Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains

From Atlantis in The Spy Who Loved Me to Nathan Bateman’s ultra-modern abode in Ex Machina, big-screen villains often live in architectural splendour. From a design standpoint, the villain’s lair, as popularised in many of our favourite movies, is a stunning, sophisticated, envy-inducing expression of the warped drives and desires of its occupant. 

Lair, the first title in Tra Publishing’s Design + Film series, celebrates and considers several iconic villain’s lairs from recent film history. The book, strikingly designed in silver ink on black paper, explores the architectural design of these structures through architectural illustrations and renderings, photographs, essays, film analyses, interviews, and more.

From futuristic fantasies to deathtrap-laden hives, from dwellings in space to those under the sea, pop culture and architecture join forces in these outlandish, primarily modern homes and in Lair, which features buildings from fifteen films, including: Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Star Wars, The Incredibles, Blade Runner 2049, You Only Live Twice, The Ghost Writer, Body Double and North by Northwest.

Edited by acclaimed architect Chad Oppenheim with Andrea Gollin, Lair includes interviews with production designers and other industry professionals such as Ralph Eggleston, Richard Donner, Roger Christian, David Scheunemann, Gregg Henry, and Mark Digby. Contributors include director Michael Mann, cultural critic Christopher Frayling, museum director Joseph Rosa, and architect Amy Murphy. Architectural illustrations and renderings by Carlos Fueyo provide multiple in-depth views of these spaces.

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