Production crews filmed Luke Skywalker's childhood home in the Tunisian desert town of Matmata. This location provided a complex of caves and domed structures that served as the visual foundation for Tatooine.
The Jedi Temple adapts the robust typology of Mayan temples for its external stone walls. It also shares stylistic similarities with the minarets surrounding the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
Battle cruisers featured in Star Wars have been described as examples of Suprematist architecture. Ship designs often make heavy use of greebles to create an illusion of mechanical function without requiring full internal complexity.
Joshua Glenn noted this architectural parallel in a Boston Globe article published the 25th of April 2007. The San Francisco Federal Building designed by Thom Mayne has been compared to the Jawa Sandcrawler.
George Lucas held personal feelings about cities and urban environments that shaped these choices. He continued his work from THX 1138 which featured a claustrophobic subterranean world of black-and-white spaces.