Architecture Education as a "Gateway Curriculum"

Architectural education, as taught in universities and colleges around the world, produces more than architects. With its focus on collaboration and creative problem solving, its attention to detail, history, and aesthetics, and its project-based approach to learning, architectural education enables students to learn and hone skills in critical thinking, graphic design, three-dimensional conceptualization, and physical construction that are useful in many other professions.

Think of architectural education as a “gateway curriculum” that leads to many possible careers. With the training architecture students receive, they can become, to name just a few professions, interior designers, city planners, industrial designers, real estate developers, building inspectors, facility managers, construction managers, computer game designers, and CGI artists. And one other that’s a natural fit for them, one that also involves creativity, aesthetics, 3D thinking, and physical construction: film design.

Art directors and production designers—I’ll use the two terms interchangeably and abbreviate them as “AD/PD”—have been essential to filmmaking since the movies’ earliest days. Because they design indoor and outdoor physical environments, they need the same skills as architects, so it’s not surprising that many AD/PDs were trained as architects. As Dean Tavoularis, an AD/PD we’ll meet later, has said, “My college background was ideal for a career in production design. I studied architecture . . . [which] taught me how to think in terms of the volume of a space.” About the education of a production designer, another of the AD/PDs we’ll soon meet, Ken Adam, said, “Get an architectural background—history of architecture, design, composition, draughting—all very useful.” [1]

In what follows, we’ll look at some of the important AP/PDs who attended (and in most cases, graduated from) architecture schools. We’ll take them geographically, by school location, starting with Europe and ending close to home—my home, that is—with the architecture school that has produced more noteworthy AD/PDs than any other.

Continental Europe

We’ll start with two early modernist architects who dabbled in film design. Hans Poelzig (1869–1936), who studied architecture at the Technische Universit?t in Berlin-Charlottenburg, designed four films, but only The Golem (1920) is still known today. Another early modernist architect, Robert Mallet-Stevens (1886–1945), studied architecture at the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture. In addition to buildings, he designed a dozen silent French movies that are forgotten today, along with one of the earliest film versions of The Three Musketeers (1921).

Hans Dreier (1885–1966) studied architecture and engineering at Munich University, fought in World War I (on the losing side), and worked as an architect in South Africa and what is now the Republic of Cameroon before joining Germany’s largest film studio, UFA, as a designer in 1919. Four years later he emigrated to the U.S. and joined Paramount Pictures, where he was supervising art director from 1927 to 1950. While Dreier designed many important movies, including For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), and Sunset Blvd. (1950), he may be more significant for mentoring several of the designers we’ll talk about later.

Allan Starski (b. 1943) received his architecture degree from Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts. He was already a leading AD/PD in Poland, having designed such international successes as Man of Marble (1977), Danton (1983), and Europa, Europa (1990), when Steven Spielberg chose him to design Schindler’s List (1993). That led to a second career in designing English-language films, such as The Pianist (2002) and Hannibal Rising (2007).

Several of our AD/PDs studied at one of the premier schools of architecture of the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the école des Beaux-Arts de Paris. German-born Carl Jules Weyl (1890–1948), after leaving the école, became a successful Los Angeles architect in the 1920s, with the Brown Derby Restaurant and the Hollywood Palace Theatre among his designs. His practice dried up with the Great Depression, so he went to Warner Bros., where he designed such classics as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Casablanca (1942), and The Big Sleep (1946).

Before traveling to Paris and the école, Wiard Ihnen (1897–1979) studied architecture at Columbia University. His Hollywood movie career began in the early 1920s; his significant movies included Blonde Venus (1932), Jane Eyre (1943) (Image 7 above), and Rancho Notorious (1952).

After studying at the Ecole, Van Nest Polglase (1898–1969) worked in a New York firm until 1917, when he moved to Havana to help design the presidential palace. Wiard Ihnen brought him to Paramount as a drafter. Later, as AD/PD, he designed more than 300 movies, with his best years at RKO, where he designed or codesigned Citizen Kane (1941), Suspicion (1941) and the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies The Gay Divorcee (1934), Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), and Carefree ((1938).

A more recent école student is Dan Weil. [2] He designed for small theater companies and TV commercials before getting into movies, and is now a leading AD/PD in the French film industry, with such international successes as Total Eclipse (1995), The Fifth Element (1997), The Bourne Identity (2002), and Blood Diamond (2006).

