Architectural Digest: the ultra modern homes of movie villains

[silverstarry]

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Architect Valery Augustin discusses the ultra modern lairs of movie villains, often displaying Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired modernist designs, 360 views, and lavish interiors. Movies covered: North by Northwest, Body Double/Charlie's Angels (2000), The Big Lebowski, Goldfinger, Batman v Superman

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Comments

[squirrels_oh_no]

Modernism being associated with evil always makes me >.> because those supervillains are always evil geniuses who are defeated by being stupid and defeated by muscles. Brawn over brains lmao.

But man i want a modernist or post-modernist house. I am just so into the aesthetic, especially brutalism. I guess that makes me evil.

[anterrabre]

My grad school campus had a lot of brutalist structures and buildings on campus and gave me an appreciation for them. There's some beautiful structures all over the African continent; I adore the African Brutalism account on Insta.

[squirrels_oh_no]

I used to work across the street from the infamous 33 Thomas Street in NYC which has influenced a lot of shady organization HQs in media (also in reality since it's an NSA listening site called Titanpointe as labeled on Google Maps even) and that building is *chef's kiss* it's even influenced my own writing just by existing and being shady as fuck.

And since my internet has come back on after it's daily outage, here are some videos! And if you have ever played the video game Control, it was the inspiration for The Oldest House, but it's been the inspiration behind lots of creepy things.

[itwontchange]

i used to pass by this all the time and thought it was a jail of some sort lol

[silverstarry]

Two of my universities featured Brutalist buildings that were so ugly to me. I wish I could appreciate them but I never liked them and I think they ended up biasing me against Brutalist buildings in general.

[anterrabre]

I think it's very polarizing? Either you like it or you hate it, there's no inbetween.

[squirrels_oh_no]

Brutalism that doesn't have any flare is just bland. Brutalism done well is amazing, almost science fiction-like. Have you ever seen the brutalist monuments/concrete utopianism of Yugoslavia? A lot of those still exist and they are weird and amazing. The spomeniks in particular. They're more pure modernism than brutalism, but socialist mid-century architecture is amazing.

[alwayspolaris]

I think ecobrutalist structures are really beautiful - the contrast is really what makes it. Looking at that insta account Africa really gets it. All of their structures are surrounded by at minimum beautiful trees to keep the structures looking stately rather than depressing, and the windows/light situation is great. They become kind of inhuman and unliveable without that light and natural element to ground them.

[alwayspolaris]

I wonder if a big part of it is because modernism is associated with wealth - all the fashionable, engineering marvels tend to be owned by the ultrawealthy. On the other hand, Brutalist structures are sometimes built as art or for the public good, but often they are built by the government for budget-pinching or fortress-building/law enforcement reasons. And though the structures can be beautiful, the people who have them built are often villains so it seems very fitting. The only question is why we don't do the same for palaces and mansions and other oversized homes built by exploiting laborers? We seem better able to accept historical exploitation than modern.

That said, it'd be nice to see more modern public structures like schools and libraries or community centers, on film and in real life.