For his first-ever feature-length film in English, legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar creates a powerhouse pairing, with Tilda Swinton and former Wallpaper* Design Awards judge Julianne Moore playing the two leads. But there is a third star, the beautiful brutalist house that forms the backdrop to the majority of the movie.
The Room Next Door tells the story of a journalist dying of cancer who calls on an old friend to be with her when she ends her life (in the room next door). The two have not seen each other in a long time, but shift from Manhattan to a rented modernist house in upstate New York to prepare for death. The location house, Casa Szoke, is actually in Spain, located on the southern slope of Monte Abantos, near El Escorial, an hour’s drive from Madrid. Designed by Madrid-based studio Aranguren + Gallegos, who took inspiration from Le Corbusier’s box-like creations, it consists of a series of interconnected angular volumes in glass and corten steel, which nestle in a pine forest landscape.