Preston Ames (1906–1983) also studied architecture in France (I don't know which school) and worked in a San Francisco architectural office until the Great Depression caught up to him. He entered the movie business in 1936 and designed An American in Paris (1951), The Band Wagon (1953), Lust for Life (1956), Airport (1971), and Earthquake (1974).

Five of our European AD/PDs attended Italian architecture schools. Two studied at the University of Rome: Carlo Simi (1924–2000), who was architect before finding a new career designing sets and costumes for spaghetti westerns. His most significant work was For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), Once upon a Time in the West (1968), and Once Upon a Time in America (1984), for which he recreated New York of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1960s (Image 9). And Ferdinando Scarfiotti (1941–1994), who progressed from architecture graduate to designing opera sets and then movies, including Death in Venice (1971) and The Last Emperor (1987). He also served as visual consultant for American Gigolo (1980), Cat People (1982), and Scarface (1983).

Franco Zeffirelli (1923–2019) studied art and architecture at the University of Florence. His studies were interrupted by World War II, during which he fought against the fascists. After Italy’s liberation, he found his way into theater and opera design, ultimately designing more than a dozen filmed operas (and getting an Academy Award nomination for La Traviata (2002)). He is more famous, however, as a film director, especially for Romeo and Juliet (1968). His other claim to fame: He was related to Leonardo da Vinci.

Speaking of Renaissance men, Lorenzo Mongiardino (1916–1998), who studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, became a practicing architect, a writer, a theater set designer, and an interior designer (for such celebrities as Aristotle Onassis, Gianni Versace, and the Hearsts), before taking on movies. He designed just four films, including three with his theater colleague Franco Zeffirelli. He was nominated for Academy Awards on two of those movies—The Taming of the Shrew (1967) and Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972)—giving him a lifetime .500 batting average (two nominations out of four films).

Ezio Frigerio (1930–2022) also studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and, like Zeffirelli, took his theater and opera design career into designing movies, including 1900 (1976), Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), and The Horseman on the Roof (1995).

From the Continent we’ll move west, across the English Channel . . .

United Kingdom

Carmen Dillon (1908–2000) spent six years training as an architect before following her love of acting and design into the British film industry. From 1938 to 1979, she designed more than 50 movies, including Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), Richard III (1955), The Omen (1976), and Julia (1977). She is known as the first British female art director.

Donald M. Ashton (1919–1985) trained as an architect in London when World War II interrupted his career plans. After serving in the Royal Air Force and being posted in Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), he broke into the movie business and designed a dozen movies we’ve never heard of. He then returned to Sri Lanka to design his masterpiece, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) (Image 4) [3]. After receiving an Academy Award nomination for Young Winston (1972), he left the movie business and began a new career as a hotel designer for the Sheraton and Mandarin Oriental chains.

After studying architecture at the University of North London and fighting in World War II, John Box (1920–2005) joined the British film industry as an assistant to Carmen Dillon. He is best known for his work with director David Lean, designing the epics Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984). Other significant work includes The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), for which he recreated a Chinese city in Wales (Image 8), Oliver (1968), and Nicholas and Alexandra (1971).

Berlin-born Ken Adam (1921–2016) moved with his family to England in 1934 to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews. He attended the Bartlett School of Architecture at the University College of London and joined the Royal Air Force in World War II, one of three German-born RAF pilots. After the war, Adam designed Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Dr. Strangelove (1964), Barry Lyndon (1975), and seven James Bond films, including Dr. No (1962), You Only Live Twice (1967), and Goldfinger (1964), for which he reimagined Fort Knox (Image 1). [4]

Arthur Max (b. 1946) received his architecture degree from the Polytechnic of Central London. His architectural practice led him to lighting design, which in turn led him into stage and film design. A frequent collaborator with Ridley Scott, his movies include Gladiator (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001), American Gangster (2007), and House of Gucci (2021).

John Barry (1935–1979) studied architecture at Kingston College in London before taking his training into stage design and then the movies as a drafter for Cleopatra (1963). His first movie as production designer was Kelly’s Heroes (1970), after which Stanley Kubrick hired him to design Napoleon. When that project died, he moved on to Kubrick’s next film, A Clockwork Orange (1971). Barry’s career appeared to be soaring in the late 1970s when he was production designer on three major movies: Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978), and Superman II (1979). George Lucas hired him as second unit director for The Empire Strikes Back (1980) when, two weeks into production, he collapsed and died, at age 44, of meningitis.

