Designs of Ep II: Supreme Office Space

18th January 2026

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Designs of Ep II: Supreme Office Space

October 01, 2001 – Ruling the galaxy requires elbowroom, a neatly organized work environment, and a heck of a view. Audiences got a glimpse of Senator Palpatine’s decorative tastes in his crimson-hued apartment in The Phantom Menace. In Attack of the Clones, Palpatine returns ten years later, as Supreme Chancellor, with surroundings that match his elevated political position.

“Doug Chiang asked me to give Palpatine’s headquarters an all-seeing view onto Coruscant,” recalls Concept Artist Jay Shuster, “It was an ideal theme in that it embodied who and what this man is all about.”

“People’s first impressions of the space may range from ‘Hey, this guy’s loaded,’ to ‘Nice view… that view could be corrupting,'” says Shuster. “Both reactions are valid: the design of Palpatine’s headquarters lends him an air of ‘Big Brother- hood’…as in Orwell’s 1984. Where does an ego like Palpatine’s go after he has an office space like this?”

Construction

Upon receiving Shuster’s illustrations, Production Designer Gavin Bocquet and his crew began examining the set in three-dimensions through detailed foam-core and whiteboard models.

“There’s a lot of stuff that goes on in there,” says Bocquet. This set was almost entirely built, as opposed to some of the other environments that consisted largely of bluescreen. “We basically worked almost 360-degrees. George [Lucas] wanted us to leave maybe 10 percent of the wall out on the right as you come in. That did give us an opportunity to move the camera crane in and out through the gap.”

The set, built in Fox Studios Australia, was finished in about seven weeks. “There were a lot of finishes to be done,” explains Bocquet.

The finished textures and details required even more effort than usual thanks to the incredible resolution of the new digital cameras. “It really does pick up a lot of your middle and background detail. It’s much more unforgiving in certain instances than celluloid is. In the film world, we’re always doing things theatrically, in a way that works for the cameras. But if you’re standing there, it might not look right. With the digital camera, we had to be a more careful since things that were in the middle distance were actually showing up more as scenic work than actual finishes. We had to take our finishes a bit further than we did before.”

Several stylized statues stand as sentinels in Palpatine’s quarters. What started off as tiny elements in Jay Shuster’s drawings were transformed into full pieces by Bocquet’s crew.

“We produced about five or six little maquettes of military figures, inspired by medieval Japanese or Chinese ones in that stately position,” says Bocquet. The assortment of six and 12-inch tall maquettes were brought to George Lucas, who selected two of them.

The finished statues were carved out of polystyrene with plastic coverings, topped with a bronzen paint finish.

There are numerous visual cues in the office revealing the evolution of the galaxy and its politics. During tense meetings of enormous importance, Palpatine sits in a very distinctive looking chair. “If anybody’s got any sort of Star Wars history in their head, they’ll notice that there’s something pretty familiar about it,” says Bocquet.
“I honestly couldn’t say whose suggestion that was,” says Bocquet. “We didn’t have the original chair. We had the drawings from Return of the Jedi, so we had to sculpt and model from that. It was quite difficult, because it was quite a sculpted, funny shape.”

The colors of Palpatine’s quarters are also an evolutionary element. It was Bocquet’s crew that came up with the red colors of Palpatine’s apartment in Episode I; they were originally going to be pastel-hued, much like Bespin’s Cloud City. “Yes, we were quite bullish in Phantom Menace to suggest to George that the room should be that crimson, blood-red color,” says Bocquet. “It was almost meant to be sort of a cocoon womb-like environment for Palpatine in there.”

The colors of Attack of the Clones visually bridges the prequel and original trilogies. “The color scheme in Empire and Jedi were very much in the monotone grays, graphites and blacks. We suggested to George that we should introduce part of that color scheme to this predominantly red environment. If you look at it, you’ll see that it’s sixty percent in the red range, and forty percent in the graphites and silvers. If this set’s required for Episode III, then probably by that time, Palpatine’s environment will move predominatly to the graphites and grays.”