Oblivion Sky Tower





A Futuristic Modern Architecture Box (dubbed the Sky Tower) nestled in the surreal setting above the clouds in the (futurist post apocalyptic) movie Oblivion (2013) written and directed by Joseph Kosinski. The home takes some obvious inspiration from the Stahl House aka Case Study # 22 by Architect Pierre Koenig. The home has some obvious improvements with the the extended helipad over the see through acrylic infinity pool. The foundation of the home is on a unbelievably thin single (steel?) column that seems to be unaffected by the wind throughout the movie.

The Director Joseph Kosinski conceived of the sky tower design with early 3D modeling renderings that he made. Joseph Kosinski graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Architecture that explains the strong modern design elements in his work. Kosinski admits that his production design team refined his early ideas into finished reality.





The set is a crisp clean design and the frameless glass walls open with automation. The aircraft (dubbed Bubbleship) like the home is an amazingly modern vehicle and fits seamlessly with the home. The vehicle concept designer was Daniel Simon who also was involved in the vehicle design on Tron: Legacy (2010). Amazingly the designers built a full scale set of the home and vehicle so that CGI was not used to fabricate the detailed shots. The Bubbleship was constructed by a company called Wildfactory located in Camarillo, California.

Design concept for the Bubbleship seems to be a combination of the Bell 47 helicopter and the dragonfly


The behind the scenes video footage shows the amazing care and realistic fabrication techniques that were used to create quality futuristic sci fi tech. The movie is worth the watch for the future-tech imagery alone however there is several holes in the evolving story that I felt I had to suspend disbelief to enjoy the ride.

The main qualms I was having with the tale was there was no explanations of how the structures like the home came into existence. And who does the maintenance on an extraordinarily exotic sky home? Normally Its possible that to move the movie along in the limited time that they did not want to go into the backstory about the development and physical details of the amount of time and work in the past to the development of current conditions. However at the very least I had some troubles believing the structural engineering integrity of the home being suspended on a spindle of a support. Possibly I should imagine that there is some sort of super strong metal alloy available in the future. It would be interesting to have a paid engineer used in the making of more sci-fi movies to review the artistic design integrity against structural engineering material laws to make the movie all the more believable.




Stahl House iconic photo by Julius Shulman
Stahl House Photo used for Kohler Numi Commercial 

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Comments

  1. Stephen8May 24, 2013 at 11:28 PM

    Thanks for your grateful informations, am working in Sky Gardens Tower , so it will be a better information’s for me. Try to post best informations like this always

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chris JohnstonJuly 24, 2013 at 7:21 AM

    Being a reader of Hard SF, especially the work of Larry Niven, I assumed the Sky Tower was built with alien tech.
    Remember the Tet in orbit? Y'know, with the aliens that invaded us?
    No actual material could maintain rigidity, let alone perfect stability, in a spindle 3,000' x 3'.
    There's only one way I know of in Science Fiction: Stasis Field.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_(fiction)
    In Niven's "Known Space" stories, there's a nifty little weapon called a "Variable Sword", which incorporates a monomolecular filament held rigid by a stasis field. This thing will cut through anything.
    http://io9.com/5011862/10-awesome-uses-for-a-stasis-field

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousAugust 6, 2014 at 2:47 AM

    As an engineer, I think that house is perfectly feasible.

    The tower support can be as yet to be develped, a carbon nabo tube. Carbon fiber are 10,000longer then their width and incredibly stifg.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJanuary 3, 2020 at 6:05 AM

    This was an awesome movie!

    ReplyDelete
  5. nik-neukMarch 16, 2023 at 10:17 AM

    Hello.
    I'm illustrator and I'm preparing a detailed floorplan of this "floating" house.
    As in many other movies and series the same question is asked, where is the toilet?
    At the back of the house there is a multifunctional space that goes from the bedroom to the gym in the center of which there is a "box" for the shower, but there does not seem to be another closed space for the toilet.
    Where do you think it would be located?
    Would that be open in that area?

    ReplyDelete

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