Sequences in architecture: Sergei Ejzenštejn and Luigi Moretti, from images to spaces

Abstract

The article ‘Montage and Architecture’ by Sergei Ejzenštejn, written between 1937 and 1940 and published posthumously, is one of the pivotal texts theorising montage as a method of composition, with a special focus on the potential of cinematic sequences in architecture. Despite the deep interest and the great number of studies that the publication of this text inspired in the last decades, Ejzenštejn’s analysis of the Basilica of Saint Peter, which occupies almost half of the article, has been overlooked. This article focuses on Ejzenštejn’s sequential interpretation of the Basilica and compares it with the one offered in 1952 by Luigi Moretti in the article ‘Strutture e Sequenze di Spazi’ [‘Structures and Sequences of Spaces’]. Examining Ejzenštejn’s and Moretti’s texts and related visual products, it develops a different way of considering the sequential qualities of the Basilica. Indeed, while Moretti proposes sequences as a method to design and represent three-dimensional spaces, the concept of montage as theorised by Ejzenštejn focuses on two-dimensional sequences as a tool to arrange images in space. The article proposes a series of possible common points between Ejzenštejn’s and Moretti’s theories, on the basis of a shared vision of sequences as mental constructs, and engages with a wider discussion on the dilemma between visual and spatial properties of architecture.