How Kasra Farahani created an "optimistic mid-century modern future world" for The Fantastic Four: First Steps

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a superhero movie set in an alternative mid-century modern universe. Production designer Kasra Farahani explains how he used physical sets informed the architecture of Oscar Niemeyer and Eero Saarinen to make it feel real.

Farahani aimed to create a realistic yet fictionally futuristic version of 1960s New York, complete with mid-century-informed interiors, as the backdrop for the recently released The Fantastic Four: First Steps film.

"The jet age manifested in real-world architecture"

"Our goal was to create a world where the 1960s manifested the technology-inspired futurism that in our world we only saw as promises, in advertisement, in media, in comics and in conceptual imagery of the time," Farahani told Dezeen from his home in Los Angeles.

"It's like an optimistic mid-century modern future, the jet age manifested in real-world architecture and industrial design."

Based on a Marvel comic, The Fantastic Four: First Steps takes place in the mid-1960s, but in an alternative world where technology and architecture have been greatly impacted by Reed Richards, also known as Mister Fantastic, played by actor Pedro Pascal.

Farahani, who led the production design, was tasked with creating a world that dramatically diverged from ours in the mid-1950s but still felt real.

"We wanted to create a world that's believable enough so that you can live in it and not constantly be yanked out of it because it's so plainly fantastical – no pun intended," explained Farahani. "We wanted to try to blur those lines and keep people living in this world."

"Because of the heightened reality and the fantasy of the characters, what they do, their powers and the drama of their story, a grounded world becomes very important."

To achieve the necessary balance, Farahani turned to real-world architecture from the late 1950s and early 1960s as well as futuristic images from comics and adverts.

In particular, he looked at the work of Brazilian architect Niemeyer and Finnish-American architect Saarinen, along with the architecture of the 1964 New York World's Fair.

"I'd say the defining references for the design of the film are Oscar Niemeyer and Eero Saarinen, specifically the cathedral and the presidential palace of Brasilia," said Farahani. "And in Saarinen's case, the TWA terminal at JFK and the terminal at Dulles airport."

"What all of these things have in common is the incredibly dynamic and accelerating curves," he continued. "They're not radial arcs, they look like they're parabolas where there's acceleration in the curves – there's a sense of movement, growth and futurism."

Farahani had also noted that many 1960s buildings, including the 1961 La Concha Motel in Las Vegas by Paul Revere Williams, were similar to some of those featured in the 1960s animated space-age sitcom The Jetsons.

"An important philosophy that we were looking at was the spectrum of whimsy to elegance within mid-century modernism," he explained.

"If you compare the Williams building to some of the designs in The Jetsons, it's just a few proportional decisions that make the difference between something being a joke and being super elegant."

"It was critically important that it not just be retro futuristic everywhere"

The buildings that Farahani and his team referenced all have a similar aesthetic, often utilising white concrete, glass and dramatic curves.

"To me, it feels like a peak for aesthetics," he said. "There was such a cohesive and consistent design logic."

"That was true for pavilions by Coca-Cola, General Motors and DuPont at the 1964 World's Fair," he continued. "I can see a utopia in the World's Fair."

To fit the logic of the film, Farahani wanted "about a third of the buildings to be retro futuristic" in his fictional 1960s New York, with the other two-thirds to be historic structures.

"Anything built before 1950 is still there, so you've got art deco and you've got turn-of-the-century architecture," he explained.

"It was critically important that it not just be retro futuristic everywhere, because that's when you lose the bridge to the audience and when these buildings cease to be special because they're ubiquitous. Also, it's just not accurate to the way cities develop over time."

"It's not just the silly version of retro futurism"

The key piece of architecture created for the film is Richards' home and the Fantastic Four headquarters, the Baxter Building.

Placed on the site of the United Nations Headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, the fictional skyscraper has a sleek form made of white concrete and glass that rises from a curved atrium, in direct reference to Niemeyer and Saarinen.

"Niemeyer was one of the architects of the UN building, so you can see that and this kind of atrium space borrows from Saarinen's TWA Flight Center," explained Farahani.

"So much of this beautiful, monolithic white concrete borrows from both of their work. They captured the energy of the futurism in these dynamic curves and yet it was refined, and they'd shed the jokey, naive quality of early retro futurism."

"That was the thing I was really inspired by," he continued, "It's a Baxter Building and city that is retro futuristic, but elegant – it's not just the silly version of retro futurism."

The design was initially sketched out with a concept artist before being developed to fit in its "real world" setting and finally finished in Photoshop.

"I worked with a set designer and the concept person to get the model halfway right," said Farahani.

"Then it came to this person who started by placing it into Google Earth to get a decently accurate sense of what the sighting would be like and then created a detailed, textured model that we rendered in octane. Then it's finally finished in Photoshop – so it's like half a dozen to a dozen people working on it."

"It's like everything you want to do in your own house"

For scenes set in the building's lobby and general assembly space, filming took place in the Palacio de Congresos in Oviedo, Spain, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

However, the majority of scenes within the skyscraper took place within Mister Fantastic's penthouse apartment.

"Maybe it's because I grew up on the West Coast, but a penthouse apartment has never been what I associate with a cosy feeling," said Farahani. "And we were very much trying to create a warm space here."

Throughout the apartment interiors, the team had fun drawing on numerous mid-century modern tropes, with several conversation pits, a rotating TV, an indoor barbecue and a cylindrical refrigerator.

"It's like everything you want to do in your own house, but you can't do – you can do here," said Farahani.

"We wanted this soft pit that feels like this nest, and for this family to be in a warm space with natural materials – flagstone and ferns – things to kind of break it from that cold penthouse feeling."

"The physical environment has a huge impact on the artists"

Although The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a superhero film set in an alternative world, much of the action takes place in physical sets.

"There's no AI on this," said Farahani.

The team built sets for the penthouse, Richards' lab and a two-thirds scale version of Times Square that was 30 feet tall.

"If you build the physical environment, it has a huge impact on the artists – whether it's the actors who don't have to imagine the environment they're in, or the photography because the light that bounces off surfaces is faithful," said Farahani.

"As you're composing shots, you have something to frame to make decisions and actors choose where to walk, what they choose to interact with and where they choose to pause."

Building sets is cost-effective when large numbers of scenes will take place within them, Farahani said, but most importantly, it helps to create a realistic and unique world.

"You get to this higher level of realism and fidelity and most importantly, specificity," he said.

"It feels specific to this world, because you have more to go off. I often think that when things are done where it's just a lot of blue screen and green screen, you get an uncanny and sort of generic quality."

Other sets recently featured on Dezeen include those for Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme, designed by Anna Pinnock, and the retro-looking offices featured in TV show Severance by Jeremy Hindle.

The imagery is courtesy of Disney.

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