Game of Thrones city inspired by late Canadian architect Arthur Erickson

I may be the only person on the continent who hasn’t actually watched the show, but fans of Game of Thrones learned last month that the upcoming sixth season’s sets will include Vaes Dothrak, a city in the Dothraki region, the architecture of which will be inspired by Canadian master, Arthur Erickson.

Erickson’s more than 500 planning and design credits include Vancouver’s Robson Square, the Museum of Anthropology at UBC and Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall. Australian architect and show set designer Deborah Riley told Curbed.com that she often references real world architects in the show’s design, including using Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mayan period as inspiration for Dany’s penthouse (which I’m assuming will mean something to people who watch the show).

Of course, art and architecture collide frequently, but that’s the direction in which it usually travels — architecture inspiring set design. By contrast, some artists are now dabbling in the creation of blueprints made from film and television sets.

Artist, Inaki Aliste Lizarralde, took 13 of the most famous homes on television and created stunning and very detailed floor plans. By referring to studio set photos for space and proportion as well placement of furniture and objects, he has reproduced Chandler and Joey’s as well as Monica and Rachel’s apartments from Friends; Leonard and Sheldon’s apartment from Big Bang Theory, Carrie Bradshaw’s Sex and the City digs and, my personal favourite, Frasier’s gorgeous Seattle apartment, among others. He even reproduced the Simpsons house.

Partners Mehruss Jon Ahi and Armen Karaoghlanian founded their online journal Interiors to investigate the architectural designs of film sets. They seem to be a perfect fit to do so — the former is a project designer at BCA Architects and the latter a filmmaker. The journal takes an in-depth look at one film at a time and begins with a detailed essay about how space is used in the film’s setting, say the house from Up or the spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and goes onto to blueprints from specific scenes.

Although the pair admit there are times they’ve had to make educated guesses, they say there is usually enough information on screen to dissect the sets from every angle; scene choices are based on its being integral to the film’s narrative and contain enough information that they can dive into an analysis. For some locations, like the John Lautner residence in Glendale used in A Single Man, its being filmed in an actual residence makes it possible for the duo to get a hold of architectural drawings.

There’s another angle to architecture and film I happened on recently — the unseen inhabitants of famous buildings including the housekeepers, window washers, concierges and more. ArchDaily reports that the the Museum of Modern Art in New York has acquired all 16 films by directors Ila Beka and Louise Lemoine. The collection, entitled “Living Architectures,” fights the “long-standing stereotype that architectural criticism is the sole domain of the intellectual elite,” according to the website.

Bagley Wright House in Seattle, Washington. Designed 1977. Photo by Timothy Hursley - via arthurerickson.com

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The Commissioner of Competition, the advocacy agency for Canadian consumers, has won its abuse of dominance case against the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) after years of fighting to make sales data publicly accessible.

The agency has argued that TREB stifles competition by restricting who can access full data on the housing market; TREB has argued that full, unrestricted public access to all the information on the MLS service would violate the privacy of their clients.

Details have not yet been released on how the ruling will impact the industry, but a new round of hearings will be held to decide what changes will be required so that TREB complies with competition laws. The agency has confirmed that details on how the market data will become public will be released in the near future.

For now, the tribunal’s ruling applies only to the roughly 40,000 realtors in the GTA, from Burlington east to Clarington and north to Innisfil. As the largest real estate board in the country, any changes to TREB will likely eventually prompt change in the other 90 or so Canadian real estate boards, making market data truly open.

While it may not yet be clear what it will mean for the industry, it’s certainly good news for buyers and sellers. 

Feature image: Graham House in West Vancouver, B.C.. Designed 1962 with Geoffrey Massey. Photo by Ezra Stoller-Esto via arthurerickson.com