IFC has announced the release of their latest documentary, Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, which will dive into “the enduring legacies of one of the most prominent figures of modern urban planning, Jane Jacobs, and talks about her David-Goliath fight to save NYC.”
Humor is a very rare quality in architecture, most architects are too serious
-Andreas Ruby, director of the Swiss Architecture Museum S AM, Basel
Since its founding in 1996, Slovenia architecture firm Sadar+Vuga has grown to become one of their country’s most influential architectural forces, with a range of projects covering interior design, to stadiums, to city master plans. In a new documentary by director Damjan Kozole, the firm’s history is being archived for the first time.
"The Architect", directed by Jonathan Parker, is a film that moves between drama and comedy. It features a humorous (and some would say believable) satire of architects. In the film an egocentric, and grandiose architect named Miles Moss, played by actor James Frain, works with a couple who wants to build their dream home.
Update: following the screening period The Infinite Happiness is no longer available to watch on ArchDaily. The full collection of Bêka and Lemoine's films can be viewed on demand, here.
For two days only—between Friday, December 2 and Sunday, December 4—you can watch The Infinite Happiness, part of Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine's Living Architectures series, exclusively on ArchDaily. The film, shot entirely in Copenhagen's "8 House" designed by BIG, follows a group of residents (and passers-by) as they experience life in a contemporary housing block widely considered to embody new models of living.
Filmmakers Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, creators of the Living Architectures seminal collection of films on architecture, will screen The Infinite Happiness—shot entirely in Copenhagen's "8 House" designed by BIG—exclusively on ArchDaily from Friday, December 2 until Sunday, December 4.
Marking the forthcoming release of two DVD box-sets of their entire œuvre (which was acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 2016) Bêka and Lemoine have, over the course of the Living Architectures project, developed films about and in collaboration with the likes of the Barbican in London, the Fondazione Prada, La Biennale di Venezia, Frank Gehry, Bjarke Ingels, the City of Bordeaux, the Arc en Rêve centre d’architecture, and more. Their goal in this has always been to "democratize the highbrow language of architectural criticism. [...] Free speech on the topic of architecture," Bêka has said, "is not the exclusive property of experts." Their first film, Koolhaas Houselife (2008), has come to embody this unique approach.
For this edition of Section D, Monocle 24's weekly review of design, architecture and craft, the team turn their attention to the crossroads where design and architecture meet film. From a documentary about Pruitt-Igoe, the St. Louis housing project, to a new reading of the title sequence of Superman, this episode investigates the role of architecture in film – and visa versa.
The following essay by Carla Leitão and Ed Keller was first published by Volume Magazine in their 49th issue, Hello World! You can read the Editorial of this issue, Going Live, here.
What are the philosophical consequences of automation after the integration of pervasive AI into the architecture, landscapes and cognitive maps of our planet and its populations? We suggest that "natural models" of automation pre-exist our technology, with profound implications for human and planetary systems. We’re interested in specific examples and models outside of our cultural milieu that test the limits of bodies, that map habits and their disruption through noise, and reframe the relation between life and consciousness. The following examples index the performance of networks in tight cycles of feedback loops: machines teaching machines. To go to the root of the philosophical consequences of automation our path is through abstract and universalist models of ‘natural laws’, redeployed into specific local situations. We use the term ‘drive’ for its myriad implications connecting across the examples we have chosen.
The biggest temptation is to jump right in. There are solutions that come to you. There are images that spontaneously appear. My method is rather to hold back as long as possible, to really imagine it spatially, so to be sure I have something to say.
Award winning documentarian and critic Matt Tyrnauer (director of Valentino: The Last Emperor, Citizen Jane: Battle For The City) has released a new documentary taking a look into the mind of world-renowned architect Jean Nouvel and his design process.
The film, titled Jean Nouvel: Reflections, follows the French architect around the world to visit his most recent works, including the Philharmonie de Paris, Institut du Monde Arabe, Fondation Cartier, Musée du Quai Branly, and Doha Tower and future projects, notably the National Museum of Qatar, his New York skyscraper, 53W53, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
The Dovrefjell mountain range, which divides the north and south of Norway, holds "a unique place in [the] Norwegian consciousness." A constellation of myths and legends are connected to these mountains which have, over recent years, born witness to hunting, mining and military activity. But it is also the home of a large wild reindeer population. At Hjerkinn, on the edge of the Dovrefjell National Park, Oslo-based Snøhetta have created an observation pavilion for the Wild Reindeer Foundation. In this film by Alejandro Villanueva, the building and the surrounding landscape are revealed through time-lapse and in astonishing detail.
Can a building help stem the tide of large epidemics?
In 2010, in the midst of the world’s worst cholera outbreak in over a century, MASS Design Group was challenged to design a cholera treatment center where the construction process, as well as the finished building, could address the underlying structural and social conditions that allow cholera to thrive.
This is the subject of Design that Heals, a new documentary that portrays the challenges, innovations, and triumph of the project, proving that, “Architecture and health are inseparable.” (Dr. Jean-William Pape, GHESKIO founder)
The 31-minute film, an official New York 2016 Architecture and Design Film Festival selection, will premiere September 29th at 6:30 and October 1st and 7:30. Screenings will be held at Cinépolis Chelsea, 260 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011.
In the canon of great Dutch architects sit a number of renowned practitioners, from Berlage to Van Berkel. Based on influence alone, Rem Koolhaas—the grandson of architect Dirk Roosenburg and son of author and thinker Anton Koolhaas—stands above all others and has, over the course of a career spanning four decades, sought to redefine the role of the architect from a regional autarch to a globally-active shaper of worlds – be they real or imagined. A new film conceived and produced by Tomas Koolhaas, the LA-based son of its eponymous protagonist, attempts to biographically represent the work of OMA by “expos[ing] the human experience of [its] architecture through dynamic film.” No tall order.
When it comes to expensive artforms, architecture undoubtedly tops the list (even if the artistic merits of some of the absolute priciest buildings are sometimes dubious). But what may not be so obvious is that many of architecture’s iconic works have been completed on budgets not so dissimilar to the work of another artistic industry: filmmaking. Each with their own set of merits, works from both categories have transcended time, confirming that (in most cases) they have more than returned on their initial investment.
To illustrate this point, we’ve complied a list of buildings from eras past, paired with movies of similar budgets completed in the same calendar year. Which buildings or movies have contributed the most based on their initial costs?
Filmed at the Vertou Cultural Center, designed by Atelier Fernandez & Serres, this video by filmmaker Lucas Bacle challenges the traditional conventions of cinematography, employing architectural drawings to provide context for the actions of the film’s protagonist. The cultural center itself becomes a central character to the short film, as Bacle layers video on top of orthographics, highlighting the character's relationship in space to the plans and sections.
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Following the burgeoning success of the 7th New York Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF), this year's incarnation—which will run September 28 through October 2 2016 at Cinépolis Chelsea—appears set to maintain its position as the nation's and most popular largest subject-focused film event. Over 30 feature-length and short films, curated by Festival Director Kyle Bergman, will be presented, including Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future, a film that examines the life of the eponymous modernist architect.
