At the Faculty of Architecture and Design, 28 students in the second semester of the Interior Design Bachelor's programme devoted themselves to selected rooms in Wes Anderson's 2014 masterpiece "The Grand Budapest Hotel" in scenography design during the summer semester 2023.
The tragicomedy is set in the fictional republic of Zubrowka and is an unconventional adaptation of Stefan Zweig's memoir "The World of Yesterday" and his personal experiences. In the plot, the director picks up on central motifs of the book: the grief over the destroyed lives of the refugees, the longing for the spirit of classical Europe and the condemnation of National Socialism.
"Mr. Anderson is no realist. This movie makes a marvelous mockery of history,
turning its horrors into a series of graceful jokes and mischievous gestures.
You can call this escapism if you like. You can also think of it as revenge."
Anthony Oliver Scott, The New York Times
Among the film's many accolades are Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Music Written for Motion Pictures, and Best Production Design. The student project focused on the work of production designers Anna Pinnock and Adam Stockhausen and graphic designer and prop maker Annie Atkins. Over the course of a few weeks, students analyzed selected film scenes and reconstructed architectural information from still images. Plan material could only be researched sporadically and when – not untypical for film buildings – in different versions. The students finally translated this content into model miniatures with different scales. The experience that the rules of the game of film architecture are quite different from real building, despite many similarities, was as much a part of the design process as experimenting with model building materials and their joining to capture the unique character of the set designs.
With the kind support of the state of Baden-Württemberg.
The exhibition will be on display until the end of January 2024, enjoy watching!
Text: Prof. Andreas Kretzer, andreas.kretzer@hft-stuttgart.de
The scenography design in the summer semester 2023 was supervised by Prof. Andreas Kretzer.
