Wow Stromberg that’s quite the location! Very peculiar and mysterious one I say.
Would be interesting to see it in a future Bond adventure.
And EON would be able to get it very cheap, I guess?
He’d love this, but he didn’t design it, that’s for sure. These were French architects. It was build as France’s first private radio station, Europe 1. The problem was that the French laws didn’t allow private radio stations at the time, so they had to built it on the German side of the French-German border (which is a few hundred meters away from the place).
Actually, it wasn’t exactly Germany at the time. The “Saargebiet” had autonomy after WWII, with a close association to France. It was a few years later that the people decided that they wanted to be a part of Germany (again).
This used to be Europe’s strongest long wave transmitter, the brodcasts could even be received in French Algeria - and if you’ve read Forsyth’s Jackal, you probably know that de Gaulle managed to end an officer’s revolt by means of radio (and that’s why OAS terrorists once planned to blow the place up).
This is an early attempt at a self-supporting ceiling by use of pre-stressed concrete, it’s built in the shape of a scallop. There are absolutely no supporting pillars inside. One of the architects died of a heart attack while it was built, the other one committed suicide when a first attempt with the ceiling went totally wrong. The new architect (the guy who invented this method of building) took everything back to the drawing board until he got it right.
BTW, I did mention the “shark pool” which originally was a cooling water reservoir:
And here’s the large conference table:
And here’s what it looks like from behind (which actually is the front):
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Can’t click “Like” for this today but considered it liked.
Just read this article and half of the pictures look like Bond locations, particularly Angkor Wat or Ross Island, Valle Dei Mulini, and Pripyat (as a city abandoned after Chernobyl, it would make an ideal Spectreville). Sadly they’ve already been to Bolivia and did not include the train graveyard.
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Great article rubix. You know throughout the USA, there are about two dozen aircraft (military and commercial) “boneyards”. Some a few square miles containing 1000’s of planes from 747’s to military fighter jets. The largest one IIRC is in Arizona. I always thought such a place would be a great setting.
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The funny thing is EON would find one of these places they like then end up rebuilding it like Hashima Island 
Fine point. It comes down to logistics. Finding a cool location that would lend itself to an action or finale or PTS or set piece is easy enough. Eon probably has volumes of notes from location scouting and now even more with the web, but it’s one thing to have Bond escape military headquarters is St. Petersburg and drive a tank through city streets, it’s another to film it there… yet they did… to a point.
But, there are still plenty of places that when approached by a Bond film, as we’ve seen, say “Right On! What can we do?” Sure, some deals have to be made, and yes, depending on the scope, interiors and exterior miniatures may need to be done… or what the hell, let’s just build Fort Knox or a twelve story volcano.
But the streets of London, Rio, Istanbul, Venice, Cairo, Vegas etc. have been utilized for where at what they are. Run with it.
Sounds good to me👏… as long as the Spang brothers don’t turn out to be lost nephews of Bonds to give another personal twist!
When will the Bond film go to United Arab Emirates or Australia? The Mission Impossible movies have already done that. Can’t keep going to Turkey, Kiev, Spain, Italy, France, parts of Africa or Monte Carlo. Even when it not wrong to do so.
I like the idea of Australia and other American cities should return to the world of Bond, but South Africa seems to be an interesting choice. Bond never “fancied” that trip in DAF and it would be a cool locale to visit.
Okay quick tangent. I had a lot of issues with Spectre and much of it had to do with the globetrotting that effected the film’s meandering plot. The locations of Mexico City and Austria were breathtaking, but it seems the filmmakers have to follow the same basic formula of having Bond visit location A here, blow stuff up and go to location B. It is getting boring now. Lesser locations the better. I loved the Mexico City sequence, in fact it was the best scene not just for its direction but also we never saw Bond in Mexico before. But it seems the pace of Spectre, and a few other Bond movies as well, seem to lose story momentum when frequent locations are used.
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I think it’s incredible that when Bond 25 is released it will have been 30 years since Bond was in America (and no, CR having Prague posing as Miami doesn’t count - they couldn’t be more different…
A number of different considerations figure in on which locations to choose for Bond: visual appeal, nature of material you want to shoot (scenic/atmospheric, action set piece, backdrop), infrastructure, availability, cost, tax incentives & kickbacks and whatnot. It’s indeed a bit surprising the US continues to lose that competition time and again for so long now.
A popular theory is that LTK’s lacklustre performance has deeply ingrained an ideological superstition in studio bosses that US locations are simply not exotic enough for Bond. This may or may not be the reason. However, there are so many truly spectacular landmarks in the US it beggars belief this wealth of scenic treasures isn’t exploited for Bond.
I hope a future Bond film does explore a location much longer than for one action sequence. To catch the atmosphere of a certain place is a quality the early Bond films offered in spades while the Craig era mostly used locations as backdrops.
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It would be very welcome if the constant jet setting was toned down a bit. Certainly it would also help keeping the bills in check…
Where can Bond go in the U.S. revisit San Francisco(most say it not gritty enough, the short live U.S. version of Prime Suspect was to be set there, but last moment changed to New York), Las Vegas, New York city. New places like North or South Dakota, Idaho, San Diego, Milwaukee, Atlantic City, Buffalo, New York, Seattle, or Atlanta?
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Well, how about Death Valley Junction’s opera house? The Horsetail Fall? Or the Fly Geyser in Nevada? Ra Paulette’s caves in New Mexico? Austin’s Hamilton Pool or Cathedral of Junk? Cincinnati’s forgotten subway tunnels? The Kentucky Derby? Or maybe the caves of Luray in the Shenandoah valley, where they built an organ from stalactites?
Just a few ideas there, a location scout should come up with a lot more.
Re: America - I point to my earlier posts about Burning Man…
Bond HAS to make his way to Washington DC at some point. I could see Savannah being good as well.
Burning Man would be a spectacular setting, definitely.
There’s a place in China, in Yunnan province called Stone Forest. An incredible “forest” of limestone formations. I can imagine a deadly chase by night organized by SPECTRE, between Bond and a death squad…It could be a part of Blofeld’s castle, maybe its garden of death like in YOLT (ok it was in Japan).
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