Archinect - News

New film narrated by Brad Pitt explores Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple

2020-10-22T14:01:00-04:00

Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright's Modern Masterpiece is a new film by Lauren Levine that is narrated by Brad Pitt. Streaming October 30th to November 15th, the documentary will look deeply into Wright's first public commission in the early 1900s and the efforts to restore it 100 years later.

From the film website: The dedicated team of historians, craftspeople, members of the Unitarian congregation and Unity Temple Restoration Foundation reveal the history of one of Wright’s most innovative buildings that merged his love of architecture with his own spiritual values.

Check out the trailer below:

"His work means a lot to me," Director Wim Wenders planning Zumthor documentary

2020-09-11T12:53:00-04:00

German film director Wim Wenders is planning a new documentary covering the recent work of Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

Regarding the forthcoming release, Wenders tells the dpa news agency, "His work means a lot to me. I have been accompanying two of his arguably most important buildings from their creation, the new LACMA Museum in Los Angeles and the expansion of the beautiful Fondation Beyeler (by Renzo Piano) in Basel with an additional large new exhibition building."

Further, Wenders explains that his intention is for the film to have a theatrical release rather than a purely digital one. Wenders explains "I only know one thing, namely 'whether' the film should go to the cinema. Of course, absolutely! There is no better awakening of a film than in a cinema, seen by hundreds of pairs of eyes at the same time."

As such, a release date for the film is currently unavailable due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Documentary explores the lives of 4 innovative women in architecture

2020-08-10T12:16:00-04:00

City Dreamers is a Canadian documentary directed by Joseph Hillel that looks at the lives of Phyllis Lambert, Denise Scott Brown, Cornelia Oberlander, and Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, all notable powerhouses in architecture and design who were among some of the first women to rise to prominence within the male dominated industry of the time.

Founding and creating the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal is probably one of Phyllis Lambert's greatest feats. Apart from working with the likes of Mies van der Rohe and receiving honorary degrees from roughly 26 universities, Lambert has also built a commendable career as a philanthropist.

Denise Scott Brown's work along with her husband, Robert Venturi is often regarded as some of the most influential amongst twentieth century architectural discourse. Learning from Las Vegas is a favorite. But, perhaps even more notably, Scott Brown grew to become a powerful advocate for Women in Architecture and continues to be a symbol for equality...

The grandson of Eliel Saarinen is working on new documentary highlighting pioneering Finnish-American architect

2020-07-31T13:42:00-04:00

Eric Saarinen, the son of Eero Saarinen, is working on a new documentary highlighting the work of his grandfather, noted Finnish-American architect Eliel Saarinen.

The Detroit News reports that the documentary comes after Eric's work on a previous PBS special highlighting the legacy of his father, with whom he had an estranged and antagonistic relationship.

Eric tells The Detroit News that his work on the Eero 2016 documentary Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future with director and producer Peter Rosen helped him come to terms and ultimately forgive his father for abandoning the family in the 1950s after having an affair with a reporter for The New York Times.

The documentary highlighting the career and works of the elder Saarinen is currently under development, a release date has not been announced.

Christopher Hawthorne's Frank Lloyd Wright documentary “That Far Corner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles” to air next week

2018-03-01T19:19:00-05:00

Why focus on Wright, American architecture’s equivalent of Abraham Lincoln, the giant who casts a shadow over his field big enough to blot out smaller and underrepresented figures? [...] Because the architect’s brilliant if forbidding Southern California houses, the most important of which were designed in a burst of creative energy during the first few months of 1923, remain mysterious, their meaning and inspiration as opaque as their heavy, richly patterned concrete-block facades.

Christopher Hawthorne's documentary, “That Far Corner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles”, focuses on aspects of the infamous architect's work which remain enigmatic. Filming inside eight Wright buildings, the project interviews around 20 people to present new insights around these mysterious works.

Hawthorne explains, "My overarching goal was to bring some new, sustained attention to a group of houses that have lingered too long, given their importance to the American architectural canon, in the relative shadows." The title “That Far Corner" originates from a phrase Wright used to describe Southern California in his autobiography.

