Sinister cine-scape: an ostranenie of the everyday through the films of Alfred Hitchcock

Abstract

Formal education is primarily based upon learning about space through static two-dimensional representations, while landscape architecture responds to the ever-changing spatial and temporal conditions of the material world. The film medium, with its illusion of movement and three-dimensionality, offers an easily accessible antidote to this conundrum. Although cinematic settings are often constructed to promote a particular narrative rather than emulate physical reality, these filmic worlds trigger powerful imagery which overwhelms the lived experience of space. Through the analysis of three seminal films by director Alfred Hitchcock – Rear Window, North by Northwest and The Birds – this project represents an endeavour to deconstruct the haunting filmic atmospheres which transformed my perceptions of three familiar landscapes. Through the use of drawing and composite graphics, I have sought to understand this cinematic ostranenie – or defamiliarization – of the everyday and its underlying creative potential for the realm of landscape architecture.