With the birth of film came the birth of a revolutionary visual language.

This new, unique vocabulary – the cut, the fade, the dissolve, the pan and the new idea of movement – gave not only artists but also architects a completely new way to think about and describe the visual. The Architecture of the Screen examines the relationship between the visual language of film and the onscreen perception of space and architectural design, revealing how film’s visual vocabulary influenced architecture in the twentieth century and continues to influence it today. Graham Cairns draws on film reviews, architectural plans and theoretical texts to illustrate the unusual and fascinating relationship between the worlds of filmmaking and architecture.