As part of a new ARTBOUND season, the documentary airs next Tuesday March 6, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on KCET-TV. The episode will also stream online at KCET, as well as on Amazon, YouTube, Roku, and Apple TV following its broadcast. Tune in and decide what you make of Hawthorne's theory. As a bonus, several of the interviews occur inside residential designs by ...

'My Dad, the Starchitect': an emerging documentary subgenre

2017-10-16T14:21:00-04:00

In an emerging subgenre of architectural documentary, Nathaniel Kahn, Tomas Koolhaas, and Eric Saarinen take a personal look at their mythologized fathers. [...] Whether a film deals in the social or monumental legacy of an architect, the idea of the genius—which has been so unevenly applied—should come under scrutiny. As the children of architects have conferred through these films, nobody can be all things to all people.

In her piece for CityLab, Daisy Alioto looks at three recent examples of iconic architects having their life's work documented in film by their sons: Rem Koolhaas in REM, produced by Tomas Koolhaas; Eero Saarinen in Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future, by Eric Saarinen; and Louis Kahn in My Architect, a film by Nathaniel Kahn.

In case you missed it, listen to our One-to-One podcast interview with Tomas Koolhaas.

An exquisite drone tour over Apple's new campus reveals the pond, furniture, + a new theater

2017-04-20T12:35:00-04:00

Like a miniature perfectionist city, the new Apple campus in Cupertino is made up of several different buildings: there's the familiar Norman Foster-designed "spaceship," as well as a massive parking garage that features gleaming solar panels atop the roof.

This drone video reveals that very little of the landscaping has come in yet--a few trees, in their boxy planters, hang out outside the main building, and only a few plants have been installed in the equipment-strewn courtyard--but it offers an excellent tour of the Steve Jobs Theatre which is slated to open this summer:

Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses star in “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City” documentary, coming to U.S. theaters in April

2017-03-20T16:15:00-04:00

The historic feud between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses is hitting the silver screen in “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”, a fairly new feature-length documentary directed by Matt Tyrnauer and produced by Robert Hammond (co-founder and executive director of NYC's Friends of the High Line). Following premieres at DOC NYC and the Toronto International Film Festival last year, “Citizen Jane” will be released in theaters and on demand in the U.S. on April 21.

Set in the 1950s and '60s in New York City, the film centers around Jane Jacobs' fight against Robert Moses' ruthless urban “renewal” schemes that targeted NYC's “slums” and its vital communities — a situation that many cities worldwide still face today. It also sheds light on European modernist ideals of architecture and urban design finding its place in the U.S., according to one film review.

“We realized that no one had done a film about Jane Jacobs,” Producer Robert Hammond said in a statement. “She came up with her own common s...

Sadar + Vuga declare, "Humor is a rare quality in architecture" in a new documentary on the influential Slovenian firm

2017-03-16T18:32:00-04:00

Rejecting self-serious notions in favor of playful, experimental, and bold architecture, Slovenian architects Sadar + Vuga have made a name themselves in the twenty-one years since they founded their practice.

Sadar+Vuga’s Air Traffic Control Center (ATCC) in Slovenia

One of the few firms to openly state that their work is "intentionally imperfect and awkward, robust, and ambiguous," Sadar + Vuga's work is now profiled in a documentary entitled "Sadar + Vuga XX." Watch the trailer below.

From the architects...

Focus of Sadar+Vuga XX documentary by director Damjan Kozole is the design process behind one of the most influential Slovenian architectural studios of the new generation, Sadar+Vuga.

The documentary Sadar+Vuga XX explores the production and communication of the Slovenian architectural firm Sadar+Vuga established by Jurij Sadar and Boštjan Vuga in Ljubljana in 1996. Individual reflections and talks with Slovenian and foreign architects, architectural critics and policy-makers, co...

