“There is something so wonderful about Villa Necchi. It’s of course an incredibly famous Italian rationalist house by Piero Portaluppi, but what is so extraordinary in the film is that it’s a castle, prison and museum all at once. Its star, Tilda Swinton, has also said something similar about the setting. The use of Italian rationalism, as opposed to just using some baronial home, is a major choice by director Luca Guadagnino to contrast the plush fabrics of the interior with the rigidity of the architectural style. Then of course, he takes us to the mountains which further conjures the sense of release and visual perspective versus enclosure as is reflected in the film’s narrative. Bravo to production designer Francesca di Mottola who nailed it.”

“I keep going back to this again and again. The richness and the details of the interiors set in 1970s Mexico City, which was designed to be director Alfonso Cuarón’s childhood home, is beautiful and filmed in gorgeous black and white. It’s an elevated home of sorts, along with moments where the domestic chores of mop water getting thrown over the cobblestones, or when the characters escape to the rooftop for the laundry, that offer the visual expanse of the outside world beyond. For someone to create this level of authenticity and beauty from their memory and portray it years later in such moving detail is deeply inspiring and wonderful.”

“I remember seeing Body Double by Brian de Palma as a kid and it was the first movie that I ever saw where I really paid attention to the setting as character. Melanie Griffith is one of the stars, but the house is the lead character 100%! The film is almost an homage to Hitchcock's Rear Window, but it takes place in John Lautner’s Chemosphere that he built in 1960 in the Hollywood Hills facing The Valley and it’s quite something. Those Lautner homes that dot that area of the country are so significant, all in their own way – this one is pitched up on a pole and you kind of can't imagine how it's going to stand up in an earthquake. The movie is all about observation and the house itself is an observation platform of sorts, so it’s very clever.”

“The Merchant Ivory films for me have always been inspiring for their beauty but I remember being most struck by Howard’s End filmed in 1992, in which the country house is truly a main character. It is a household full of love, reflected in the textures and the paintings and textiles; I just love all the interiors of this one. The house is based on a house called Rook’s Nest in Hertfordshire where the author of the book, E.M. Forster, grew up, and the production designer Luciana Arrighi did an absolutely amazing job. The 2017 four-part BBC drama version of it was also excellent and I think those two are both great to watch one after the other – they are beautiful.”

“I mean, come on, it is so beautiful! Again, it’s another Lautner house, the Schaffer Residence, a modest house he designed in 1949 for his apprentices’ parents, which is surrounded by nature which makes it secretive. It’s almost hidden from its neighbours, really, which speaks perfectly to 1962 when the film takes place, among the invisible minorities in society. The story is centred around a gay couple who have lived in this house for 16 years with a protected, beautiful domestic life. To me, it’s the perfect setting for this story – life and its intimacies being lived within the precinct of a homes’ indoor-outdoor relationship with nature. It portrays the idea of seeking out privacy and the curation of a life within a home in which we feel safe, while still having the openness to the landscape directly beyond and to nature. The tenacity of the filmmaking and how rigorously gorgeous it was is outstanding.”

“What's important to me about Blade Runner visually is looking back to history in order to inform what's imagined in the future. There's a weightiness to the architecture, and while the people with privilege live in these towers in the sky, the Ennis House – the most lavish textile block house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built by his son Lloyd Wright – is the textural foundation for Harrison Ford's character’s apartment which was pretty incredible. How genius to look at the architecture of that house to inform this take on L.A. 40 or 50 years into the future (the film is set in 2019) and use the historic interiors of the Bradbury Building Downtown to link the past and future. Syd Mead, who was brought on as a visual futurist to design the vehicles, ended up being a big part of the production design and had a really fruitful collaboration with the production designer, Lawrence Paull.”