Sometimes taken to the extreme,  the later half of the twentieth century saw designers begin to play quite deliberately and quite jokingly with classical form and motif; two famous examples being Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building (1984) and the Piazza d’italia by Charles Moore>>> Finished in 1978, this public square is a hybrid of Greco-Roman architecture, and the flashy, neon MTV aesthetic reminiscent of “True Stories”. Many, if not all, of the films viewed this term used the spectacle of collage in order to support a plot of madness. But two specific examples which approached itin a unique way are Tim Burton’s “Batman” and Peter Greenaway’s “A Zed and Two Noughts”.

In the cinematic style of creating a corrupt and dystopic environment, such as is found in Gilliam’s “Brazil”, Gotham City is the fictional representation of a diverse field of social, cultural and historic influences, constructed entirely from scratch across a series of London film studio back lots. The production designer Anton Furst worked closely with Burton to create a graphically condensed, subverted urban context which could readily suspend the disbelief of the audience and easily perpetuate the superhero mythology; “the characters in the movie are so extreme that [Burton] felt it was important to set them in an arena that was specifically designed for them”
(Neumann and Albrecht, 1999, 162). Although completely fictitious, the close resemblance to a city such as New York, Chicago or London loosely implies that Gotham City’s state of decay and corruption are not isolated to the plot of the film, but rather is indicative of the degradation, crowding and discomfort that can be found internationally, in any modern city.  A quality that is harder to maintain in newer versions shot on location. Analyzing the skyline, it too

is densely populated with historical reference and strata of varying cultural resonance resembling more of a Piranesi etching than an inhabitable city. Maintaining that the actual time period of the film is meant to remain ambiguous, the inherent placelessness of Gotham is reiterated by architectural reference to modern industrialism, early humanism, and contemporary minimalism:

“We chose styles which, when put together, would create its own kind of style-everything from the early brownstone buildings to modern brutalism, Gothic architecture to Italian futurism. We even tapped fascism for the city hall. For the Flugelheim Museum I chose a modern Japanese architect…who does really brutal, locomotive type architecture…we put together this Dadaistic potpourri and we became quite comfortable with it. We began to formulate our own language of architecture.” (Neumann and Albrecht, 1999, 162)

The most obvious link between postmodernism, the theme of fragmentation and traditional architectural practice is in the specific sets that have been conceived and constructed for each of the films. If plots and characterizations have become open to intense de-lamination and decoding then it follows suit that the spaces which facilitate them should be comprised of multiple layers of meaning as well. Looking once more to Harvey’s definition of the postmodern condition:

“The immediacy of events, the sensationalism of the spectacle (political, scientific, military, as well as those of entertainment), become the stuff of which consciousnesses is forged. Such a breakdown of the temporal order of things also gives rise to a peculiar treatment of the past. Eschewing the idea of progress, postmodernism abandons all sense of historical continuity and memory, while simultaneously developing an incredible ability to plunder history and absorb whatever it finds there as some aspect of the present  ”
(Harvey, 1990, 54)