2032 vs. 2049
2032 vs. 2049:
Blade Runner (1982), Ridley Scott
"Vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above... The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculated to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior." - Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward
Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Dennis Villeneuve
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Perhaps one of the only similarities between the architecture of both films is the location: Los Angeles. Most notably, Los Angeles' Bradbury Building (Italian Renaissance Revival) and Ennis House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, are easily distinguished from the futuristic cityscape of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. The architectural duality between class distinctions in Scott's Blade Runner is seen in the opening scene through skyscrapers vs. dark city streets; the wealthy exist above the erosion of the ground-level city streets, while the lower-class reside within the degradation. This class distinction is also seen in the paradox between scenes of the interior of the Bradbury Building, through a massive rooftop skylight vs. dark and mechanical lower levels of the structure.
The difference between the two films, however, lie in the architecture; while Ridley Scott's Blade Runner is Hugh Ferriss' "The Metropolis of Tomorrow", Blade Runner 2049 is brutalist with notable buildings like the LAPD Headquarters and the Wallace Tower (with interiors based off the unbuilt Estudio Barozzi Veiga's Neanderthal Museum concept). The architecture within the 2049 Los Angeles features less distinction between architectural forms, which seem to portray an even more downtrodden and claustrophobic cityscape than 2032 Los Angeles. Both 2032 and 2049 suggest that our futuristic cityscapes combine a globalized nodal architecture with rundown structures of the past.
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Hugh Ferris' The Metropolis of Tomorrow
The Wallace Tower, Blade Runner 2049
Carley, I am a big fan of both of these films, but I haven't really learned about the architectural influences in them. So your post was really interesting! Whenever, I have watched the movies I am always stuck by the scale and tone of the environment that the characters find themselves in. For the most part, they go around crushed by the massive, inhuman-sized city - except for a few brief contrasting moments in a rainy street or apartment. Despite this scale and maybe because of it, the architecture portrayed is wildly powerful. Anyways, great movies.
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