Exploring Giedi Prime: Architecture, Symbolism, and Environment in Dune

An entire planet driven by a singular obsession. Military and industry power. This is Giedi Prime, the home of the Harkonnens

It's a planet that's almost entirely industrialized. It's dark, it's polluted, and it's dominated by these massive factories that's completely stripped the land of any semblance of nature.

And doing research on this. It took us down a very interesting path. The movie actually takes a lot of liberties on the source material,

but it's made some really in additions that really help you understand why the Harkonnens are the way they are. As the product of this strange environment,

a portion of this video is sponsored by Bambu Labs. And apparently the design of this planet was inspired by septic tanks.

I'm not kidding. Apparently, Patrice Vermette, the set designer Saw a pile of septic tanks on the side of the highway outside Montreal.

And he built this entire planet based on these plastic ripped forms. Which kind of makes sense. But there's also a more direct connection.

A hyper Aryan race that drove entire populations into brutal forced labor to fuel their machines and ideologies. This is Hitler's unbuilt utopia, Germania,

conceived by Hitler himself and drafted by his lead architect, Albert Speer. Germania was the ultimate expression of Hitler's megalomania.

The plan was to raise Berlin to the ground and build a new mega city in the image of the Third Reich. A physical manifestation of control and oppression and social dominance.

Although Hitler modeled the city off of something we don't necessarily associate with any of this. The Greeks laid the foundation

for Western architecture, hence the name classical architecture. And they didn't really have a lot of source material

to work with in the fifth century BC. So they derived their architectural principles directly from nature, which they realized had a logic to them.

They used plants and shells or the human body, to derive their principles on symmetry and proportion and order, creating a guide for architecture that we still use today.

A couple centuries later, the Romans adapted this to create their own architectural identity that's bigger and grander and more monumental than ever before.

All of this was made possible thanks to their innovations in arches and vaults and domes. You could see the Romans were one of the first

to effectively and systematically use architecture as propaganda, especially on such a large scale. They use architectural strategies to impress upon the people

the power and the permanence of the empire. They wanted their buildings to not just last forever, but also look like they could last forever.

And many, many years later, Hitler took all of this and turned it into this. You see, for Hitler.

The Roman Empire was the symbol of power and stability. There's actually a term for this revival of the classic styles for the modern age, and it's called neoclassicism.

You see this in a lot of public buildings anyways. Hitler naturally had to make his buildings bigger than the Romans, so he designed them to be more monumental

to a scale that was incomprehensible. The crown jewel of Germania was this building, the Volkshalle

It could hold up to 180,000 people. And it was said that their breath, as they chanted in unison, would condensate

and create indoor rain. Ironically, Volkshalle directly translates into the People's Hall,

but the design completely ignored any sense of human scale. Now let's look at the Harkonnen’s Great Halls The resemblance is eerie,

and it's not a coincidence at all. In fact, every detail from the lack of windows to the hollow vaulted ceilings exude this sense of oppressive power

and a complete indifference for human comfort. The Prachstrasse, or the People's Avenue, was supposed to be the grandest of the boulevards,

and it was designed for these massive rallies, and it's flanked on either side with structures that are elevated on plinths that can seat thousands of people

while creating these imposing backdrops that tower over the street. And all of this direct the eye towards one thing. Oil and plastic.

It's one of the only materials that can outlast stone or brick. Villeneuve specifically wanted to create a world that was black and plastic,

which is probably why, despite using familiar architectural elements like columns and boulevards and monuments, it still feels completely alien.

So what you get is an entire planet. That's one enormous temple to this military industrial complex. And everything here looks machined

with these rounded corners and plastic ribs. There's almost a kind of H.R. Giger Machine Fetishism across the entire surface of the planet.

This space literally looks like the inside of a ball bearing. Because in the end, they are a parasitic culture that sucked the life out of the planet.

Even their harvesters look like ticks. There's this underlying logic here that plastic and oil is life, their key to longevity and permanence.

Which makes sense because material is like fiberglass. Reinforced plastic could last hundreds or thousands of years, especially on a planet like this, where UV

rays are practically non-existent, and which is what typically causes plastics to break down. But plastics are typically molded into place.

So despite this hard industrial machined look, these structures start off as a liquid, and this fluid interaction between these different

material states is actually a recurring theme. in Dune, For example: Sandworms.

How is it that they move so fast underground? The density of the sand must create an enormous amount of friction, but they move almost like they're gliding underwater.

And that's because sand forms create these vibrations that make the sand around them fluid. It's actually based on a concept called liquefaction,

where essentially vibrations reduce friction between granular material like sand, causing it to act more like a liquid.

This is what allows the worms to swim through the desert. Even the Holtzman shields have the same kind of logic of non-Newtonian fluids.

They turn hard when struck by an object that's moving very fast, so it's going to protect you from things like a spear. But they can be penetrated by slow moving objects.

And there's this strange interaction between liquids and solids and gases. But add another tactile dimension to this world. Oh, you know,

making the perfectly smooth Feyd Rautha head the head was absolutely essential for us. And we made these models

using the Bambu Lab's X1 carbon printer. Who's also the sponsor of this video! I've 3D printed a lot in my days,

and this is by far the fastest and most accurate and intuitive printer I've ever come across. The problem with 3D printing is always the alignment of the printer bed,

but this printer has an automatic leveling feature with vibration compensation and AI powered lidar sensors that scan and adjust the print bed in real time,

making sure every layer is perfectly flat for printing this Harkonnen arena. We ended up breaking it up into different sections,

and we actually use different materials PLA metal and PLA marble. They have a huge variety of PLA

and PTG filaments that you can choose from, and you can also print multiple materials and colors within one print job if you want.

