Suites, Steel, and Superpowers: Rewatching The Incredibles 2 Through an Architectural Lens
There’s a certain kind of film that stays with you not because of its plot, but because of its corners. The way the light falls in a room. The geometry of a kitchen. The furniture that doesn’t just seat characters but hosts their chaos. The Incredibles 2 is, famously, about a family of superheroes, but on my recent rewatch, I found myself less concerned with Elastigirl’s motorbike stunts or Jack-Jack’s existential tantrums and more transfixed by the house they’re loaned, the yacht that becomes a stage, the lair-like precision of Edna Mode’s design temple.
Pixar didn’t simply animate environments, they curated them. Architecture here isn’t passive background; it’s ideological. It shapes the characters as much as their capes and crises do. I’ve started watching The Incredibles 2 the way I might explore a design exhibition: with reverence, analysis, and the occasional pause to mutter, God, that lighting plan.
The film is set in a retro-futuristic utopia that borrows from the sleek optimism of mid-century modernism, think Saarinen curves with a side of paranoia. It's a world where danger hides behind design, and comfort is often suspiciously curated. This is suburbia reimagined through the lens of suppressed superpowers and social performance, and nowhere is this tension more evident than in the spaces the Parrs inhabit.
The Parr House ©2018 Disney•Pixar
The Parr House: Glass, Glamour, and Domestic Discomfort
When the Parrs are relocated to their temporary loaner home by the ever-smiling tycoon Winston Deavor, the house is presented as a gift, a gesture of generosity from someone who wants to protect the public image of superheroes. But it quickly becomes clear that this is no sanctuary. This is a house built to impress, not to offer refuge. Situated on a precarious cliff, it is as much about spectacle as it is about function. Its imposing glass-and-stone structure, striking from every angle, exudes the kind of glamour that would have made Frank Lloyd Wright blush, though not in admiration. It’s more like an architectural dare — an exercise in modernism so bold it feels almost designed to fail.
If there’s an architectural equivalent of a red carpet rolled out just for you, this is it. Yet, unlike a red carpet, the house doesn’t welcome you with warmth or comfort. It demands that you prove yourself worthy of living in it. And while it may be visually stunning, surely the sort of place Architectural Digest would proudly feature in a ‘Top 10 Most Visually Impressive Homes to Live and Die In’, it’s far from practical. The Parrs, with their chaotic family dynamic, are far more accustomed to the functional mundanity of suburban existence, where the biggest concern is whether or not the neighbours can hear you arguing. This house, in contrast, feels like a performance of perfection, one that the Parrs weren’t invited to rehearse for.
The house’s open-plan design makes it visually arresting. Double-height living rooms allow you to breathe freely, almost as if the space is daring you to stretch your arms out and claim ownership of its vastness. The massive windows, which seem designed to ensure that the entire neighbourhood can gaze in, offer stunning views, but they also serve as an uninvited reminder that the family’s every movement is being observed. And not just by the external world but, in many ways, by the house itself. It has a gaze all its own, forcing the inhabitants into a kind of domestic transparency that no one asked for.
Perhaps the most disconcerting feature of the house is its lack of intimacy. The sunken seating area, a subtle nod to Palm Springs modernism with its ‘70s-style sensibilities, feels more like a stage than a living room. It’s an area designed for show, a space that says, “Sit here, look polished, be picturesque.” The lava-rock water feature, the sinuous staircases, the floating platforms — all part of the sculptural beauty of the space, scream style over substance. There is no sense of security here. There are no hidden corners, no quiet nooks where one can retreat to be alone. Every inch of this house is curated to within an inch of its life, but not for comfort. The house isn’t designed for family life; it’s designed for an aesthetic, for showcasing success.
And this is where the irony lies. The Parrs, despite their larger-than-life powers, are very much a family trying to hold it all together. The juxtaposition between the grandeur of the house and the disjointedness of the family’s emotional state is striking. The sprawling space designed to be a beacon of success is in direct contrast with their unsettled lives. It’s as though the house is screaming “you’ve arrived”, while the Parrs’ emotional state screams “we’re not even sure where we’re going."
