Attendees at the 81st Annual Academy Awards were treated to a spectacular yet intimate set design created by architect David Rockwell featuring an awe inspiring three-ton, 60-foot tall custom designed Swarovski crystal curtain sparkling with over 100,000 crystals flown in especially from Austria. The dazzling curtain which creates a sparkling rainbow illuminating the grand arch of the Kodak Theatre helped redefine this year's Oscar experience with more of an elegant party feel.

David Rockwell, a New York architect known for his lengthy resume, shaggy hair and productive ease with the press, said "We could not think of a better partner than Swarovski to fulfill our vision of not just a curtain, but a frame to capture all the elegance, excitement and high-fashion that is the Academy Awards. We have collaborated with Swarovski many times and the result is always breathtaking. This is yet another spectacular centerpiece."

Given a rare chance to rewrite himself -- for an audience of hundreds of millions, no less -- Rockwell produced some winning but also some jarring effects. The boldest stroke was to splinter the sight lines into a thousand pieces. Instead of a single podium and the occasional film clip, Rockwell gave us a whole armada of hanging and flying screens. Instead of a proscenium stage separated from the audience by an intimidatingly steep staircase and a yawning orchestra pit, he designed a low, semicircular thrust stage with seats wrapping tightly around it.

That compelled the nominees to look not only at the stage but at each other. Hanging chandeliers and a few numbers when the band sat on risers onstage added to the clubber feel. At the same time, architectural academics got to congratulate themselves for seeing in Rockwell's design a version of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon, the prison design in which individual cells surround a single guard post in the middle of a circle. Bentham's invention has been called a "surveillance machine," which isn't a bad way to describe a stage set that enabled host Hugh Jackman to play a toe-tapping warden in black tie and tails.