Two of our AD/PDs studied architecture at Willesden Technical College in London. After interning in architecture, John Graysmark (1935–2010) became a drafter (including a two-year uncredited stint for 2001: A Space Odyssey) at MGM’s Borehamwood studios, where his father was chief construction manager. He moved up to production designer in the 1980s on such films as Ragtime (1981), The Bounty (1984), and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). Leslie Dilley (b. 1941) spent five years working as a plasterer with Pinewood Studios. He was promoted to drafter, then eventually to art director. His movies include Star Wars (1977) (with John Barry), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Alien (1979), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and The Abyss (1989),

After studying theater design, Eve Stewart (b. 1961) earned a Master of Architecture from London’s Royal Academy of Art. Her true love was theater, and she moved from stage design to movie design. Her film résumé includes Topsy-Turvy (1999), The King’s Speech (2010), Les Misérables (2012), and Cats (2019) [5].

We now continue west, across the Atlantic . . .

United States (East of Mississippi River)

After graduating from Syracuse University, Stephen Goosson (1889–1973) practiced architecture in Detroit from 1915 to 1919 before starting his long career with Columbia Pictures, where he was supervising art director for 25 years. His significant movie designs include Lost Horizon (1937) (Image 2), Gilda (1946), and The Lady from Shanghai (1947).

The University of Pennsylvania produced two of our AD/PDs. George Jenkins (1908–2007) moved from architecture to set design on Broadway in the 1940s, receiving a 1960 Tony nomination for The Miracle Worker. He began designing films in 1947, and his work included the film version of The Miracle Worker (1962), Wait Until Dark (1967), All the President’s Men (1976), and Sophie’s Choice (1982). The other U Penn graduate, John S. Detlie (1908–2005), worked as an AD/PD from 1937 to 1942, designing such movies as Another Thin Man (1939), Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), and Bitter Sweet (1940). After serving in World War II, during which he designed camouflage for the Boeing plant in Seattle, he settled into a traditional architectural practice, designing churches in Seattle and Honolulu.

Albert Heschong (1919–2001) attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology, first in the drama department, then in the architecture program. It turned out theater was his real passion, and after graduation he joined a theatrical company. During World War II, he used his skills, like John Detlie, to design camouflage, then to interpret aerial reconnaissance photographs. He eventually found his way into television production, designing dozens of made-for-TV movies. Among his few theatrical films are Crossroads (1986) and Flight of the Intruder (1991).

A graduate of the University of Chicago, Jan Scott (1914–2003) designed just a handful of theatrical movies, including The World of Henry Orient (1964) and Rich and Famous (1981). She focused her career on made-for-TV movies and miniseries, of which she designed dozens, such as Eleanor and Franklin (1976), Roots (1977), and Marilyn: The Untold Story (1981). She won 11 Primetime Emmy Awards for her designs.

Two of our AD/PDs graduated from the University of Illinois, and they happened to be brothers. Hal Pereira (1905–1983) and his younger brother William Pereira (1909–1985) both worked in film design (and won Academy Awards) but took different career paths. Hal joined Paramount Pictures and learned to be an art director under the mentorship of Hans Dreier. In his 24-year career, Hal designed more than 200 movies, including When Worlds Collide (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Shane (1953), Stalag 17 (1953), The Ten Commandments (1956), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), and The Odd Couple (1968). Meanwhile, William took a more traditional architectural career path. He led the design for such celebrated projects as the Geisel Library at the University of California San Diego, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the LAX Theme Building (seen in many movies), and the recently demolished Los Angeles County Museum of Art complex. He also had a brief career in the movies in the 1940s, serving as production designer (with Wiard Ihnen) on Jane Eyre (Image 7) and winning an Academy Award for visual effects on Reap the Wild Wind (1942). One of William Pereira’s final buildings, the Fox Plaza in LA’s Century City, is famous as the Nakatomi Tower in Die Hard (1988).

