Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains by Chad Oppenheim and Andrea Gollin. Tra Publishing, 296 pp., $75.
This month Tra Publishing releases Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains, a playful and thought-provoking book about the way cinema has linked modernism to evil. From the Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired enclave in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest to the naturalistic compound in Ex Machina designed by Jensen & Skodvin, Lair asks the question: “Why do bad guys live in good houses?”
On October 10, Tra hosted a release party at New York’s NeueHouse, where a panel attempted some answers. Lairs turn out to have a few things in common. They are bunkers where villains separate themselves from society. They are bachelor pads where, in the words of Entertainment Weekly’s Leah Greenblatt, bad men “invite pretty ladies to come and stay, and probably die.” Most importantly, they are aspirational. Whether it is Lex Luthor’s sprawling lair beneath Grand Central (surely the biggest residential space in Manhattan) or a Bond vil…