Archinect - Features

Unpacking Politics and the 'Apparatus of Power' Through Architecture and Film with SCI-Arc Graduate Julia McConnell

2021-11-02T08:37:00-04:00

Architectural representation in film and television often provides highly impressionable results. Beyond a story's narrative, architecture can be used as a secondary 'character' to help create a sense of place, tone, and facilitate visual association for the viewer and the story's setting. Julia McConnell, a recent M.Arch graduate from SCI-Arc, used her interests in film to further explore questions relating to representation, ethics, and aesthetics.

In her thesis project, "Pledge of Allegiance," McConnell explained that her thesis research requires "architects flatten the ontological plane and view individual instances of a particular type for their particularity. Thus, establishing that we may be able to differently value what architecture inherently contains: a myriad of views, positions, and possibilities."

Architecture thesis acts as a catalyst that allows young designers to explore their interests while expanding their perspectives and architectural thinking. Continuing with ...

Architectural Memory and Film with UCLA's Alekya Malladi, Gesthimani Roumpani, and Yanrong Yang

2020-07-29T13:11:00-04:00

Architecture and it's ability to frame visual narratives has impacted film and entertainment for decades. With the evolution of design techniques and software, a new form of digital storytelling can aide how architecture is used to test design process and pedagogy. University of California Los Angeles Architecture and Urban Design M.Arch students Alekya Malladi, Gesthimani Roumpani, Yanrong Yang use film to dissect architecture and AI in their project, Incognito.

Advised by UCLA's IDEAS Entertainment Studio advisors Natasha Sandmeier and Nathan Su, the group explains how their film "serves as an exposé on memory, spatial reconstruction, and the role of contemporary media in delivering fact and fiction." Archinect connected with the trio as they share their perspectives on working through the pandemic and what their future holds as they enter professional practice. "Our interactions with professionals in the architecture industry have shown us that establishing a clear identity and i...

The Photographic and Film Work of Imagen Subliminal Playfully Translates the Architect’s Ideas to the Public

2018-03-13T09:00:00-04:00

In Focus is Archinect's recurring series dedicated to profiling the photographers who help make the work of architects look that much better. What has attracted them to architecture? How do they work? What type of equipment do they use? What do they think about seeing their work in blogs?

For this installment, we interviewed Imagen Subliminal, a New York and Madrid-based practice run by Miguel de Guzman and Rocío Romero.

Fear & Wonder: Orienting Ourselves Through Fiction

2017-11-15T12:31:00-05:00

Fear & Wonder was a symposium surrounding the possibilities of world building and pondering of what would be possible and yet, nothing seemed impossible, nothing seemed out of our grasp and in fact, forced us to reckon with how much of our own world we are not aware of.

Columbus, a Movie on Architecture, Drama and Romance

2017-09-14T10:20:00-04:00

Set in Columbus, Indiana, the movie bearing the city’s name narrates the singular friendship between Casey, a young woman deeply passionate about modernist architecture, and Jin, the son of a famous Korean architect who landed in Columbus because of his father’s illness.

How 3 Architecture Firms Are Using Showreels to Present and Promote Their Work

2017-04-27T11:43:00-04:00

For a director or actor, putting together a showreel—a short video of spliced footage—is the first step in securing a gig. One may think of it as a cinematic portfolio: the means by which one presents work to the world of one's profession when the work is in motion. It might seem redundant, then, for an architect to have one too. After all, buildings are, by and large, static objects—and drawings, plans, photos and renderings can tell a lot. But, for those architects that do attempt to encapsulate their portfolio with real, edited footage—usually in combination with either voice-over or text statements—the rewards can be great. Not only does it make their work very accessible, it's also a bit of a control freak’s dream: the narrative of the practice is orchestrated, down to the millisecond.

Student Works: 'Ensemblespiel' Makes Uncanny Architecture from Everyday Objects

2016-10-25T12:07:00-04:00

“In an ensemble, the tone of a singular instrument becomes difficult to distinguish at the moment when all of its players strike a note,” explains the German-born, LA-based designer Paul Krist, a recent graduate of the Southern California Institute of Architecture’s M.Arch II program. “Each sound vibrates to produce a unifying harmony, an emergent sensation.”