United States (West of Mississippi River)

After the Russian Revolution, Alexander Golitzen’s (1908–2005) family fled from Moscow (they had tsarist ties) to Seattle, where Golitzen earned his architecture degree from the University of Washington. In 1933 he moved to Los Angeles and found work as an illustrator at MGM. Two years later, he began his long career as an art director. His best design work was for Foreign Correspondent (1940), Touch of Evil (1958), Spartacus (1960), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Airport (1970), and Earthquake (1974).

Lawrence G. Paull (1948–2019) earned his architecture degree at the University of Arizona. The movies he designed include Blade Runner (1982), Back to the Future (1985), Harlem Nights (1989), and Escape from L.A. (1996).

Japanese-born Eddie Imazu (1897–1979) graduated from the famous Hollywood High School and majored in architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. While in school he attended a party hosted by Sessue Hayakawa (a Japanese American movie star of the 1920s, later famous for The Bridge on the River Kwai), where he was offered a job at MGM. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Imazu, despite being employed at Hollywood’s most important studio (but without American citizenship, not that being a citizen would have mattered), was sent with his family to relocation camps in Arkansas. After the war, he re-established his career and designed several of director John Ford’s last movies: Sergeant Rutledge (1960), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Donovan’s Reef (1963), and 7 Women (1965). Imazu’s other credits include The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956).

Another University of California, Berkeley architecture graduate was John Beckman (1898–1989). He worked at the architectural firm of Meyer & Holler, where he contributed to the designs of the Egyptian Theater and Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. His film credits include Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Calamity Jane (1953), and Gypsy (1962).

Herman Rosse (1887–1965) studied architecture in his native Delft and in London before earning his B.A. in architecture at Stanford University in 1910. He spent the next few years as an architect, painter, interior designer, theatrical set designer, and department head of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1929, his stage design experience took him to Hollywood, where he worked for Universal Pictures, designing just a few movies, including the classics Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), as well as winning an Academy Award for King of Jazz (1930). After leaving the movie business in 1936, he returned to teaching and stage design. His post-Hollywood career also included designing world’s fair pavilions for the Netherlands in Brussels, Paris, and New York.

William J. Creber (1931–2019) majored in pre-architecture at Santa Monica City College before getting into film design. His credits include Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and The Towering Inferno (1974), as well as designing the flying sub for the TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964–1966).

Dean Tavoularis (b. 1932) studied architecture at Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) in Los Angeles before joining Disney’s animation department. As AD/PD, he designed 13 Francis Coppola movies, including the three Godfathers (1972, 1974, 1990), Apocalypse Now (1979) (Image 3), and One from the Heart (1981), as well as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Farewell My Lovely (1975).

And finally, we’ve arrived in Los Angeles and at the architecture school that has produced more AD/PDs than any other:

University of Southern California

In 1914, USC began its architecture program, and in 1925 instituted its School of Architecture. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, when most architecture firms struggled to survive, the Hollywood studios, being busy and in the neighborhood, were a logical place of employment. Ever since, USC has been the training ground for many AD/PDs, including these dozen important ones:

John Meehan (1902–1963) had spent just 10 years designing movies before working exclusively on television productions. But in that short period he designed The Virginian (1946), The Heiress (1949), Sunset Blvd. (with Hans Dreier), and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

Randall Duell (1903–1992) graduated from USC in 1925 and, while working for the firm Webber, Staunton and Spaulding, designed the Avalon Casino on Catalina Island as well as buildings at Pomona College. In 1937, in the middle of the Great Depression, Duell found work at MGM, where he became one of their top AD/PDs, designing Ninotchka (1939), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Singin’ in the Rain (1952) (Image 6), and Blackboard Jungle (1955). He left MGM in 1959, but his design career wasn’t over. After working with Marco Engineering, known for designing theme parks, he formed his own theme park design firm. His work included Six Flags over Texas (1961), Universal Studios Tour (1964), AstroWorld (1968), Six Flags Magic Mountain (1971), Opryland in Nashville (1972), and MGM Grand Adventures Theme Park in Las Vegas (1993).

Lyle Wheeler (1905–1990) joined MGM and become an art director in 1936. It was Wheeler who, for the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind, proposed torching the old King Kong sets. Wheeler moved to 20th Century Fox in 1944 as supervising art director, where he designed Laura (1945), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), Viva Zapata! (1952), The Robe (1953), The King and I (1956), and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). ?????

