Shander Yeh

Cinematic Disjunctions

This thesis explores how cinematic language can be translated into architectural design strategies. Rather than using cinema as a metaphor, it is approached as a functional design system—a grammar that organizes space, movement, and perception. Architecture and film share conceptual parallels: framing in architecture mirrors cinematic composition, circulation works like camera movement or editing, and light and color in both fields shape atmosphere and narrative tone. Shared terms such as montage, sequence, and spatial narrative reveal a deep structural connection. 

The theoretical foundation draws on Rem Koolhaas’s narrative-driven urban theory in Delirious New York, Bernard Tschumi’s use of cinematic syntax in The Manhattan Transcripts, and Juhani Pallasmaa’s focus on sensory and emotional qualities in The Architecture of Image. Together, these inform a methodology that extracts cinematic logic and transforms it into spatial composition. 

The project is sited at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, integrating a theater, museum, gallery, and café. These programs are connected through a continuous sequence shaped by cinematic principles of framing, pacing, and montage. 

The design process begins with cinematic diagramming—analyzing keyframes, visual composition, and editing rhythms from selected films. Parasite inspired sectional diagrams capturing spatial depth and narrative rhythm, assembled into a three-dimensional storyboard. Whiplash influenced circulation patterns, where rapid cuts became sharp disjunctions, and tracking shots translated into continuous paths. 

Key strategies include de-axialization and “spatial cuts”—windows, skylights, and voids that shift perception and light, creating a cinematic promenade of stillness and motion, compression and expansion. 

By applying the logic of editing, framing, and sequencing, this thesis positions architecture as a temporal, narrative medium—one that is read, moved through, and experienced like film.