Handling the multi material printing was super simple with the AMS add-on And once the filaments were loaded, all we had to do is select which materials we wanted in the bamboo

studio slicer and the rest was automatic. Printing this part was a little bit tricky because it has a curve, and we were worried about was seeing the layers of the print.

So we tested it with a 0.4 nozzle, which prints much faster, and also a 0.2 nozzle, which is slower, but you can see the difference. And if you're looking for inspiration,

you can join the MakerWorld community, where you'll find thousands of ready to print models. If you're interested in getting yourself a 3D printer,

check out the Bambu Labs X1 Carbon Link in the description. This scene was, visually incredible, but

it made me feel extremely uncomfortable in the theater. This endless sea of bold, screaming crowds and these demonic figures with their creepy clicky sounds

and these ominous ink fireworks and people who are just tiny specks in this colossal arena, and this deliberate decision to make the Coliseum triangular

rather than the typical oval. It explains a lot about the society. There's the obvious fact that fighters,

they can get backed into corners or, from a visual standpoint, sharp angles compared to rounded ones. They do symbolize aggression and trigger the amygdala,

which is the brain's fear center, but it's also a form of crowd control. Each side is forced to face the other two sides, and the sight lines are limited compared to a round coliseum.

So there's this inherent division in the crowd that's probably exasperated by this cacophony of screaming hurricanes, because sound kind of sucks in angled spaces.

For example, Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, which is another domed and circular space. It's known partly for its creeping whisper,

where a whisper spoken at the right angle can cling to the wall and move across the entire base of the dome to a person's ear on the other side.

So a triangular space, it will create dead zones and echoes and inconsistent reverb. And since sound has such a huge impact

on how we perceive space, you can see how it will create not the most comfortable atmosphere. And the more I think about it,

the more I think the triangle is actually the perfect shape for the Harkonnens This cacophony of sound, grotesque scale

and fear of being backed into a corner and factions and creating sides. It literally echoes a Harkonnen’s values for oppression and fear.

And this entire sequence was shot with an infrared camera, which captures wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum,

which we normally perceive as colors. Infrared images, translate this wavelength into shades of gray, and the more infrared light an object reflects, the brighter it appears.

For example, the sky scatters infrared light, making it appear darker and kind of foreboding, while things like plants and skin

reflect and more, giving it this white glow. But this is one of those details that's not originally in the books. This idea that daylight or natural

light on Giedi Prime renders everything colorless, because when they're inside, you can actually see the colors. So what makes a planet look like this?

It could be pollution that's fill the atmosphere with particulates that somehow scatters invisible light. Or it could be this unique atmosphere

that blocks much of the visible light and only lets an infrared radiation. Or this is what most of the fans have speculated. It's that Giedi Prime orbits around a dim star,

or what's been referred to as the black sun. Ironic because Black Sun, Schwarze Sonne is actually a Nazi symbol.

Perhaps the architecture on Giedi Prime was intentionally designed with these dark or non-reflective materials to minimize reflection from infrared light.

But whatever the reason, this little detail, it gives you so many insights into the Harkonnen psyche. Dune explores this relationship between humans

and their environments on Arrakis. The environment led to the development of religions and technology and culture.

So what does that mean for a group of people living on a plastic, black and white planet? There's not a whole

lot of discussion into the Harkonnen psychology, but the sun is the source of nutrition and life beyond just colors. It could mean a lack of proper nourishment or variety of health issues.

I mean, they definitely have some psychological issues. In the 80s, psychologists tried painting jail cells with this bubblegum pink color called

Drunk Tank Pink and realized that it actually calmed down aggressive prisoners for about 15 minutes, and soon they started doing it in drunk tanks and psych wards.

And it seemed to actually work until it kind of had an opposite effect. The author of the book: Drunk Tank Pink

also talks about a study that found weightlifters can't lift as much and athletes don't perform as well. If they look at the color pink, as opposed to something like red or blue,

and maybe studies like this kind of border on pseudoscience. But scientists have made associations between colors and emotions, and you don't have to be a genius to realize

that this makes you feel warm and comfortable. While this makes you feel calm or somber, so this is a long way of saying that environments that are rich in color

could evoke a wide range of emotions and depth and complexity to our experiences. While in a world devoid of color, this emotional range

might be stunted, and over centuries this could lead to an entire civilization where extreme and binary thinking dominates

a world of strong versus weak, rich versus poor, pain versus pleasure.

All these different ways where the environment can produce these unique expressions on humanity, and how you can trace these nuanced customs

back to the environment or the built environment. This is why I freaking love Dune. But it's not just fiction.

Throughout our history, we've been shaped by the environment and the built environment. You can also see how architecture can be used

as a tool to manipulate people. Because more than just functional things. Architecture is a symbol which can be deconstructed and twisted.

Turning one thing into something completely different. So what did you guys think about Dune? Let me know in the comments

if you're interested in our merch or our VFX booklet. As always, I'll leave the links to those in the description of the video. And with that, I'll see you in the next video.