Tell us about your latest work on Suspiria, a remake of the horror movie classic set in 1970s Germany.
It was an evocative script, and there were certain elements of it that spoke to me. I love modern dance, and I know Berlin and that time period well. I created a lookbook for the film before talking to [director Luca Guadagnino]. I haven’t worked on a fantastical film before. I’m very realistic in the way that I think, so the exercise of thinking about spaces that don’t exist in reality was a creative challenge.
How did you transform the circa-1912 Grand Hotel dei Fiori in Varese, Italy into a Cold War-era ballet academy?
It was a major challenge to even be working out of that place. A lot of it was still standing, but certain areas had fallen apart. [First], we had to make it habitable. Then, we had to change the design to be in the style we wanted. We built rectangular marble columns around the original ones; we put in an entirely new floor in the lobby, which we faux painted to look like marble and granite; and we redid the original moldings in simpler and cleaner designs.
How did you establish the building as being in Berlin?
We poured cement and carved the right type of flagstones from Berlin in the sidewalk, and then we built the Berlin Wall in front of the building. We even brought lamp posts from Berlin. We tried to create the feeling that this was a few different buildings because you would never find one building that large on a street in Berlin.
What inspired the design?
The hotel was [originally] built in an Art Nouveau style, with a lot of plaster details like little cherubs and mosaics on the floor. We were not going for that. We were inspired by architects from early modernism, mostly Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann, and Le Corbusier. They were the first ones that said no to the very prevalent decorative style.
How does travel inform your work?
What’s interesting about working in film is that we never have the surface-level tourist experience. We have to go very deep, so we scout extensively wherever we are. You get to these places and you feel a bit like Marco Polo. Of course, people have been living there forever. You’re not really uncovering it, you’re just uncovering it for yourself. It’s very interesting.