Edward Carfagno (1907–1996) began in movie design as a drafter for The Wizard of Oz (1939). In his long career as AD/PD, he designed Quo Vadis (1951), Ben-Hur (1959), The Hindenburg (1975), and Pale Rider (1985). He was also on the 1940 U.S. Olympic fencing team.

After immigrating to the U.S. in 1927, Moscow-born Boris Leven (1908–1986) graduated from USC in 1932 and, like many Depression-era architectural interns, found work in the movie business. As AD/PD, his major movies included Giant (1956), West Side Story (1961), The Sound of Music (1965), The Andromeda Strain (1971), New York, New York (1977), and The Color of Money (1986).

When Robert F. Boyle (1909–2010) graduated from the USC in 1933, he had every intention of becoming an architect. Unfortunately, thanks to the Great Depression, in his first three months out of school, Boyle worked for three architectural firms, each shutting its doors shortly after he joined. Out of desperation, he found a job at Paramount Studios, working under their supervising art director, Hans Dreier. This began a 56-year career as drafter, art director, and production designer. His earliest credit, as associate art director, was for The Wolf Man (1941). The following year he worked on Saboteur (1942), the first of five collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock. Among his many movies are Cape Fear (1962), The Birds (1963), In Cold Blood (1966), and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). The high point of his career was North by Northwest (1959), for which he designed the memorable Phillip Vandamm House. This work of imaginary modernism, part Frank Lloyd Wright and part John Lautner, is made of field stone, steel, timber, and glass, and features a spectacular cantilever over the mountain side (Image 5). This was one of the first instances of using a work of modern architecture, rather than an old mansion or creepy castle, as a villain’s headquarters, an example followed by most James Bond movies.

In addition to studying architecture at USC, Dorothea Holt Redmond (1910–2009) studied illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. While never credited as an AD/PD, her work as an art department illustrator contributed to the designs of dozens of movies, including Gone with the Wind (1939), Rebecca (1940), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Rear Window (1954), and Funny Face (1957). And despite never receiving AD/PD credit, she is in the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame (more on that below).

Like many USC graduates of his generation, Jack Martin Smith (1911–1993) had the bad timing to enter the workforce during the Great Depression. He joined MGM, where, as a sketch artist, he developed the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz (1939). As art director, at MGM and 20th Century Fox, he designed Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), Cleopatra (1963), Fantastic Voyage (1966), and Hello, Dolly! (1969).

Another Depression-era graduate was Hilyard M. Brown (1910–2002). His career highlights included designs for The Night of the Hunter (1955), Cleopatra (1963) (with Jack Smith), Von Ryan’s Express (1965), and Finian’s Rainbow (1968).

J. McMillan “Mac” Johnson (1912–1990) was working for an architect when producer David O. Selznick lured him into movies by hiring him as a sketch artist on Gone with the Wind. He then became an AD/PD for such movies as Duel in the Sun (1946), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). The Hollywood blacklist hysteria drove him back to architecture, but he returned to design One-Eyed Jacks (1961) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) before starting still another career designing visual effects for two dozen movies, including The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and Ice Station Zebra (1968).

Japanese-born Albert Nozaki (1912–2003) earned his bachelor's degree from USC in 1933 and a master’s degree at the University of Illinois a year later. He found work in the movie business as an art director until World War II, which he spent at the Manzanar Internment Camp in California’s Owens Valley. After the war, he returned to designing such movies as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949), The War of the Worlds (with Hal Pereira), and The Ten Commandments (also with Pereira).?

While studying architecture at USC, Henry Bumstead (1915–2006) began interning at RKO Pictures art department. After serving in World War II, he joined Paramount, working under Hans Dreier. Bumstead designed four movies for Hitchcock, including Vertigo (1958) and Family Plot (1976); eight for George Roy Hill, including The Sting (1973); and 13 for Clint Eastwood, including Unforgiven (1992) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Bumstead’s final movie.

The most recent USC graduate I found was Jack T. Collis (1923–1998). In his 44-year career, he designed Up Periscope (1959), The Last Tycoon (1976), The Long Riders (1980), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), The Running Man (1987), and Far and Away (1992).

