Instructor Spotlight: Alice Belaya and Chris Chung

Tell us about yourselves and what inspired you to teach this course

We are both huge architecture nerds and movie lovers! Coming from vastly different cultural backgrounds – Alice from Moscow, Russia and Chris from Daejeon, South Korea – we bonded over our fervent and at times overzealous enthusiasm for architecture and film. Both of us are Architecture Studies majors, and we have often talked about the lack of course options within our department – so we decided to design our own architecture course curriculum with the ExCollege! The intersection between cinema and the built environment is incredibly captivating, as is the interweaving of the materiality of film with its narrative.

Part of your course involves field trips to Boston and around Tufts. Can you tell us a bit more about what you’re looking for?

We want our students to explore the way in which they perceive the built environment and to get excited about the buildings they see in their everyday lives. Architecture is everywhere! During our field trips, both around Tufts and to Boston, we ask the students about their thoughts on and associations with the buildings we’ve looked at – that way, their analysis of the structures comes from an impassioned standpoint of personal connection with the space.

For our field trips, we look for any and all spaces that are both aesthetically significant and emotionally evocative, and aim to teach our students that all architectural spaces can create both sensorial and psychological impact. During our Boston excursion, we looked at both the current and the Old City Halls, as well as Faneuil Hall and the Old State House. Comparing the various spatial capabilities of these buildings and their historical and cultural contexts, we opened up the conversation on Boston’s rich and multiplex built environment that we hope will continue outside of the class.

What’s your favorite fantasy film architecture, and why?

We both love the architecture of the Harry Potter series – Hogwarts alone is a stunningly complex locale that mixes together university, cathedral, and castle typologies. Growing up, we both cherished the endless hours spent immersed in the Harry Potter universe, transfixed by how the boundaries of reality are stretched while magic and architecture seamlessly intertwine. In designing our curriculum, we’ve discovered that the series provides an excellent framework to begin the discussion on Gothic and Neo-Gothic architecture, which is prevalent on many college campuses today – Tufts included – and plays a key part in formulating the image of a prestigious academic institution.

What do you hope that students will take away from your course?

We hope that our students will be inspired to find new intersections between unexpected disciplines. Architecture in cinema is not just a backdrop to a film, nor is film a mere medium to express architecture – the two come together to create a comprehensive spatial experience, which is crucial in constructing fantasy. In creating a course curriculum that devotes equal attention to architectural thinking and filmmaking, our aim is to instill a sense of academic inspiration within our students, and to encourage them to be curious in everything they do.

Alice Belaya is a senior majoring in Architectural Studies and International Literary and Visual Studies. Christopher Chung is a senior majoring in Architectural Studies.