Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546606
P O N I E S | P E R S P E C T I V E 3 7 At a macro scale, my goal was to interrogate the architectural language of the time in both America and the Soviet Union. I came to the project knowing only the West's version as told in films. Along with perusing the stacks in the library, I watched films that were the height of culture inside the USSR. What did it look like to them when they held up the mirror of entertainment? In the US and the West, the mid-century offered sweeping, open spaces as the style of the future. Office floor plans opened up, living rooms and dining rooms commingled, even kitchens lost their doors. What walls were left often became sheets of crystal-clear glass. This was what freedom looked like. The West is open, accepting, there's nothing to hide. I took this knowledge with me in designing the office for the US Embassy in Moscow. The production found a hulking eclectic neoclassical building on József Nádor Square that gave us the sense that we were in the powerful grip of the USSR. We layered the offices inside like a matryoshka doll, inside the heavy shell was the US Embassy, bright, open and full of color. To create the proper contrast, the crew made a little America inside the walls. I worked closely with US Supervising Art Director Christine Foley, who was overseeing the designs to make sure they responded to American sensibilities—which included measuring standard dimensions in feet and inches, not meters. It was a huge task that could bewilder the most competent construction team, but it made a difference when an actor walked in and could lean on a counter at the "proper" height. Stepping deeper into the machinations of the embassy, doors appear—first glass, then solid, then entirely hidden—like the secrets the US wasn't supposed to be keeping. Up in the attic of the embassy lived the cramped CIA office, nicknamed the "Yellow Submarine" by the actual agents of the time. To pay homage, we worked in pipes, fittings and fixtures to evoke the comparison, while the building's heavy mansard roof presses down on the perfunctory space. C D B