Artist Boryana Ilieva examines film architecture and set design in her project Floor Plan Croissant. This ongoing series of meticulously painted floor plans capture the cinematic spaces of famous films like Parasite (2019), Roma (2018), and Call Me By Your Name (2017). The idea for the series began after Ilieva attended a lecture in 2014 by Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa. In the talk, Pallasmaa elaborates on his book The Architecture of Image, which explores the lived space of five films by four iconic directors – Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, Antonioni, and Kubrick. As an architect and film buff herself, Ilieva was intrigued by the relationship between cinema and architecture and began studying notable films on her own. You can see some of her cinematic spaces in our gallery and of course, follow Ilieva on Instagram. You can purchase prints of Floor Plan Croissant via Society6, and any available original paintings through Ilieva’s official website.
According to her artist statement, Ilieva’s work is based on “extracting floor plans of main character houses.”
She spends considerable time investigating each film and plotting the architecture on graph paper.
Afterwards, Ilieva draws a delicate pencil sketch onto paper, which she then fills with layers of watercolor.
Her masterful understanding of color and keen observation of detail make her floor plans shine as both fine art paintings and analytical surveys of unique cinematic worlds.
With her pencil and brush, Ilieva constructs rooms, buildings, and places that previously felt intangible.