Architectural Education’s Impact on the Movies

The 50 individuals we’ve looked at represent just a tiny fraction of the thousands of AD/PDs who have designed the movies. Yet they have made a disproportionate impact. One metric for determining this is the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame. Since the Hall of Fame was started in 2005, 58 AD/PDs have been inducted, of whom 21, or 36%, are among our group of architecture school students [6].

Another metric is the Academy Awards. Among our 50 former-architecture-student AD/PDs, 42 have been nominated at least once, and 26 have won at least once. Since the awards were first handed out in 1928, there have been 899 nominees for best art direction or production design; of those, our AD/PDs account for 203, or 23%. During the same period, there have been 182 winners, of which 45, or 25%, were among our architectural AD/PDs. These are impressive numbers, and provide strong evidence of the value of architectural education on film design.

But a closer look at the Academy Award statistics reveals another story. The generation of architectural students whose career plans were waylaid by the Great Depression—in other words, those who attended architecture school from the mid-1920s until the start of World War II—were among the top AD/PDs for the next 30 to 40 years. Their dominance of the Academy Awards roughly covers the same period. From 1928 through 1979, our AD/PDs accounted for 28% of the nominations and 32% of the wins. However, in the years since 1980, they accounted for just 8% of the nominations and 8% of the wins. What happened?

My hypothesis: During the Depression, not only were there few architectural jobs available to architectural graduates but there also were few design-related job opportunities of any kind. For many of these graduates, film design was their only option. Since then, no matter how severe the economic downturns have been, they were not as global and devastating as the Depression; other opportunities were available, opportunities that perhaps offered even higher pay with fewer years of internship than film design (or architecture, for that matter). As a result, after the Depression, far fewer architectural students entered the movie business. So while film design remains an alternative career path for architectural students, it’s no longer the only one, or even the most appealing one. [7]

Whether architectural graduates select film design as an alternative career, as they often did in the 1930s and 1940s, or if they pick among dozens of other professions in lieu of traditional architectural practice, architectural education remains a significant gateway curriculum. And that’s good for architectural school graduates as well as for the alternative professions they enter. For the graduates, it means more and varied opportunities beyond traditional architectural practice, which is particularly helpful during economic hard times. And the alternative professions benefit by gaining creative yet practical individuals who relish the chance to solve difficult problems. In other words, either way, everyone wins.

Follow the author on Twitter Job Floris l_schmwil.

Footnotes:

[1] Tavoularis is quoted in Production Design & Art Direction Screencraft by Peter Ettedgui. Adam is quoted in Ken Adam: The Art of Production Design by Christopher Frayling. Both books were useful resources, as was Christine French’s The Architecture of Suspense.

[2] Dan Weil is probably the youngest of the still-living AD/PDs we’re talking about, but I can’t know for certain since none of his online bios give his year of birth.

[3] For more on the real bridge, the movie bridge, and the Burma “Death Railway,” see https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/bridge-mae-klong-when-structures-represent-more-than-schmalz-faia?trk=pulse_spock-articles

[4] Adam has another, surprising link to architecture: His family inherited the S. Adam sports and fashion store on the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. In the late 1920s, his father wanted to replace the aging 1863 structure with something new and modern, and hired Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to design a replacement. Renderings and model photographs of the new S. Adam store have been much published, but the building was one of Mies’s many unbuilt projects of the 1930s.

[5] Yes, the movie sucked, but the production design was impressive.

[6] The 21 Hall of Famers are Ken Adam, Preston Ames, Robert Boyle, John Box, Hilyard Brown, Henry Bumstead, Edward Carfagno, William Creber, Carmen Dillon, Hans Dreier, Alexander Golitzen, Stephen Goosson, Albert Heschong, Mac Johnson, Boris Leven, John Meehan, Van Nest Polglase, Dorothea Redmond, Ferdinando Scarfiotti, Jan Scott, and Lyle Wheeler. Nine of them were educated at the USC School of Architecture.

[7] Another reason for the decrease in architect-AD/PDs being nominated for Academy Awards since 1980 may be that online bios of living and recently active AD/PDs tend to be skimpy on details. The best biographical information generally comes, sadly, from obituaries. Wikipedia and IMDb provide good info for older AD/PDs, but not for recent or active ones. So it’s quite possible that some of the more recent Academy Award nominees had architectural educations without my knowing it. Nonetheless, I suspect that the post-1980 decline wouldn’t change much.?