It is indeed one of life’s strange coincidences that Michelangelo Antonioni should pass away on July 30 2007 the very same day as Ingmar Bergman. As one friend has put it, if Antonioni’s death was a shock it was perhaps due to the assumption that many had, that he had died years ago, such was his physical state and absolute inactivity. L’Avventura, L’Eclisse and Il Desserto Rosso are among my favourite films ever, such visually arresting, open ended tales of existential impasse. For me these are films that engage with the environment (built or otherwise) in a startlingly original manner. For Antonioni site does not simply equal stage. Rather, architecture is unmistakably implicated in the proceedings. From the detached modernism of the EUR district of Rome to the almost alien industrial landscape featured in Il Desserto Rosso we are shown are world that is strangely ill at ease with itself and a time out of joint.

Monica Vitti in L’Eclisse 1962