Interior Design and Atmosphere Creation in Wes Anderson Films

Abstract

This thesis investigates how interior design constructs cinematic atmosphere in Wes Anderson’s films and how this language can be applied to real-life interiors. Atmosphere is considered as the interaction of material, surface, and light. The method is qualitative, interpretive, and comparative; the theoretical framework draws on Giuliana Bruno’s emotional/inner mapping and Juhani Pallasmaa’s concepts of haptic imagery and lived space. The data for the study consists of selected interior-focused scenes from Anderson’s films and relevant literature. The analysis is conducted in two stages: in the first stage, materials, color, texture, lighting, threshold, and circulation patterns are compared within the films; in the second stage, recurring “atmospheric codes” across the films are extracted and transformed into a framework of design principles. This framework is tested at the room scale in Ceceyan Han, where office interiors with diverse atmospheres are created while preserving the historical shell. The findings demonstrate that interiors function as narrative actors and that surface-light pairings reliably modulate affect. The thesis presents a systematic, testable and reusable framework of design principles that transcends visual simulation and transfers film-based atmospheric generation to interior design.