fact can be traced to the Labyrinth, a seemingly mythological structure envisioned by Daedalus to contain the aggressive creature, Minotaur. however, in our world we are the Minotaur, architecture is the maze we created  to impose order and contain our behaviors before a chaotic world.

What happens when you messed up with physics?

another interesting idea is how we are consistently obsessed with an ideal albeit dream-like Utopian world. Nolan alluded that the Utopia is only achievable in the dream world rather than reality; this popularized scene of how Ariadne attempted to form her dream world into a mobius-like band, shattering reality and challenging the possibility of an imagined dream world.

that particular scene reminds me of the ‘Stanford Torus’, painted by space artist Donald Davis. the torus is in fact a conception of a massive space station, artificial ecosystem if you will, rotating in such a manner that provides centrifugal, artificial gravity as described in the novel Ringworld by Larry Niven. it sounds impossible, financially yes, but possible in physical reality. some of you avid gamers might recall this to Bungee’s Halo (the name itself refers to the ringed space station) and maybe Mass Effect as well.

the most obvious but the most interesting idea however is the limbo state, the deepest level of dreams. Dom Cobb’s 50 years work, the architectural Utopia  is manifested here. it is a now quite a common idea that it bears remarkable influence of the great modernist Le Corbusier’s never achieved Contemporary City (I thought I was the first one to notice that, silly me) – filled with massive cartesian skyscrapers, a Hausmann-scale rebuilding of the Paris built environment. the scene also perpetrates how this modernist utopia is so devoid of life, immediately questioning the reality of the modernist dream.

In addition, John Powers noted that the crumbling of Dom Cobb’s Utopia parallels the demolition of Prutt Igoe, the Death of Modern Architecture as taunted by Charles Jencks. the Modernist Utopia is seemingly full of contradictions, of illusion and reality – and as a result, Dom Cobb would never trust himself to be a dream-architect.

In the end, the Inception is really an interesting critique of the role of architecture – though I do disagree with the idea of an unachievable Utopia. I think that the Modernist dream did not fail completely; it provides us a platform to re-evaluate our definition of Utopia – not scrapping the whole idea of Utopia itself. Post-Modernism and particularly Deconstructionist architecture is a pretentious not to mention the wrong way to reflect back at Modernism itself.

Our answer to the failure of Modernism has always been there. It has been predicted by Alvar Aalto, written by Juhani Pallasmaa, and practiced by Peter Zumthor. It is manifested inside the Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Open our eyes of the mind and we will see it. – Yang Yang

extra readings

• visual effects: Inception by Bill Desowitz
• architecture of inception: combat archaeologies by John Powers
• inception’s dream architecture

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