Forced Perspective

When it comes to the way a structure is perceived in reality, architects have a number of tricks up their sleeves. One of these tricks is what we call forced perspective where the design of a building is made to look either bigger or smaller than it actually is. This practice isn’t only used in architecture, however. Filmmakers and photographers also use this technique to manipulate the way the viewers see certain elements.

In order for all of these professions to make this illusion work, we all use different tactics. For photographers, they use the aperture of the lens and the depth of field to trick the eye into seeing some thing at a different size, much like the popular tourist pictures of people holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. For filmmakers, they use the same tactics as photographers but when it comes to a moving scene, they manipulate the surrounding environment and props to produce the illusion. One prominent example of this practice in film is in the Harry Potter series where the props around the giant, Hagrid, are much smaller than normal in order to make him seem much larger.

Architecture faces a much larger challenge as there is no lens to play with nor props that can be resized without seeming obvious. Architects must instead use the construction itself to manipulate the perspective in their favor. When it comes to a real-world example of architectural forced perspective, Walt Disney World is somewhat of a poster child of this illusion. The construction of the park was designed in such a way that the scale of the facade gets smaller the taller the structure gets in order to make it appear taller than it actually is. This is put into practice especially in the Cinderella Castle which is much shorter than it appears.

The forced perspective is not only apparent in the size of the castle, but as well as the scale of the windows and the floors of the buildings along the street

The origin of this practice stems back to the architecture and cinematography industry. When films had smaller budgets, the filmmakers had to get creative in creating certain scenes that would involve otherwise expensive sets and props. They became masters of illusion, making things seemingly impossibly big, when really, they just had it closer to the camera. Early architecture sometimes also used this technique when trying to make a building look a lot longer and more marvelous than it was. The architect, Borromini, used forced perspective in his Palacio Spada, creating a much longer corridor than what one might expect.

Borromini’s Palacio Spada and an analysis of its forced perspective

From filmmaking, to photography, to even architecture, the deception of reality is something of an art. Even though forced perspective has been around for centuries, the tricks and tactics used may change, but the creative illusion will live on for centuries to come.