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The architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre’s extravagant urban mansions in El Alto, Bolivia, have been derided as kitschy-looking cohetillos, meaning “spaceships”—giving his work the nickname “spaceship architecture.”
But the admirers of Freddy Mamani, as he is generally known, say his colorful “new Andean” style has also served to reinvent a city once aesthetically monochromatic, and that he has found a way to bring traditional Andean and Tiwanaku cultures into an urban setting.
— qz.com
Previously: 'Neo-Andean' architecture sprouts in Bolivia View full entry
"Citizenfour," in fact, enlarges and underlines ideas about architecture, privacy and culture that run more subtly through a number of Oscar nominees. Several [...] movies exploit the dramatic appeal of the constricted, labyrinthine, tightly packed, claustrophobic or paranoid space: the crowded backstage corridors of "Birdman" by Alejandro G. Iñárritu; the tunnels, hallways and dollhouse-like spaces of Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel"; the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Ava DuVernay's "Selma." — latimes.com
Related: Julia Ingalls' Material Witness series on Archinect View full entry
Sérgio Bernardes was a star of 60s Brazil, a brilliant architect and a mesmerising man. And then almost forgotten. His grandson has made a film to discover what happened — theguardian.com
Archiculture takes a thoughtful, yet critical look at the architectural studio. The 25-minute film offers a unique glimpse into the world of studio-based, design education through the eyes of a group of students finishing their final design projects. Interviews with leading professionals, historians and educators help create crucial dialog around the key issues faced by this unique teaching methodology and the built environment these future architects will create.
Read our interview with filmmakers David Krantz and Ian Harris about the film, from 9 years ago (!!!) here. View full entry
Beavercreek, Ohio, nabbed its own infamous place in civil rights history last year, when the Federal Highway Administration ruled that the suburb had violated anti-discrimination laws by blocking bus service from nearby Dayton. [...]
The Beavercreek case illustrates larger, more widespread problems with America’s transportation system [...]. The Kirwan Institute is producing a one-hour documentary exploring the Beavercreek case and how racism can influence transportation decision making.
— usa.streetsblog.org
Depicting the Sancaklar Mosque, commissioned by Sancaklar Foundation and designed by EAA -- Emre Arolat Architects, this film is a semi-documentary salute to this distinguished example of modern architecture, which stands out among Turkey's Islamic places of worship dominated by historicist building typologies.
SGMStudio (Sarraf | Galeyan | Mekanik) has filmed a short documentary on EAA – Emre Arolat Architects’ Sancaklar Mosque -a building that stands out as one of the rare examples of modern architecture among Turkey's Islamic places of worship. SGMStudio’s “Sancaklar Mosque” premiered at... View full entry
Wim Wenders and a team of directors attempt to show ‘the soul of buildings’, from the Pompidou Centre to the most humane prison in the world, in 3D. But their sickly-sweet results feel more like a series of vapid promo videos — theguardian.com
In collaboration with fifteen poets and community activists from StartUp Box South Bronx, I recently created Memories of the Future, a location-based cinema project viewed on mobile phones. The group experimented with spoken word poetry, site specific performance, and on-site spectatorship to reframe the predominant view of Hunts Point and speak about possibilities for its future from a position of power. — urbanomnibus.net
The documentary Lagos Wide and Close - An Interactive Journey into an Exploding City, arose from Rem Koolhaas' 2001 visit to Lagos, Nigeria with filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak, hoping to document a phase in one of Africa's fastest growing cities. The doc's unique direction allows viewers to... View full entry
For most of the 20th century, Atlanta was known for its public housing. The city had pioneered the concept in the 1930s [...]
Two decades later, that proportion has fallen all the way to zero. [...]
Looking at these two decades of rapid residential change, Atlanta native and filmmaker King Williams is looking for an answer to a seemingly obvious question. With his in-production documentary The Atlanta Way, Williams asks: Where did all of these people end up?
— theatlanticcities.com
The Competition, which has its UK premiere at the Barbican tonight, follows the trials and tribulations of five stellar practices competing in a doomed bid to build a new national museum for Andorra, back in 2009. As the global financial crisis hit rock-bottom, no job was too small for architects whose dreams of dotting Middle Eastern deserts with their snazzy signatures had been revealed as a hopeless mirage. — theguardian.com
Unfinished Spaces by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray continues to gain recognition since its initial release in 2011. In addition to previous grants and awards, the documentary film recently won the 2014 Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) Award for Film and Video at the 2014 Annual Conference in Austin, Texas. Established in 2013, the annual award is given to the most distinguished international work of film or video on the history of the built environment. — bustler.net
Reflective of its Cuban Revolution setting in 1961, Unfinished Spaces tells the complex tale of Cuba's historic National Art Schools project commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to visionary architects Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti, and Roberto Gottardi. Construction of the school... View full entry
In the center of the sprawling metropolis of Germany's capital, Berlin-Tempelhof Airport stands as both a monument to a darker era in Germany's past and a link to its future.
Built on an airfield where the Wright Brothers once demonstrated their Flyer before a captive European audience, Tempelhof Airport was conceived by the leaders of the Third Reich as a architectural testament to the boundless ambition of German supremacy. Captured by the Soviet Army in 1945 before... View full entry
Perhaps you remember Spirit of Space's Art in the City film from back in summer of 2013, meditating on the interplay between city life and public art in Chicago. More recently, the architectural film-making creative agency produced two short films showcasing Steven Holl's work for the Sifang Art... View full entry
So continues the battle of saving neglected pavilions from their ultimate fate of destruction. MODERN RUIN: A World's Fair Pavilion by filmmaker and film educator Matthew Silva tells the eventful tale of Philip Johnson's New York State Pavilion in the last 50 years.The film starts with the... View full entry