Brutalism, Film, and Dystopia: The Many (Cinematic) Lives of John Andrews’s Scarborough College

Abstract

Since its opening to the public in 1965, John Andrews’s megastructure Scarborough College —currently University of Toronto, Scarborough— has received universal acclaim. Praised by Kenneth Frampton as “by far the most daring, comprehensive and radical… of all the completed university complexes of recent years”, Scarborough has enjoyed, unlike many other brutalist structures, a peaceful and successful existence: untainted by later extensions, the Andrews Building, as it is known today, has not only survived, but become the revered core of a landmark university campus. However, adding to its prosperous history as a university facility, Scarborough has also led a prolific double life as a filming location, lending its architectural persona to an assortment of evil corporations, futuristic prisons, or government facilities. This article examines some of the many appearances of Scarborough on the screen, and the different ways in which cinema has depicted, appropriated, recontextualized, transformed, and even extended the building beyond Andrews’s original design and its as-built reality.