Archinect - News

Filmmaker Kevin Siyuan releases final ‘A Wes Anderson-ish Singapore’ update

2023-08-11T18:15:00-04:00

The second and final update to architecturally-inspired filmmaker Kevin Siyuan’s documentation of Singapore has been released, offering his follow-up to a popular 2021 video that compared many of the city’s iconic landmarks to structures and interiors included in the cinema of fellow design lover Wes Anderson.

In the 19-plus minutes of ‘A Wes Anderson-ish Singapore Vol.2’, Siyuan weaves a narrative about the aesthetic qualities latent in the city and related to Anderson’s films. Siyuan said he was particularly inspired by the recently-released ‘Asteroid City’ and ever-popular ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’, adding that it offers an equally concise portrait of the various aspects of land use – a component that has helped Singapore earn a reputation as the greenest city in Asia.

As he tells it: “The year is 2023, as we embrace the new normal, have a breath of the refreshing Singapore Air, and welcome back to our island, the tropical getaway and the City in Nature. Change happens very quickly...

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 Tokyo Toilets project will star in Wim Wenders' next film

2022-06-27T20:41:00-04:00

The fictional film will be set in a public restroom that is part of the real-life urban renewal project known as the “The Tokyo Toilet project", which involves the creation of 17 public bathrooms in key locations in the Japanese capital with designs by world renowned Japanese architects, such as Tadao Ando and Sou Fujimoto. Wenders said he was inspired by the futuristic look and unique cultural spirit of the project and decided to set his forthcoming untitled film inside one of them.

The angsty Alice in the Cities and Tokyo-Ga director said “there is something very Japanese about the idea, about the whole setting […] I almost think it’s a Utopian idea” in reference to the Nippon Foundation’s two-year-old Tokyo Toilet project, which has to date produced 17 different designs from Toyo Ito, Shigeru Ban, and Tadao Ando, among others. Production will begin in October. The film is said to center around four narratives and stars Koji Yakusho in the lead role as a Tokyo sanitation worker.

“First of all, I love architecture. In another life, I certainly want to be an architect. And I slowly realized how close the work of an architect to the work of a director really is in many ways,” he said at a press conference, referencing Ando's design in particular. “I truly feel like he is a contemporary of mine. Though we don”t meet so often, I feel a connection and I’m happy that I kno...

New streaming platform to focus exclusively on architecture and design content

2020-07-21T18:01:00-04:00

Australian actor-producer and entrepreneur Dustin Clare is launching Shelter, a new streaming platform for architecture enthusiasts. The platform is targeting a global audience and will carry a mixture of films, TV shows as well as its own originals.

Shelter's "Inspired Architecture" series will include six fifteen-minute episodes that explore six Australian structures including JR's Hut in Gundagai, Permanent Camping in Mudgee, and Hart House at Great Mackerel Beach. The series explores the narrative of the buildings and their creators, accompanied by interviews with the architects and their clients.

Curated from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, United States and South America, Shelter will feature more than 200 hours of content upon launch, with new content to be added every month. The service will launch with the following:

Festival favorite Tadao Ando: From Emptiness to Infinity (2013) pays homage to one of the world’s most renowned architects: the Japanese ‘Master of Minimalism’ Tadao Ando. The film introduces viewers to his famous buildings and offers an exclusive look into his work process, inspiration and motivations.
Winner of Best Documentary at the Atlas Awards International Film Festiva...

How the death of suburban malls aided the filming of the third season of Stranger Things

2019-07-12T13:29:00-04:00

Fans of Netflix's science fiction horror series Stranger Things were recently treated to season 3, which almost entirely takes place within a suburban mall. Filled with neon, fake marble and geometric water features, the postmodern mall design became the ideal setting for the show set in 1985.

Interior of Gwinnett Place Mall. Photographer unknown.

What is first assumed to be an elaborate stage set or impressive CGI is actually a mall in Duluth, Georgia. Originally built in 1984, the Gwinnett Place Mall is one of many malls throughout America that faced declining visitorship during the early 2000s which led to the closure of many of its stores several years ago (only a few remain in operation, including Foot Locker, Finish Line, Victoria’s Secret and Macy’s).

This became a perfect opportunity for the producers of Stranger things to rent a large portion of the space for a fraction of the price it might have been even a decade ago, allowing them to invest more into making the mall app...

Architecture and space subverted through the pratfalls of Buster Keaton

2019-03-28T19:07:00-04:00

Keaton’s comedy derives largely from the positioning —and constant, unexpected repositioning— of his body in space, and in architectural space particularly. Unlike other slapstick performers who relished in the close-up and detailed attention to the protagonist, Keaton frequently directed the camera to film with a wide far-shot that could contain the whole of a building’s facade or urban span within the frame.

While few movies can be truly considered architectural, and even fewer can meaningfully activate the filmic environment through its protagonists, the silent movie era saw no better patron of the spatial arts than Buster Keaton, the creative force Roger Ebert once described as "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies."

Gifs of his battles with building façades, staircases and other architectural elements have popped up on the internet with significant fervor, and members of the architecture community have been quick to notice. An article by Will Jennings highlights the brilliance with which Keaton interacted with architecture.

Clip from One Week. Buster Keaton, 1920.

"In One Week (1920)," Jennings writes, "Keaton and his new wife are given a self-build house and plot of land by his uncle: “To give this house a snappy appearance put it up according to the numbers on the boxes”, state the Portable House Co. instructions. Unbeknown to the couple, a former suitor of the b...

Three famous modernist houses set the stage in this video art exhibition

2018-06-29T17:57:00-04:00

At Pioneer Works, in Brooklyn, the show “Gerard & Kelly: Clockwork” — photographs, text, installations, and live and filmed dance — references the three small structures and the intertwined careers of their architects: the Schindler House in West Hollywood, Calif., by R. M. Schindler; Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Conn.; and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill.

