Is Tim Burton's Beetlejuice the best Halloween movie for design students to watch?

2022-10-29T09:00:00-04:00

Every season has its own set of iconic movies, and within that set, there are those that stick out for their portrayal and elevation of architectural issues. Tim Burton’s 1988 classic, Beetlejuice, is perhaps the fall’s best example — an ever-trendy classic Halloween tale that showcases and offers some critique of the period’s salient design trends. Even the scale model of the town has some architectural qualities, and its central star — a shopworn Victorian-style home — has become an inspiration to aspiring designers around the world.

The conceit of Beetlejuice has essential elements that design students would be well-served to evaluate. Two families fighting for the creative control of a structure with radically different agendas. Its conflict is based on a disagreement about preferences in residential architecture: The “good, sturdy country craftsmanship” of a rural Victorian run up against a vacuous amalgam of 80s high design.

Opening title sequence from the film. Image courtes...

The winners of this year's Critical Halloween at the Storefront for Art and Architecture

2015-11-04T19:49:00-05:00

Each year, Critical Halloween celebrates a feared ghost of art and architectural production. This year, we explore DEMO, which operates simultaneously as an abbreviation, a prefix, a verb, and a noun. From acts of collective will (DEMOnstration) to institutional erasure (DEMOlition), DEMO invites guests to intellectually examine ideas, issues, and objects in art, architecture, and design with a focus on those that should get a dose of DEMO.

Critical Halloween, an annual event hosted by the Storefront for Art and Architecture, is a hybrid party, critical debate, and costume contest. Each year, the organizers announce a "spooky" architectural issue or concept, which is then interpreted by design aficionados and practitioners from around the city. Then an esteemed jury selects the winners of a series of theme-appropriate categories.

This year, the theme was "DEMO" – as in demonstration, but also demolition, demon, demos, democracy, demography, etc. The jury comprised Keller Easterling, author of Extrastatecraft and other notable titles, Winka Dubbeldam of Archi-Tectonics, Andres Jacque of the Office for Political Innovation, and Beatrice Galilee, the architecture and design curator at the Met.

The Storefront has also teamed up with the art website Hyperallergic to host a "Democratic People's Choice Award" and you can vote here.

So, without any further ado, the winners of the 2015 Critical Halloween costume contest...

Best Ove...

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Is Tim Burton's Beetlejuice the best Halloween movie for design students to watch?

The winners of this year's Critical Halloween at the Storefront for Art and Architecture