Archinect - Features

Reinventing the Design Documentary with 'Abstract' Creator Scott Dadich

2017-03-15T12:16:00-04:00

Say the words 'bingeable television' and 'high design' in the same sentence and almost anyone will look at you like you have three heads and an even more questionable grasp on pop culture. But that’s about to change, all thanks to former Wired editor-in-chief and design consultant Scott Dadich whose Abstract series premiered on Netflix late last month. Dadich, along with co-executive producers filmmakers Morgan Neville and David O’Connor, turned the camera on the ever-illusive design process, featuring episodic biographies of discipline-spanning greats like Bjarke Ingels, Tinker Hatfield, Ilse Crawford, and Ralph Gilles, among others.

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.

"LA's Grand Central : The Gentrification of the People's Market": Interview with director Dylan Valley

2014-08-27T17:47:00-04:00

Dylan Valley is a filmmaker from Cape Town who recently completed a master’s degree at the University of Southern California. While in Los Angeles, Valley produced a short documentary film about downtown’s Grand Central Market, and its continuing transformation.

Art + Architecture: an interview with Lagos documentary filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak

2014-07-16T18:29:00-04:00

Several weeks ago, we featured Bregtje van der Haak's interactive documentary, Lagos Close and Wide: an Interactive Journey into an Exploding City, originally released as a DVD in 2004 and now available online. The project emerged from van der Haak's 2001 trip to Lagos, Nigeria with the architect Rem Koolhaas and their attempt to capture the city at a crucial moment in its emergence as the fastest growing city on the continent. ("Every hour, fifty new people start their lives in Lagos" states the film's description). The documentary utilizes a novel and innovative format in which the information is organized by distance – close-up, through the perspective of bus driver Olawole Busayo, and the more distant perspective typical of many urban studies. Users choose between these visual perspectives as well as various audio by Koolhaas and Lagosians. We recently touched base with van der Haak to better understand her motivations behind the project and experiences of making it.

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"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: 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.