Overview

From the Red Room in Twin Peaks to Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive, the work of David Lynch contains some of the most remarkable spaces in contemporary culture. Richard Martin’s compelling study is the first sustained critical assessment of the role architecture and design play in Lynch’s films. Martin combines original research at Lynchian locations in Los Angeles, London and Lódz with insights from architects including Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier and Jean Nouvel and urban theorists such as Jane Jacobs and Edward Soja. In analyzing the towns, cities, homes, roads and stages found in Lynch’s work, Martin not only reveals their central importance for understanding this controversial and distinctive film-maker, but also suggests how Lynch’s films can provide a deeper understanding of the places and spaces in which we live.

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9781472505484

Table of Contents

Reviews

While David Lynch's admirers have long marvelled at his talents as an engineer of atmosphere, the director's architectural thinking has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. The Architecture of David Lynch is thus a welcome study. Brimming with insight and intelligence, this book inhabits the obsessive spatial topoi of Lynch's films, and finds there the traces of history. In Martin's fascinating account, Lynch's moody architecture is a way of engaging modernity's built environments through the kinds of spaces that only cinema can fashion. -- Justus Nieland, Michigan State University, USA

While David Lynch's admirers have long marvelled at his talents as an engineer of atmosphere, the director's architectural thinking has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. The Architecture of David Lynch is thus a welcome study. Brimming with insight and intelligence, this book inhabits the obsessive spatial topoi of Lynch's films, and finds there the traces of history. In Martin's fascinating account, Lynch's moody architecture is a way of engaging modernity's built environments through the kinds of spaces that only cinema can fashion. -- Justus Nieland, Michigan State University, USA Architecture is more central to the cinema of David Lynch than that of any other filmmaker, and now a book finally exists that not only grasps architecture's significance for Lynch but shows that it is impossible to understand these films without a thorough knowledge of the role that architecture plays in them. Martin's book is godsend for anyone with even a passing interest in David Lynch or the relationship between architecture and cinema. He bombards us with insight after insight. -- Todd McGowan, University of Vermont, USA

Architecture is more central to the cinema of David Lynch than that of any other film-maker, and now a book finally exists that not only grasps architecture's significance for Lynch but shows that it is impossible to understand these films without a thorough knowledge of the role that architecture plays in them. Martin's book is godsend for anyone with even a passing interest in David Lynch or the relationship between architecture and cinema. He bombards us with insight after insight. -- Todd McGowan, University of Vermont, USA In this important and original study Richard Martin explores connections between the cinema of David Lynch and a series of distinctive urban spaces, drawing on insights from architectural history, cultural geography and contemporary film theory. -- Matthew Gandy, University College London, UK While David Lynch's admirers have long marvelled at his talents as an engineer of atmosphere, the director's architectural thinking has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. The Architecture of David Lynch is thus a welcome study. Brimming with insight and intelligence, this book inhabits the obsessive spatial topoi of Lynch's films, and finds there the traces of history. In Martin's fascinating account, Lynch's moody architecture is a way of engaging modernity's built environments through the kinds of spaces that only cinema can fashion. -- Justus Nieland, Michigan State University, USA

Author Information

Richard Martin completed his PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, having previously worked at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). He has taught at Birkbeck, Middlesex University and Tate Modern.

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