American architect and designer David Rockwell designed the set for the 2021 Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles.
The awards took place at LA’s Art Deco Union Station, an iconic hollywood venue that has been used as the backdrop for movies such as Blade Runner, The Dark Knight Rises and Pearl Harbor. Rockwell’s design for Steven Soderbergh’s intimate Academy Awards ceremony transformed the venue into ‘an indoor/outdoor supper club’ for nominees and their guests, a design referencing ‘the intimacy and understated elegance of the Academy’s very first ceremonies.’
Oscars 2021: discover the David Rockwell-designed set
The Oscars set design featured four separate spaces taking over the station’s Ticket Concourse, Waiting Room, as well is its North and South Patios. The design concept for the Oscars set offered a nod to the early awards ceremonies, which were often staged as seated dinners inside some of LA’s most iconic ballrooms.
This was Rockwell’s third Oscar set design, following his collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the 81st and 82nd Oscars at the Rockwell Group-designed Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
The eclectic set design was defined by a rich material palette featuring wood, metallic touches, saturated colours and textures, which came together to celebrate the building’s Art Nouveau architecture. Integrated technology throughout the space brought the old school Hollywood set into modern times and gave it added flexibility.
Throughout the set, Rockwell created a series of custom-designed café tables and chairs placed on the multi-tiered seating balconies, with custom-built wooden banquettes in blue velvet for the lower, stage-facing seats. Oscar-inspired lamps offered illumination throughout the set and functioned as centrepieces for the bistro-style tables.
The room was framed with a series of art-deco inspired screens, installed along a raised promenade and equipped with a series of live picture frames exhibiting historical photographs from past Oscar ceremonies (during the ceremony, these screens also delivered live content that mirrored what appeared on the main screens onstage to give an immersive experience).
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The Oscars stage this year featured a circular podium in rich, inlaid wood with an asymmetric tiered design for accessibility. Two screens flanking the stage featured the same art deco motif found at the back. Completing and anchoring the stage was a blue velvet drape with oversized matching tassels.
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