Documenting Stefan Sagmeister's Meticulous, Entertaining Solipsism in "The Happy Film"

2016-10-07T14:34:00-04:00

Graphic designer par excellence Stefan Sagmeister, bored with creating iconic album covers for The Talking Heads and Lou Reed (among others), decided to document his search for love and greater meaning over a six year period with collaborators Ben Nabors and the late Hillman Curtis. The result, "The Happy Film", is an occasionally affecting tour of one man’s methodical, gorgeous solipsism.

The visionary workaholic: an intimate, luscious documentary portrait of Eero Saarinen

2016-09-20T12:19:00-04:00

In the way that the Star Wars film franchise was modeled on Joseph Campbell’s theory of the hero’s journey, architectural documentaries might seem to be modeled on the theory of the visionary workaholic. Certainly this is the case with Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future, which stays true to its form with majestic drone footage, voice-over narration, a soundtrack by Moby and interviews with famous co-workers, architects, and family members.

Devastation is in the details: a review of "High-Rise"

2016-05-29T11:05:00-04:00

Whatever risks one takes with allegorical storytelling—namely, that the conceit will wear thin far before the third act—one does gain the advantage of being able to luxuriate in detail.

The Reluctant Architect: 15 Minutes with Liz Diller

2016-04-20T08:49:00-04:00

Elizabeth Diller, co-founding partner of Diller, Scofidio and Renfro, almost didn’t become an architect. In her student years at Cooper Union, Diller expressed a greater interest in pursuing film than in taking up traditional architectural practice, partly because the profession seemed like too much of a commercial pursuit. Some thirty-six years later, from the Broad Museum to Lincoln Center to The High Line, DS+R’s built work consistently pushes the visitor to experience space in an unanticipated way without providing a ready-made interpretation.

Getting the chair: how cinematic villains' seats illuminate character

2016-02-14T00:07:00-05:00

Imagine Hannibal Lecter in a lawn chair: not quite as menacing, right? While furniture in film can be a subtle part of the mise-en-scene, for cinematic villains, their signature chair often defines their character, even if that character is rotten right down to the studs. What chairs do the best job of bringing out the worst of an empire-crazed nihilist, or a serial killer, or a limelit psychopath? To answer that question, we had these ten evildoers take a seat according to their preferred vice.

Playing to the House: architecture's unconventional performance in film and theatre

2015-12-23T02:59:00-05:00

During the 2015 London Design Festival, Groves Natcheva Architects exhibited a short film they'd made, entitled Black Ice. Written by Adriana Natcheva's brother and shot entirely in his house – which the architects had designed, and located across the balcony from where Groves Natcheva is based – the film is a powerful study in dark, brooding suspense. Indeed, so much was made of the “psychotic” plot of Black Ice by certain elements of the design press, that perhaps the real essence of the film was missed.

Pop Cultitecture: The Genius of David Byrne

2015-02-04T10:04:00-05:00

Unlike those architects who long to be thought of as artists, Byrne is an artist who loves to thinks about architecture. Like the deadpan docent of the infrastructural realm, David Byrne's work has inadvertently helped make architecture into a pop culture staple. While his commentary may not be mind-blowing to an architect, the method of his commentary – the diversity and size of his audience, the innovative visual and aural techniques in which he conveys highly abstract concepts – is a major contribution to architectural discourse.

Working out of the Box: Production Designer and Art Director, Colin Sieburgh

2014-12-23T11:29:00-05:00

Working out of the Box is a series of features presenting architects who have applied their architecture backgrounds to alternative career paths.

In this installment, we're talking with production designer and art director, Colin Sieburgh.

Are you an architect working out of the box? Do you know of someone that has changed careers and has an interesting story to share? If you would like to suggest an (ex-)architect, please send us a message.

Material Witness Finale: What Apocalypse Is Made Of

2014-12-04T17:27:00-05:00

Western civilization has never been particularly adept at dealing with death, which is perhaps why its own eventual collapse is such a source of cinematic fascination.

Art + Architecture: Felix Melia and Josh Bitelli in the Gaps Between Buildings

2014-10-17T12:44:00-04:00

Felix Melia and Josh Bitelli are artists who live and work in London. We met last year and have remained in contact through email since then, exchanging periodic updates and continuing our fragmentary, rambling conversations over shared interests (and confusions) regarding the contemporary urban experience. Threads of continuity arise between individual emails with each of them, unsurprising since the two are old friends, share a new studio space, and often collaborate. Our conversations are inescapably informed by the digital media that allows them but at the same time bears traces of a perhaps nostalgic notion of letter exchanges. Both Melia and Bitelli investigate the city through the (often unnoticed) infrastructure and industrial processes that support it, while also grappling with the shifts in phenomenological experience produced by the internet – all of which is often tinged with an undeniable romanticism.