The irony of a house that is meant to convey permanence and success yet feels fundamentally rootless mirrors the emotional state of the family. Helen, out reclaiming her superhero identity, is physically absent, leaving Bob to hold down the fort, struggling to maintain the semblance of a normal family life. The house stands tall, solid in its stone and glass, yet it is as much a reflection of Bob’s inner turmoil as it is an external statement of success. The towering structure, full of bold lines and sharp angles, mirrors Bob’s feeling of being out of place, a giant caught between two worlds — his family life and the legacy of superheroes.
In many ways, the house is a liminal space. A ‘dream home’ dressed up in the language of success, it fails to understand the difference between show and substance. And yet, much like the film’s narrative, it resists easy judgement. It is both dazzling and uncomfortable. It is seductive in its beauty, but its sharp edges leave no room for warmth. It speaks of ambition, yes, but it also speaks of the alienation that often comes with striving to be something more, something better, than you are.
The Parrs are caught in a space that doesn’t understand them, just as they are caught between their two worlds. They’ve been placed in an architectural paradise that offers no real comfort, only exposure. It’s like living in a showroom, where everything is pristine and beautiful, but utterly uninhabitable. The architecture of this house could have been inspired by the 1961 home of architect James Evans in New Canaan, Connecticut, an icon of mid-century modernism that eschews conventional comfort in favour of stunning visual impact. Evans’s house, much like the Parr’s borrowed abode, exemplifies the belief that architecture should be striking, should make a statement. But in doing so, both houses leave behind the more human need for refuge.
And yet, as is often the case with art, the house grows on you. You start to appreciate the beauty of its design, even as you recognise its inherent hostility. The Parrs, too, start to understand that, like the house, they can survive in the discomfort of transition. They don’t need a perfectly sculpted home to be a family. The house may be an architectural mismatch, but in its own way, it’s the perfect backdrop to the Parrs’ struggle. It’s a home they can’t settle into, a space they can’t belong to, much like the larger world outside that refuses to accept them.
In the end, the Parr House becomes something of a metaphor: modern life itself, dazzling and alienating, beautiful but isolating. Just as the family must learn to adjust to this house, we too must learn to navigate the grand spectacle of the world — recognising that beauty, though alluring, does not always bring comfort, and that the quest for greatness often leaves us feeling unmoored.
The Yacht: Glamour, Power, and the Illusion of Control
It’s never just a yacht. In The Incredibles 2, the DevTech superyacht is not a pleasure vessel — it’s a floating ego, lacquered in walnut and dressed to impress. It slices across the water like it knows it’s being watched, like it’s trying to outshine the sun with the glint of its chrome. From the moment the family boards it, there’s something unsettling… something too sleek, too symmetrical. The kind of perfection that whispers you’re not in charge here.
This isn’t a boat. It’s a power move. A sculpture in motion. The kind of vessel that assumes authority simply by existing, like a billionaire’s signature on a cheque the sea never asked for. It evokes the kind of sweeping, expressive modernism we see in Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center or his pedestal for the St. Louis Arch — those structures that curve with conviction, as if the future itself were shaped by confidence.
We’re told it’s a celebration, a victory lap for Winston Deavor’s super-relations campaign. Heroes back in the public eye, champagne flutes raised, optics secured. But the yacht doesn’t feel like a celebration. It feels like a stage. Every corridor, every stairwell is too curated, too precise, as though the entire thing were built not for safety or sea-worthiness, but for spectacle. If the Parr House was modernism in concrete, this is modernism at sea — drenched in mahogany, glass, and just enough menace to remind you you’re only a guest.
And isn’t that the point? The yacht is designed to impress, not to reassure. It’s diplomacy as theatre. Everything aboard feels rehearsed: the smiles, the lighting, the horizon conveniently framed through panoramic windows. It’s the kind of place where people say things like “We’re making history,” while history quietly prepares a coup in the engine room. The yacht exists not to move but to be seen moving, a show of progress that remains, ironically, directionless.
