After spending a semester studying the architecture of film, our final project was to design a film school annex to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Located on a triangular site along Flatbush Ave, the spot of various unbuilt design competitions, we were assigned a particular film to interpret into a building.
Memento, by Christopher Nolan, depicts a vengeant protagonist Leonard who, despite his anterograde amnesia, searches desperately for his wife’s killer. To experience the story as Lenny would, it is told alternating between two storylines, the main one starting from his most recent memories, the other from the beginning of the storyline. The film switches back and forth until they meet near the middle of the storyline at the conclusion of the film.
This film school operates the same way, alternating the film education and production spaces (black) with the public spaces for experiencing the final product (white). The idea is to integrate and educate the viewers on the production process of film, and vice versa.
The building, like the movie, is navigated through mementos, or moments, created in the vertical circulation towers or floating pathways connecting sections. As Lenny uses his tattoos and photographs to find his way without memory, these objects allow users to navigate and understand the spatial organization of this film school.
