Designer of some Star Wars elements, Colin Cantwell has passed away
Sylvie Claire / May 23, 2022
Colin Cantwell, the designer of the Death Star space station in the Star Wars film series, has died at the age of 90, The Hollywood Reporter reported Sunday. Also responsible for the design of several spaceships in these films, this artist also worked on famous films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
For the original Star Wars films, he designed not only the Death Star, but also the X-wing, the TIE fighter and the Star Destroyer.
Colin Cantwell was born in San Francisco in 1932. In a question-and-answer session on Reddit in 2016, he recounted that as a child he suffered from tuberculosis and a detached retina. As a result, he spent two years in a dark room, wearing an aggravation vest that was supposed to stop coughing. After that, nothing could stop me, he said of the experience.
He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in animation and was invited by Frank Lloyd Wright to continue his studies in his school of architecture. Before moving to Hollywood, the artist worked for the U.S. space agency NASA, for which he designed educational programs. His love of architecture and space travel proved to be a perfect combination for his later work in the film industry.
According to Rolling Stone magazine, Colin Cantwell was suffering from Alzheimer's disease in recent years.