There’s something frankly absurd about it all. Supers are still outlawed, society remains sceptical, and yet here we are, floating in cinematic luxury like we’ve already won. Cocktail dresses, designer suits, caviar canapés — this is a world performing certainty on a deck built over uncertainty. The yacht becomes a floating contradiction: luxurious yet unstable, polished yet precarious. It isn’t anchored to any truth. Which is exactly why, when it all begins to unravel, the symbolism doesn’t so much emerge as crash through the hull.
Because eventually, it always sinks. And when it does, the illusion doesn’t fade gracefully — it detonates. The same windows that once framed peaceful seas become portals to chaos. The symmetry is swallowed by panic. The wood-panelled fantasy becomes a slick death trap. It’s not even being subtle anymore, the yacht doesn’t just become dangerous; it reveals that it always was. That luxury without grounding is just decoration for a disaster in waiting.
Winston Deavor, of course, is no innocent bystander in all this. The yacht mirrors him completely: performative, polished, and obsessed with presentation. He’s a man who believes that the right image can fix any reality. And so he builds a ship to carry that belief across the world, a travelling temple to the gospel of visibility. He wants superheroes on magazine covers, billboards, talk shows — he doesn’t want them saving lives; he wants them selling hope.
But there’s no sturdiness in his convictions. Just as the helm of the ship is minimal to the point of fragility, so too is Winston’s ideology. It’s all gloss and no grit. And when Screenslaver turns the ship’s controls against its captain, the metaphor doesn’t require analysis, it screams. No matter how luxurious the control panel, if you don’t understand the forces beneath it, you’re going down.
Perhaps the most affecting image in all of this isn’t the yacht itself, but the Parr family fighting against it. Watching a mother stretch herself across steel cables to prevent impact, or a teenage girl steering against the current with no training and total resolve, it’s like watching domesticity war with infrastructure. The family, barefoot and determined, up against a monument to modern ego. And somehow, improbably, they succeed.
It’s thrilling. And also, just a little bit ridiculous. The whole notion that a family’s raw energy could stop the architectural embodiment of corporate excess. But isn’t that the film’s entire thesis? That humanity, in all its messy sincerity, might actually triumph over spectacle? That love, obligation, intuition — those things still matter more than style or spin?
The yacht, in the end, is a perfect battleground for this ideological showdown. It is the final theatre of deception, the climax of control undone. Design meets consequence. And it loses. The very thing that was built to command attention becomes the wreck that reminds us how shallow that command always was.
Even its failure is cinematic. The yacht doesn’t just crash, it makes a statement on the way down. A decadent, arrogant, visually flawless vessel undone by the very fragility it tried to hide. In another film, this might have felt heavy-handed. But here, in the bold, brassy universe of The Incredibles, the metaphor lands precisely because it doesn’t apologise for being obvious. It’s a floating house of cards, dressed in couture.
And so the yacht sails into the sea not as a triumph, but as a lesson. A warning, perhaps, that the more beautiful the mask, the more brittle it might be underneath. That in a world obsessed with control, the things we build to hold power often reveal just how little we really have.
Edna’s House: Brutalism Meets Genius
Edna Mode’s home is a love letter to brutalism… if brutalism were touched by couture and sprinkled with sarcasm. It’s a bunker of brilliance, a minimalist temple to ego and intellect. Her house is more than just a set piece; it’s a character, as composed and uncompromising as its owner. Every material screams control: polished concrete, glass, steel, the occasional bit of leather that looks like it might also serve as part of a tactical vest. What’s remarkable is how Edna’s house manages to feel so rich while being so sparse. It's not maximalist like Tony Stark’s lab, or monastic like Batman’s cave. It’s somewhere in between: a pure expression of function-as-beauty, where the function is being fabulous and right about everything. One imagines she never sits in her chairs; she poses on them, as part of a line-up of Italian masterpieces that double as statements of personal philosophy.
Edna Mode doesn’t just live in her house, she curates it the way one might assemble a garment: with sharp lines, decisive cuts, and a total intolerance for anything that droops, dithers, or deviates from perfection. The result is a structure that feels less like a home and more like a thesis statement. Edna’s house isn’t “inspired by” brutalism — it is brutalism, whispered through clenched teeth and upholstered in genius. (In my head) Le Corbusier himself might have raised an eyebrow, then nodded approvingly, recognising the ghost of his béton brut now reinterpreted through a lens of bite-sized authority and high fashion.
