Courtesy Sky Atlantic

Over his 50-year career, David Lynch created some of cinema’s most iconic visual spaces, from the psychologically charged Red Room in Twin Peaks to Club Silencio in Mulholland Drive. Following the director’s death this week, aged 78, we take a look at his spatial legacy – celluloid sets that became characters in their own right and the real-world interiors he left behind.

A Thinking Room – Milan

Photography: courtesy of David Lynch and Salone del Mobile

Lynch launched his cinematic installation A Thinking Room at the Rho Fiera during last year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan (16-21 April 2024), teaming up with curator Antonio Monda on the immersive installation. Two identical ‘Thinking Rooms’ embodied his auteurial language and passion for furniture design; each featured a single, oversized throne-like armchair designed by Lynch (himself a passionate furniture designer) and surrounded by heavy blue velvet drapes – a reference to his 1986 hit, Blue Velvet. Overhead, brass tubes reached towards a gilded ceiling, while screens on the outskirts of the space played abstract videos, offering a ‘glimpse’ of the world beyond the room.

The ephemeral Thinking Room was conceived as a space for reflection and pause, away from the bustle of the fair. Lynch drew all the concept sketches for the exhibition design, and his vision was brought to life by the Milanese firm Lombardini22 and set designers from the Piccolo Theater.

Red Room – ‘Twin Peaks’ (1990, 2017)

Courtesy of Sky Atlantic

Arguably, his most iconic set design, the Red Room has inspired and intrigued generations of cinema-goers. Crimson red curtains envelop the space, with a black-and-white chevron patterned floor adding a hypnotic touch, giving the space the eerie feeling of being out of sync with time and reality. Lynch was particularly interested in the psychological impact of colours and motifs: red is a recurrent visual cue to convey a sense of paranoia, dread and fear, with the director using his recurrent red curtains in Twin Peaks, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Lost Highway.

See more on Twin Peaks season 3’s scene-stealing set designs.

Rabbits’ (2002) living room

Still from Rabbits

Rabbits is a series of eight short horror web films Lynch wrote and directed in 2002 about a trio of humanoid rabbits voiced by Scott Coffey, Laura Elena Harring and Naomi Watts. All of the action and conversation takes place in the living room, which quickly becomes the fourth character as the series progresses.

Poorly lit, with dramatic shadows dancing across its walls and ceiling, Rabbits’ living room has a monochrome palette of dark, muted tones and spartan furniture that seems to embody the drabness and depression of the characters who inhabit the room. The vintage-style midcentury sofa is arranged off-kilter, adding to the psychological tension of the space. At the same time, you can’t see through the room’s singular window, adding to the sense of claustrophobia and anxiety about what lies outside.

Betty’s apartment, ‘Mulholland Drive (2001)’

Credit: MLS

Obscure and impenetrable, Mulholland Drive explores Lynch’s recurrent theme of doubling, among other things, and is an uncanny journey through Los Angeles’s underbelly, exploring its seductive yet frightening nature. The plot follows aspiring actress Betty Elms’ arrival in the city to stay in her aunt’s vacant apartment in Hollywood. Here,  she encounters Rita, who appears lost and confused and eventually becomes her love interest.

Betty’s fictional apartment is actually located in the real life, historic Il Borghese Apartments in Hancock Park, near West Hollywood. Designed by architect Charles Gault in 1929, this building is a striking example of Spanish architecture, complete with a leafy courtyard and a fountain. It is also said to have been the former residence of Shirley Temple and a popular party venue for many Hollywood personalities, including Errol Flynn.

Madison House – ‘Lost Highway’ (1997)

Credit: Homes.com / Google

Considered by many Lynch fans to be the thematic ‘sequel’ to Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway continues Lynch’s exploration of duality, fluid identities, and the hidden, dark side of mundane life. Protagonists Fred and René Madison (Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette) live in the angular Hollywood Hills home; their ordinary lives are disrupted when they begin receiving video tapes through their door, and Fred suspects his wife of infidelity.

In real life, the property was owned by Lynch (among three on the same street, including a residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, Lloyd Wright). From the outside, the concrete fortress encapsulates Fred’s paranoid state of mind, while the minimalist interior has those signature red curtains and large, empty rooms with furniture floating in negative space. Low ceilings and winding corridors add to the sense of disruption and paranoia.

Henry’s apartment – Eraserhead (1977)

Film still of Eraserhead

Never has an interior embodied a character’s dismal psychological state quite so well as Henry’s apartment in Lynch’s 1977 film Eraserhead. The room is small, sparsely furnished, and dirty: the walls look dingy with peeling wallpaper, the bed is unkempt with dirty bed sheets, and there’s little else beyond the radiator, a small table and a nightstand. Like Rabbits’ living room, the space is shadowy and dimly lit, manifesting Henry’s psychological anxiety as a visual cue for the audience as he unravels.

Silencio Paris

Photography: Le Silencio

David Lynch took cues from his fictional Club Silencio, featured in Mulholland Drive when creating this real-life private members’ club in Paris back in 2011. Everything from the 1950s furniture to the black toilet bowls was conceived by the director in his role as Silencio’s artistic director, and it’s designed to ‘induce and sustain a specific state of alertness and openness to the unknown’.

Since then, the Silencio portfolio has expanded to NYC. And though Lynch was not directly involved in the design of the Manhattan clubhouse, it was done in collaboration with his original Silencio Paris. Consequently, the Manhattan space mirrors the concept of the Parisian club.

Silencio Manhattan Photography: Pauline Shapiro

Crosby Studios founder Harry Nuriev designed the Manhattan outpost’s interiors and they’re every inch the David Lynch fever dream, distilling the director’s visual language through the use of red curtains and LED strips outlining the walls. Stepping into the space feels like you’re stepping into a slippery Lynchian world.

Read next: 10 real-world locations from David Lynch’s film catalogue

New York nightclub Silencio is a David Lynch fever dream

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