Science Fiction Movies and famous architecture have a particularly strong tradition, however the link is not always flattering. Since much science fiction deals with a dystopic vision of the future, architecture is often seen as part of the environmental cause, from Philadelphia’s abandoned, alienating, solitary confinement based, Quaker prison in 12 Monkeys to the architectural brutalism of Brunel University in the literally brutal Clockwork Orange.
In the Truman show, the blandness and superficiality of Seaside in Florida makes a real location feel like a set, and the accidental neo-classical fascist style Ronald Reagan building in Washington is a perfect authoritarian backdrop for Minority Report.
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Just as modernist architecture was built with the best intentions to sweep people up from the slums into pristine but ultimately alienating boxes, the ESP was built under the auspices of Quaker reformist ideas.
It was built to scoop prisoners out of squalid places of violent interaction with other prisoners, to clean monastic solitary confinement with a bible, where no interaction with human beings would return people to a pure state.
Instead it turned people insane.
In 12 Monkeys the main protagonist is locked up here and deemed crazy, which he begins to be, unable to communicate an unbelievable story to others.
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The Ennis house is both modern and timeless, inventing a genuinely new decorative style - and its in LA, making it highly appropriate for Blade Runner which mixed old and new to create a vision of the future which wouldnt date quite as obviously as yesterdays interpretation of modern.
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So little is known about the Mayans that their architecture makes a suitable substitute for something genuinely other worldly.
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The sheer absurdity of the massive organic concrete structure, although magnificent, is at the same time an overblown caricature, perfect for the parody of modernism in Woody Allen's science fiction comedy.
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In THX-1138, this was merely a conveniently local piece of architecture that looked like a contemporary vision of the future, rather like the Texas modernism in Logans Run.
In Gattaca, this building fitted the overall consciously retro-futuristic style.
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The Fifth Element, with its Gaultier clothing and cartoon like sets, mixed high camp with sci-fi, and there is nothing quite as high camp as the wedding cake like interior of an Opera House.
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The ministry is owned in its entirety by Theo's cousin Nigel who is the very epitome of a prosperous Blairite, just as the building itself is a monument to Londons recent wealth. You can't help but feel that the choice of this building is deliberate and satirical.
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Interestingly, although Greene and Greene were groundbreaking architects, their stye has become so emblematic of America that this house was used in these films not to represent a mildly quirky take on the future or modern, but the comfort of the present and of home.
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These were hailed as great buildings, at the time, raised on piloti and allowing an expensive West London landscape to flow underneath them. The film makers seem to have known better, in hindsight.
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Rich people in the film inhabit more traditional buildings, except for this one example of more sensitive modernism. The interior of the writers house in Clockwork Orange is a particularly obscure but notable piece of architecture, being designed by both Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, when they were together in Team 4.
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The very mediocrity of Seaside made it the perfect setting for the flawed utopia of the Truman show.
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The Orwellian police agency in Minority Report, used this building as its appropriate setting.
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