Approaching it is like stepping into a fortress designed by someone who thinks traditional fortresses are a bit much, but still useful in theory. There are high walls. There’s a security gate that scans your entire genetic history. There are courtyards so sparse they feel like existential tests. And at the centre, Edna herself, sipping espresso in a chair that costs more than most cars and looks like it’s judging you. Every inch of the space communicates the same unflinching message: no mess, no maybes, no mediocrity.
©2018 Disney•Pixar
The house is unapologetically concrete. But not the grey, crumbly sort that lines car parks and forgotten schools. No, this is concrete as couture. Smooth, deliberate, sensual in its severity. The sort of finish that makes you stand up straighter and check your tone. There are floor-to-ceiling windows, yes, but they don’t invite light so much as stage it, like a lighting designer given one beam and infinite power. Steel joins the party, glass oversees the ensemble, and leather shows up only where absolutely necessary — like on the armrest of a chair that might also double as a panic button.
It is, in every way, a reflection of Edna herself: small in footprint, monumental in presence.
And then Jack-Jack arrives.
Edna’s home is a temple to order; Jack-Jack is divine chaos wrapped in nappies. He toddles into this monument of discipline like a warm breeze through a marble crypt. And here’s where the film performs its quiet architectural miracle: instead of rejecting him, the space bends, ever so slightly, not out of sentiment, but out of respect. The brutalism doesn’t evaporate, it adjusts. What was once cold becomes curious. The walls don’t soften, but they seem to echo with laughter for the first time.
The moment Edna agrees to babysit isn’t just comic relief, it’s architectural rebellion. Her bunker, sealed tighter than a billionaire’s alibi, becomes a playground. Not because it becomes softer, but because Jack-Jack is irrepressible. He doesn’t merely survive the austerity; he thrives in it. Concrete doesn’t frighten him. Steel does not suppress his sparkle. In fact, the clinical minimalism acts as a perfect contrast for his shapeshifting mayhem. Fire, lasers, teleportation — his powers become a kind of kinetic graffiti against Edna’s clean lines. It’s not destruction. It’s symbiosis.
There’s something almost touching in how Edna and Jack-Jack find an unexpected rapport within the space. She, a woman of lines and limits. He, a being of flux. Their interaction becomes a study in aesthetic opposites. She doesn’t coddle him. He doesn’t behave. And yet, the energy becomes generative, like watching a modernist architect and a jazz musician collaborate on a building made entirely of improvisation and rigour.
It’s here that the design of the house reveals its final, hidden quality: adaptability. For all its rigidity, its edges and echoing austerity, it manages not to repel life, but to frame it. Jack-Jack is allowed to be outrageous not because the house gives way to him, but because it refuses to be disrupted by him. The confidence of its design is its resilience. And so the comedy of their interaction plays out in brutalist surround sound — architecture as straight man, infant as punchline.
What’s especially notable is how unselfconscious the house is. Unlike the Parrs’ cliffside display home or Winston’s performative yacht, Edna’s lair doesn’t care if you approve. It’s not designed to impress the neighbours. It’s designed to function as an extension of her psyche. There’s no room for ego because the ego is the room. It’s as though Frank Lloyd Wright and Rei Kawakubo had a child and let it play with concrete for six months. The result: severe beauty with an IQ.
There’s a deeper metaphor humming beneath all this too. In a world where superheroes struggle with their place in public perception, Edna’s home represents pure interiority. She doesn’t seek the spotlight, she engineers it. She isn’t fighting for relevance; she defines it. Her house doesn’t adapt to fashion, it precedes it. It is architectural self-actualisation.
And maybe that’s why it feels so fundamentally complete. Where other spaces in the film feel transitional, borrowed, or performative, Edna’s is whole. It contains everything it needs: intellect, isolation, utility, drama. It is not waiting for a new tenant or a new storyline. It is her and she is it.
In the end, Jack-Jack’s visit doesn’t change the house — but it reveals its capacity for wonder. Brutalism, often accused of being cold, here becomes the backdrop for delight. The house, in all its seriousness, learns how to smirk.
