SOURCE: “The Consuming Landscape: Architecture in the Films of Michelangelo Antonioni,” in Architecture and Film, edited by Mark Lamster, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000, pp. 197–215.

In the following essay, Schwarzer analyzes the metaphorical use of architecture in Antonioni’s films.

In day-to-day experience, the sight and feel of buildings is subject to extreme shifts of attention, duration, and familiarity. We experience buildings on pragmatic excursions, in the rounds of routine, and via flashes of discovery. In the representation of architecture (through drawing, model, or rendering), by contrast, the approach to buildings is abstract and ideal. With film, the experience of architecture is more directed than in everyday situations and less focused than in architectural representation. In a dark auditorium whose seats point toward a fixed screen, great demands are made of a viewer’s attention and vision. Images of buildings unfold off reels in a linear sequence, yet...