Germania
By Steve Koch
Designs for the Germania model seen in The Empty Mirror were taken directly from the original plans drawn up by Hitler's Architect, Albert Speer. Hitler, a student of architecture, planned to transform Berlin into the world's most impressive city. The Art Department on The Empty Mirror found an amazing book -- Albert Speer: Architecture 1932-1942 -- which showed drawings and photographs of the models that Albert Speer had constructed for the proposed city.
Although much simplified, the film's miniature accurately represents that city, including its central boulevard and immense "Gross Hall", the dome of which was to have risen some twelve hundred feet into the air.
The model was built by modelmaker Michael Morgan and myself in a period of about eighteen weeks. Approximately thirty structures were built out of wood and styrene plastic. Typically a single facade was constructed, then molded in silicone. Multiple castings were then made out of liquid polyurethane plastic and applied to wooden building forms. Next, the entire finished building was molded in silicone. This allowed multiple high-quality buildings to be cast up in polyurethane for the "hero" model.