And Edna, the woman who designs with the finality of a decree, finds herself, for once, surprised.
Screenslaver’s Lair: The Cold Geometry of Control
Screenslaver’s lair isn’t just a villainous hideout. It’s an architectural exercise in manipulation — cold, sterile, and alienating. Unlike the Parrs' domestic, warm interiors or Edna’s gleaming fortress of creativity, Screenslaver’s lair is a chilling machine of influence. Every wall is a screen, and every screen is a weapon. It’s an environment where the human is replaced by the technological, where the lines between digital and physical collapse into a singular, inescapable narrative.
In design terms, it’s the ultimate spatial representation of control through surveillance and distraction. The circularity of the lair’s shape, the rhythm of the screens, the unbroken repetition of visuals and light — it all speaks to a kind of mechanical dominance. There’s nothing in this lair that speaks to humanity, or warmth, or anything resembling the human spirit. It’s all about strategy, aesthetics of power, and total isolation. The screens themselves become the environment, blanketing the characters in a constant state of heightened tension.
If we look deeper, the layout speaks to something even more insidious: the architecture of isolation. There’s no sense of escape or refuge here, just a continuous loop of surveillance. The spiral of the lair echoes the spiral of control, each room folding back on itself, each new screen feeding the narrative of domination. There are no windows, no doors, no light apart from the artificial glow. It’s a labyrinth without a centre, a theatre without an audience, a world where the only rule is the constant, overarching gaze of the screens. What makes the lair so captivating, architecturally speaking, is how the design of the space is almost invisible, it doesn’t shout for attention like the yacht, but it still commands absolute power. It’s a space that erases identity and subsumes the mind, visually and mentally overwhelming anyone trapped inside. There’s no room for self in this environment. There’s only the all-seeing eye, the absolute control that smothers freedom under its polished, digital surface.
And yet, there’s a certain brilliance to how The Incredibles 2 uses architecture here. Screenslaver’s lair is a perfect visual metaphor for the way technology can consume and control us. In this space, we’re all at the mercy of a screen’s gaze, stripped of autonomy, devoid of choice. It’s almost a warning, a cautionary tale that speaks to our current anxieties about the pervasiveness of surveillance and technology’s role in our lives. You enter the lair and instantly feel subtracted. Stripped of voice, agency, even visual relief. There’s no texture here, no grain to hold onto. Everything is smooth, slick, synthetic. It’s like stepping inside a PowerPoint presentation rendered in concrete and LCD. Every surface is either a screen or wants to become one. Walls don’t support, they project. And in doing so, they erase the boundary between architecture and ideology. The structure doesn’t house evil. It broadcasts it.
The genius of the lair is in how little it actually does while appearing to do everything. Its power isn’t architectural in the traditional sense, it doesn’t command with height or ornament. Instead, it seduces through rhythm: a visual stutter of endless imagery. Light pulses with hypnotic regularity. The screens cycle through patterns not to entertain, but to entrap. This is not a place for presence. It is a factory of absence, a theatre of submission where the audience is also the performance and the stage is always watching back. What’s unsettling is how familiar it feels. Not in the sense of décor — there’s no couch to slump into, no clutter, no warmth, but in the way it mimics our real-world relationships with space and screen. The lair is algorithmic. Each turn leads nowhere new, each room loops the same signals. It's a Möbius strip of surveillance. The architecture denies progression; it prefers recursion. You don’t move through it… you orbit, endlessly. You’re not exploring, you’re buffering.
Circularity is everywhere. The central chamber spins like a centrifuge, spatially reinforcing the psychological spiral that the Screenslaver intends. The geometry here is not just oppressive, it’s relentless. Every corridor loops back, every vista is flat. There is no vertical aspiration, no way out. Just the flat logic of the screen: consume, repeat, obey. It’s the architectural equivalent of a Terms & Conditions page — overlong, unreadable, yet still binding.
