The second season of the Star Wars series Andor introduces us to the planet of Ghorman. The simple description of the planet is that it is known for making fabric (via the indigenous spiders) and it is known around the galaxy for its high quality. What we see in the episodes (so far) are focused in on a city square and a few of the spaces off of the square ; hotel, café, fabric shop, cocktail lounge. The production designer, Luke Hull, when talking about the world building refers to the design as being “a more Northern Italian-vibe – as that Ghorman is like Turin.” Although, one of the beauties of science fiction is that they can pick and choose where this inspiration comes from, so there is a definite mix of European design blending Art Nouveau and Art Deco with a flair of sci-fi.

A side street busy with the quotidienne aspects of Ghorman street life, including space Vespas.

In a universe where almost everything can hover (I once noticed a “horse”-drawn cart hovering in one of the animated episodes of the Clone Wars) it makes road building interesting because in not having to take the weight of vehicles they can be simple thinner tiles than what we use for paving. The city square even gets into using decorative coloring and pattern in the tiles.

Brutalist forms and inverted umbrellas. (Are they collecting rain water ?)

The city square in the evening. Buildings from the Empire loom menacingly in the distance.

Every night it appears to rain in Palmo, so they design their structures with pitched roofs. Slanted and terraced into the city square and Mansard for the buildings away from the square. (There are a few corner domes scattered about in the background for older buildings.)

Some emergency vehicles arrive after an accident at night and we get to admire the beautiful rooftops of Palmo.

Most of the buildings range in size from two to four storeys, with an enlarged rear elevated patio to provide private exterior space. These rear patios all appear to be empty for some reason and feel like they could function like Montréal’s plex-housing staircases, in which people use them to reach the upper storeys without having to access through the ground floor.

Ground floor commercial, but a lack of storefront windows.

The covered walkway around the city square and one of the few instances of overhead lighting in Ghorman.

The design of the square has a beautiful blending of geometric angular meets curve. A repeated form of a tapered column that branches out near the top is a motif found throughout the buildings of the square. They look as though they are a cast-concrete form that is then paired with others so that it is easily repeatable, but that the language continues through. Two angled together can be a pilaster against a wall and three / four arranged together are a solitary column. (The gold recessed line is a beautiful little detail.)

Enlarged, these columns can also stand alone and function as street lighting.

I love the textural nature of these designs and how weathering can create interest in the subtle variations of a repeating pattern. There’s also this feeling of history – a palimpsest of architectural elements built up upon what we assume was there before. In the world of sci-fi, there seems to be a growing design aesthetic in which we are pulling away from the shiny white plastic and only touching glass and a return to texture and tactile and switches. Entropy and just the passage of time doesn’t like white or smooth and clean, so it’s nice to see people embrace this tactile version.

Looking out onto the city square from the hotel room we see the detail of mullions.

Glass is not absent from Ghorman, but the design seems to embrace more their connections, rather than their field of transparency / reflectiveness. The mullion details for different windows are absolutely stunning for creating an atmosphere.

The café complete with French waiters in space. The moasic spider on the wall is just … *chef’s kiss* Also, the irregular floor tiles add so much.

The café plays well with this notion of mullions and how they address the glass. Pulling strongly from the Art Nouveau aesthetic, we see that glass fills curved forms, with their delicate thin mullions acting as lines to provide doors or main window versus side light. Wood, leather, and brass give us tactile cues to the space. For those of us who sadly don’t live near Art Nouveau spaces this gives us a sense of old world wealth as well as otherworldly.

I love a large mirror to make a small space feel bigger.

Sometimes the mullions also play with the idea of curve.

The fabric shop with daylighting through the slit in the ceiling.

The cocktail lounge.

In the cocktail lounge we get another glimpse at the rare Ghorman overhead lighting, but as a geometric soft light chandelier, so it gets an aesthetic pass. The column forms also continue though in their bridging the gap in the many spaces in connecting them to a singular location. The geometric details of the cocktail lounge seem to mirror our own design development progression from Art Nouveau to Art Deco, where curve gave way to angular.

It’s so refreshing to see an embrace of natural materials with textures being brought into the sci-fi setting, where too often design is only shiny plastic and glass.