Cutting Room: Joseph Kosinski talks to Archinect about his transition from architecture to Hollywood

2014-09-05T11:12:00-04:00

As we've seen throughout our Cutting Room series, there's a clear relationship between architecture and filmmaking. Architecture is inspired by film as often as film is inspired by architecture, so it's not uncommon for architects to experiment with film, or even transition into a film career. Joseph Kosinski is one such individual, but his path to filmmaking is a little different than normal. His full-length directorial debut was for 2010's TRON: Legacy, a blockbuster sequel to the early 80's classic. Three years later, he followed that with the visually stunning Oblivion, starring Tom Cruise.

Cutting Room: "Interiors" takes classic films back to the drawing board

2014-06-23T12:44:00-04:00

Filmmaking is a labor of love that shares architecture’s compulsion: to model a stratum of life down to the most precise detail, creating entire worlds that do not (yet) exist. It seems natural then that an architect and filmmaker would combine forces to create Interiors, a journal of reconstructed sections taken from famous scenes in classic films.

"This incredible, derogatory, racialized way people talk about the space": director Kelly Anderson's Cutting Room interview on gentrification and activism in her doc, "My Brooklyn"

2014-06-12T11:53:00-04:00

My Brooklyn takes a close look at the guiding forces behind Brooklyn’s gentrification, from the highly personal perspective of documentary filmmaker (and self-identifying gentrifier), Kelly Anderson. Pivoting around Anderson’s and producer Allison Lirish Dean’s investigation of redevelopment efforts for downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall, the documentary carefully considers both the personal and historical factors behind gentrification’s economic shifts, outlining (if not simplifying) the complexity of the gentrification debate.

While buildings rot, film preserves architecture's memory: Cutting Room's interview with Malachi Connolly, director of "Built on Narrow Land" documentary

2014-06-05T10:03:00-04:00

Before the Cape Cod National Seashore was declared public land in 1959, the grassy dune landscape was already dotted with a handful of Bauhaus-inspired beach houses. Built by a strain of rogue bohemian architects, the houses served as beloved, experimental cottages until the land underneath them was seized by the federal government. Many of the houses were abandoned and left to slowly rot in the landscape, whether or not they were protected by historical status.

Cutting Room: Talking architectural dissent and climate-proof buildings with Eugene Tssui, subject of Kyung Lee's "TELOS" documentary

2014-05-28T10:06:00-04:00

TELOS: The Fantastic World of Eugene Tssui is a slice of the architect's uphill battle against the built environment’s status quo, documenting his crusade for what he calls “Evolutionary Architecture”. Maligned for his off-beat sustainable design principles as a student and struggling to build as a professional, Tssui persists as a Renaissance Man -- an artist, athlete, teacher and designer, who just doesn’t seem made for these times.

Cutting Room: Listen to John Szot, creator of "Architecture and the Unspeakable", discuss cyber-architectural realities and speculative practice

2014-05-19T11:08:00-04:00

John Szot, architect and creator of the Architecture and the Unspeakable film series, is a pioneer in film's unique architectural exploration, working with digital animation to investigate parts of the built environment that remain hidden at the street level. In our interview for Cutting Room, an audio series at the intersection of architecture and film, Szot spoke with me about his architectural background and how he started making films.

Cutting Room: We talk with Patrick Creadon, director of "If You Build It", about the documentary and the power of design education in post-recession U.S.

2014-05-14T12:33:00-04:00

If You Build It documents a year in the classroom of Project H, an experimental design-build workshop for high school students in Windsor, North Carolina. Guided by designer Emily Pilloton and architect Matt Miller, the creators of Project H, ten high schoolers set out to design and build a farmers’ market hall for their town, in the hopes that it will help invigorate the local economy and inspire other community-minded projects.

Interview with John Szot of "Architecture and the Unspeakable" film series

2014-04-04T17:45:00-04:00

Architecture and the Unspeakable is a triptych of short, magnificently animated films, each exploring a different symptom of architecture’s vulnerabilities. Produced by Brooklyn Digital Foundry and directed by architect John Szot, the films feature architecture proposals from John Szot Studio, imagining distinct fictional buildings in New York, Tokyo, and Detroit -- all animated in striking digital realities.