Cast Iron Architecture

For 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, I researched a lot of steel and iron architecture and their principles in order to design the appropriate look inside the ‘Nautilus’. I am a big fan of it, and its aesthetics.

Growing up in Northrhine-Westfalia in Germany, an – before its redevelopment – industrialized area, I was surrounded by a lot of thius architectural style, and I think it has very unique, elegant aesthetics to it. The steel framework, for example, that you see here: A factory building in my current residential area (in Berlin) is kept in this style. Green-painted steel girders riveted together in a special way are filled with red bricks. This creates a high-contrast, handcrafted and pattern-like appearance.

Of course there are no bricks inside the ‘Nautilus’, but looking at the aesthetics of the connections between the steel girders (2nd and 3rd picture) was very helpful to get an understanding of how these details had to be handled inside Nemo’s fabulous submarine.