The video "Oculus" surveys the history, context, and execution of Calatrava's transit hub

2017-02-07T18:24:00-05:00

How does Santiago Calatrava's Oculus encapsulate the complex history and significance of its site? In this brief video from filmmaker Jeff Durkin, Calatrava's elaborate transit hub canopy is sited in its aesthetic and social contexts via a series of carefully selected voice-over news clips and aesthetic commentary. Here, the horror of 9/11, the beauty of human perception, and sweeping shots of the architecture itself are layered to create this filmmaker's interpretation of what the Oculus is. Watch it here:

Watch "Ex of IN House," an unusual, compelling new video from Steven Holl

2017-01-24T12:43:00-05:00

Poetry, abstracted Venn diagrams of spheres, and a love for natural materials are just some of the components that go into this video from Steven Holl, who acts as a kind of a hyper-thoughtful Huell Howser as he explores a gorgeous new home parented primarily by concept. Entitled "Ex of IN House," the video explores the formulation, execution, and daily reality of a home built on a splendor of acreage in Rhinebeck, New York. Likening program to a bunch of bananas, Holl advocates for abstraction in the design process, explaining that with the concept of IN, "all space is sacred." With a soundtrack that seems to combine the plinkiness of Thomas Newman with the urgency of Clint Mansell, it's a bit of a wonder (click here to view).

Watch a meditative and breathtaking aerial survey of the L.A. River

2017-01-05T14:26:00-05:00

Only one thing is certain now that Frank Gehry has undertaken the plan to revitalize the LA River: in the future, it will be different.

Check out Archinect's extensive coverage of the LA River Redevelopment, including interviews with major players like Mia Lehrer via the Next Up series...

This elegant aerial video by Chang Kim captures the current state of the concrete-channeled river, offering not only a meditative journey over freeway overpasses, opportunistic scrub brush and litter-choked rivulets, but a lush historic record of what this city's main water artery was, whatever it may eventually become. With a spare piano soundtrack composed by Nils Frahm, the video comes in at just under five minutes:

Watch Daniel Libeskind speak of his love for NYC's diversity

2016-12-14T14:42:00-05:00

Daniel Libeskind loves the multi-faceted nature of New York City's inhabitants; the rich, the poor, the successful, and perhaps most amusingly, the failures who think they're successful. Although the architect doesn't really break any new conceptual ground in this short video from the Louisiana Channel, one can enjoy Libeskind's merry musings intercut with scenes of the metropolis and its diverse denizens, who form "a very complicated microcosm" of the world:

Eero Saarinen documentary to air on PBS Dec. 27th

2016-12-01T13:27:00-05:00

For those who are interested in seeing Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future (reviewed her e on Archinect), they'll have their chance on December 27th when PBS airs the documentary as part of its American Masters Series. The film, which charts both Eero's professional and personal stories, will officially be released on DVD on January 3rd, 2017 from PBS distribution. In the meantime, here's a clip from the film where Eliel Saarinen finds out it is not him but his son Eero who has won the competition for St. Louis memorial design:

Surveying the failure of utopian ideals in Tokyo's Nakagin Capsule Tower

2016-11-01T12:32:00-04:00

Despite its potential for easy refurbishment and adaptability, the Nakagin Capsule Tower has not exactly fulfilled the hoped-for mission of its designers. A team of documentary filmmakers recently attempted to stay in the tower, only to find the majority of its units without plumbing or much in the way of livable amenities. As the narrator laments, "Maybe nowhere else is the gap between the utopian 1960s and 70s dream of the future and the reality of life in the 21st century as acutely felt as right here." Check out the full, thoughtful video here:

Documentary seeks funding to finish tour of UK-engineered social utopias

2016-09-01T13:03:00-04:00

What are dreams made of? More importantly, how are these dreams executed, and how do we live in the corresponding gap between vision and reality? For the residents of the U.K. towns Basildon and Essex, who dwell in post-World War II "New Towns" designed to be social utopias, their struggles to thrive in a globalized reality are being chronicled in the documentary "New Town Utopias." The filmmakers, who have shot over 100 hours of footage, are currently seeking funding via Kickstarter to help them complete the film.

While the film centers around the creative community, it also investigates the larger historical questions of place and belonging. As the Kickstarter description notes, "It is a meditation on British social history that asks the question: do people make the place… or does a place make the people?"

For more on innovative architectural documentaries:

"The Dessau Bauhaus" documentary now available on YouTube

2016-02-25T17:13:00-05:00

"Does the Bauhaus really offer total liberty, or is it a place of oppression where all intimacy in banished, and the group triumphs over the individual?" asks the narrator midway through the English version of the acclaimed documentary The Dessau Bauhaus. The 28-minute film about Walter Gropius' innovative designs, which was directed by Frédéric Compain, can now be streamed (mostly commercially free) on YouTube: