![\"Estimated](\"https:\/\/www.elledecor.com\/_assets\/design-tokens\/fre\/static\/icons\/clock-regular.b2f2888.svg\")
3 min read<\/p>\n3 min read<\/p>\n
Production designer Nathan Crowley had a fantasy problem. Floating castles are everywhere\u2014anime, video games, every world-building IP that needs a visual shorthand for ancient magic. For Wicked: For Good,<\/a> he needed Kiamo Ko to do something different\u2014not just float. It needed to defy gravity in a way that felt architectural, intentional, and rooted in the forgotten magic pulsating through Oz. \u201cHow do I make a floating castle and it not being silly?\u201d Crowley asked himself.<\/p>\n His solution: inverted arches that don’t quite touch the ground. \u201cWe saw these images of these columns that didn’t touch the ground,\u201d Crowley recalls. \u201cIt was in the summer, I think it was some art exhibition. It was an interesting idea.\u201d The concept became the foundation for what Crowley calls \u201canti-gravity architecture\u201d\u2014a network of arches stretching skyward, each with a deliberate, calculated asymmetry that subtly interacts with the land’s lost magic below.<\/p>\n Behind the scenes of the set of Kiamo Ko.<\/p>\n Crowley used blue-glazed brick around the windows and columns as a direct reference to the 1939 Wizard of Oz, where moonlight bathed the castle in blue. \u201cThe ’39 film has the blue moonlight coming across that castle, so the color you think of when you watch it, you see it as blue,\u201d he says. But the blue serves a dual purpose: it connects to the Flying Monkeys’ blue wings, visually tying them to Kiamo Ko before they eventually become Elphaba’s freedom fighters. \u201cI knew blue was part of it and that’s why I used blue-glazed brick around the window in the columns because I knew that color belongs to Kiamo Ko,\u201d Crowley explains.<\/p>\n \u201cYou’ll notice the blue-glazed brick start wider and go thinner, so that tells you the story of defying gravity\u2014being held up by a singular brick,\u201d Crowley says. The narrowing pattern creates a visual logic: the castle is held aloft not by magic alone, but by architectural manipulation of forces, a forgotten levitation technique from an era when all creatures co-existed. Mixing the blue-glazed brick with granite blocks also solved a design challenge. \u201cBrick doesn’t belong to the language of castles,\u201d Crowley notes. \u201cI’m putting giant steps, round windows into granite openings, which is not a language of castle. So we sort of had to connect it using the colonnades of blue-glazed brick.\u201d<\/p>\n Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and her flying monkeys at Kiamo Ko in Wicked: For Good.<\/p>\n Inside, Kiamo Ko had to reveal layers. The space initially appears imposing and pristine, mirroring Dorothy’s <\/a>perception of the Wicked Witch. But as the narrative unfolds, the castle reveals itself as a relic of a bygone era through strategic use of stone, brickwork, and secret passageways. \u201cIf you look at the main chamber, there’s lots of tapestries, and behind tapestries are secret doors, because that is something we understand as humans who’ve been to castles,\u201d Crowley explains. \u201cThat is the language of castle building.\u201d Those hand-painted tapestries depict landscapes that echo the 1939 film\u2014the single tree, the valley, the mountains. \u201cWhen you think about the ’39 [film] and Kiamo Ko\u2014you remember that road and the single tree and the valley,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The floating castle also had to serve the film’s central theme: no place like home. For Elphaba<\/a> and Fiyero, Kiamo Ko represents both refuge and exile, a place suspended between Oz and the Impassable Desert they’ll eventually have to cross to start a new life. The people of Oz need the villain so Glinda<\/a> can become the hero, which means Kiamo Ko must embody both menace and loss\u2014a silent monument to a forgotten time and a symbol of hope for a fresh start.<\/p>\n Julia Cancilla is the engagement editor (and resident witch) at ELLE Decor, where she oversees the brand’s social media platforms and writes the monthly ELLE Decoroscope column. She covers design trends, pop culture, travel, and lifestyle. Her work has also appeared in Inked magazine, House Beautiful, Marie Claire, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"3 min read Production designer Nathan Crowley had a fantasy problem. Floating castles are everywhere\u2014anime, video games, every…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7157,90117,637,146,85,46,1975,90116],"class_list":["post-147499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-content-type-default","tag-contentid-b72161a5-8f45-455b-aab3-c727dd3f9854","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-locale-us","tag-shorttitle-the-gravity-defying-architecture-of-kiamo-ko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Film](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1ab86d6f-494e-40f5-ab58-65cd0a03089e.jpg\" "\\"Film")
Lara Cornell\/\/Universal<\/p>\n![\"cynthia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/9bf1a0df-11fb-41a5-b14e-19d88181733d.jpg\" "\\"cynthia")
Universal Pictures<\/p>\n![\"Headshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763837410_710_afe6c5ab-daa4-4248-860f-c8bebef90726_1735829133.jpg\" "\\"Headshot")
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