Artists Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly's film Schindler/Glass uses three iconic modernist houses as the backdrop in which issues of gendered space and domestic intimacy are explored. The video piece is part of an ongoing series by the artists called “Modern Living". Shot on site at the Schindler House, the Glass House, and the Farnsworth House, performers interact with the complicated architectural histories in each structure.

Luis Barragan’s Casa Gilardi hosts a body-bending dance troupe

2018-04-25T18:48:00-04:00

Luis Barragan’s Casa Gilardi is considered one of the most internationally transcendent works of contemporary architecture. His last project before passing, the house shows off the legendary Mexican architect's exemplary use of geometry and eye-popping color. In this new video for the design video channel Nowness, the home acts as the perfect stage for hosting a body-bending dance troupe that twists and moves through the building’s vibrant spaces and rooms.

Explaining his interest with Barragan’s architecture, Director Andres Arochi said: “I wanted to play around with and explore the architect’s design. He knew exactly when and where people stand, and how the combination of light and space makes them feel. When we began shooting, magic started to happen. Light burst in through the window, and the dancer’s bodies started to flow in a way I had not anticipated.”

Watch the full video below.

A new documentary series explores Flores & Prats' renovation of a Barcelona theatre

2018-02-15T15:23:00-05:00

Flores & Prats Architects have released a new documentary series, ESCALA 1:5, focusing on their design for Sala Beckett Theatre and International Drama Centre in Barcelona.

Sala Beckett Theatre facade, by Flores & Prats, located in Barcelona. Image: Adrià Goula.

The series consists of 5 episodes each 10 minutes long, produced by 15-L. Films and directed by Patricia Tamayo and Albert Badia. Retracing the journey behind the architectural renovation, this short series documents the space and the bond which ties the building to its neighborhood.

Still from 'ESCALA 1:5' series, by Flores & Prats. Image: Flores & Prats.

Starring architects Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats, the film also includes Toni Casares, the director of Sala Beckett, as well as Sergi Belbel, playwright and former director of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, artists Soraya Smithson and Antoni Miralda, and designer Curro Claret.

Ticket box entry of Sala Beckett, by Flores & Prats, located in Barcelona. Image: Adrià Goul...

Famed Bradbury Building stars in Justin Timberlake's new video for "Say Something"

2018-02-06T13:49:00-05:00

Justin Timberlake may have just completed his halftime performance at the Super Bowl, but before that, he was busy roaming around the historic Bradbury Building in Los Angeles with his good friend and country star, Chris Stapleton. The duo have a song together on Timberlake's new album Man of the Woods, released over the weekend. Titled "Say Something," the music video for the pop-country duet features the two playing on acoustic guitars while they tour the historic structure; seventeen musicians and a sixty-person choir also showed up to lend their help.

Shot by the Paris-based collection of filmmakers known as La Blogothéque, the music video, including the audio, was recorded live, rather remarkably, in a single take. Though the team rehearsed a few times, they had only a 10-minute window in which the lighting through the windows was just right. Additionally, Arturo Perez Jr., who directed the video, told Esquire that the whole thing "was a reverb challenge. The building was all ...

Prop and Property: The House in American Film

2017-12-19T18:50:00-05:00

Cinema heightens the ambivalent but powerful pleasure we take in looking at property. The private property of the house is already a spectacle, of course, as the house is a medium for making visible the wealth of its owners and inhabitants. In a movie theater, this spectacular function is multiplied.

A history of the house in American cinema might well begin with Gone with the Wind, a film that is fascinated with the loss, acquisition, and consolidation of private property; and To Kill a Mockingbird, a putatively antiracist film whose production history is actually an archive of racist urban development. The houses in these pictures tell stories about property that the films do not mention, but cannot cease from showing.

Is the architecture in 'Blade Runner 2049' really Brutalist?

2017-12-05T14:32:00-05:00

This fall Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner 2049 was released as the long awaited sequel to the original 1982 film, and has since sparked much conversation around the film's architecture. There is no denying that Blade Runner 2049's construction was considerably influenced by Brutalist forms, but is the architecture really Brutalism?

Cinematographer Roger Deakins looked to London's Brutalist architecture to create his film, and director Denis Villeneuve said he wanted the "Brutalist feel" with severe concrete design.

'Blade Runner 2049' trailer still.

While serving as inspiration to the filmmakers, Brutalism's core philosophy does not align with Blade Runner 2049 and its architecture. The extremely capitalist society and unpopulated scenes found within the film contradict the original socialist intentions of Brutalist architects whose focus was on material rawness and honesty in order to create the ideal form of dwelling.

'Blade Runner 2049' trailer still.

Read the full essay by Alice Sw...

BFI Giveaway - Win two tickets to "Transport as Architecture: Ballard to Banham"

2016-06-22T04:13:00-04:00

Reflecting on TV's role in British architecture the BFI is running 'Architecture on TV'. "TV has not only provided a platform for these commentators but played a pivotal role in broadening architecture’s audiences and engaging the public in debate. "

We are giving away two tickets to the final event "Transport as Architecture: Ballard to Banham"

The season rounds off with a unique J.G. Ballard double bill which sees the author deconstruct the beauty and menace of motorised society in Transport as Architecture: Ballard to Banham; this event will be introduced by journalist Paul Morely who appears alongside Ballard in The Thing is... Motorways (C4, 1990). In addition to Ballard’s thoughts on the utopian sentiments behind motorways and service stations, Reyner Banham pays tribute to LA and its freeways in Reyner Benham Loves LA (BBC, 1972).

To enter simply fill out this survey by the deadline Monday 27th June 12pm. Best of Luck!