The lair is also brutally silent. No music, no ambient hum of domestic life. Just the electric whine of screens and the occasional hiss of an automated door. The absence of organic sound is a design choice as much as a narrative one. It deprives you of rhythm, of comfort, of cues. You are meant to lose track of time and self. Clocks are irrelevant here. Only cycles matter. Repetition becomes the new religion, and the lair, its chapel. There’s a kind of fascist cleanliness to it all. The space is spotless, not in a luxurious way, but in a chilling, antiseptic one. No fingerprints, no footprints. It’s as if the lair itself resents the presence of the human. The structure isn’t just indifferent to warmth, it’s actively hostile to it. If Edna’s house invites brilliance, this one expels everything it cannot convert into signal. And yet, for all its coldness, the space is mesmerising. There’s a perverse beauty in how thoroughly it commits to its philosophy. No embellishment, no distraction from the distraction. It’s the purity of a prison cell designed by a UX team. Its menace isn’t theatrical, it’s procedural. You’re not afraid you’ll be attacked. You’re afraid you’ll comply.
What makes it all the more sinister is its invisibility. Unlike the opulence of Winston Deavor’s yacht, which practically begs for interpretation, Screenslaver’s lair hides its hand. It doesn’t try to dazzle or intimidate, it simply functions. And in that, it becomes a parable. A space designed not to be noticed is often the one doing the most work. The screens aren’t decoration. They are doctrine. And we, the viewers, are never entirely certain where the lair ends and our own living rooms begin.
Because that’s the true horror, isn’t it? This isn’t just a villain’s lair, it’s a mirror. We’ve all sat in rooms where the only source of light was a glowing rectangle. We’ve all surrendered attention, allowed ourselves to be lulled by the soft tyranny of curated images. The lair is just a hyperbolic version of what already exists: the screens that mediate, manipulate, and mute. Screenslaver doesn’t need henchmen. He has design.
And so, when Elastigirl confronts him — not in a gothic dungeon, but in a glowing, symmetrical void, it feels less like a battle and more like an exorcism. She’s not just fighting a villain. She’s fighting a spatial ideology. One that insists control is best administered not through force, but through interface.
It’s a reminder that architecture doesn’t have to scream. Sometimes, it just blinks.
Architecture as a Reflection of Identity, Power, and Conflict
When I rewatched The Incredibles 2, I found myself no longer just admiring the animation or the storytelling, but observing the architecture. The homes, the hideouts, the ships — they all revealed something deeper about the characters, their motivations, and the conflicts that drive the plot. Architecture, in this sense, becomes not just a background element but a living, breathing reflection of the psychological and emotional landscapes of the characters.
The Parr house, a domestic haven full of warmth and love, contrasts sharply with the cold, detached power of the yacht and the clinical control of Screenslaver’s lair. Edna’s house exists as a bridge between these extremes, asserting the individual brilliance of its owner while still remaining something of a creative sanctuary. Each space tells us something about the character it houses: the Parrs are grounded, emotionally invested in one another; Winston’s yacht reflects his lofty ambitions and fragile sense of control; and Edna’s minimalist shrine to genius allows her to exist in her purest, unapologetic form.
What struck me, though, was how all these spaces shared one common trait: they were reflections of the desires, frustrations, and limitations of the characters. The architecture in The Incredibles 2 isn’t just there to look pretty — it functions as an extension of each character's worldview. The structures we inhabit reflect the values and conflicts we carry with us. And in a world where architecture can be a means of self-expression, these homes, yachts, and lairs tell us far more than we might have initially realised about the individuals who occupy them.
Rewatching the film through an architectural lens revealed something profound: that space and design are never neutral. They are, at their core, a part of the narrative. Whether it’s the luxurious and dangerous yacht, Edna’s fortress of brilliance, or the cold, calculating lair of Screenslaver, each environment serves as a silent character in the story, playing an integral role in shaping the plot and revealing the deeper emotional currents beneath the surface. The architecture, like the characters, is as much about power as it is about the fragility that lies beneath it.
Ultimately, The Incredibles 2 is a film where design and character aren’t separate entities; they are intertwined, influencing and shaping one another in ways that are as subtle as they are telling. The spaces we live in, the structures we build, aren’t just places to exist — they are extensions of our identity, our power, and our unresolved conflicts. And in the world of The Incredibles 2, architecture tells the story as much as the heroes do.
S xoxo
Written in Monaco
18th March 2025