Videos

Humanity’s ability to construct and change an urban landscape is incredible, but rarely do we get to see that interaction at full scale. Beno Saradzic’s "BEYOND: Memoirs in a Timelapse" captures just that. Taken from more than two years of footage from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, this film showcases hourly transformations wrought on some of the city’s most famous buildings, such as the Al Bahar Towers and Burj Khalifa.

Twenty years ago, one of the world’s most unusual and unexpected pieces of architecture was razed to the ground: Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City, the most densely populated area on earth. Squalid, dark, and labyrinthine, the informal city was not only a hotbed for organized crime, but also a vibrant community of commerce and hope. Now, the Wall Street Journal has released this short documentary, bringing the city back to life and revealing why it holds a special place in world culture today.

In this four-part, stop-motion series, Mayeul Akpovi presents a new perspective on the City of Lights. Filmed with manual camera movements and composed of more than 30,000 photographs, the videos enable a unique, otherwise-unattainable experience of Paris’ sleepless urban spaces by ceaselessly attenuating the passage of time.

Watch part one (above), and continue after the break for the remaining series...

Amanda Burden, former animal behaviorist turned New York’s chief city planner, has discovered what makes cities desirable: great public spaces. During her time with the Bloomberg administration, Burden oversaw the fruition of the city’s most transformative public projects, including New York’s beloved High Line. In the video above, she reveals the many unexpected challenges of planning (and maintaining) parks people love, and why it is so important for cities to have great public spaces.

The bowels of a Gasometer may be an unlikely place to stage a light installation, however, URBANSCREEN, a German projection company, has done just that. 320 Licht is a spectacle of light and sound within a cylindrical volume over 300 feet high. With the help of Epson Germany, URBANSCREEN was able to sync 21 separate projectors for a 22 minute loop, documenting the process in the amazing high-definition video above. Enjoy!

Cristobal Palma from Estudio Palma presents his latest video of Ambient 30 60, UMWELT's pavilion for Yap_Constructo 2014 in Chile. The video aptly captures the spirit of the Young Architects Program (YAP) -- an annual collaboration between the MoMA and MoMA PS1 that takes place in Istanbul, New York, Rome and Santiago.

Recently voted the UK’s ugliest tower, The Barbican Tower is one of the three residential towers of the Barbican Estate, built between 1965 and 1976 in London. Along with fourteen apartment blocks, the Barbican Estate contains 2014 flats, connected by a labyrinth of floating passageways and landscaped gardens.

The history of Johannesburg's Ponte City Apartments is a provocative one: built in 1975 and designed by Manfred Hermer as the height of luxurious (white-only) living in South Africa, the continent's tallest residential building soon became a notorious vertical slum, filled with crime and poverty, its signature hollow core re-purposed as a trash dump and a suicide drop.

MASS has just released the third video in their Beyond the Building series, which examines how architecture and design can positively impact our world, beyond buildings (check out the first video here and the second here). The latest - "Ilima: Beyond Sustainability" - explores MASS's collaboration with the African Wildlife Foundation as well as local masons to build a primary school in the rural Congolese village of Ilima, where, due to its remote location, practically all materials must be sourced locally.

With an emphasis on collaborative environments, relaxing atmospheres, and quirky branding, it's always interesting to take a peek into the offices of tech companies, often found in the sprawling, multi-colored campuses of Silicon Valley. But how does this particular brand of interior design transfer to the more cramped spaces of a Manhattan office block? This video by Internet Week NY takes us behind the scenes at Tumblr, About.com and Fueled Collective to find out.

Jeffrey Durkin, director of Breadtruck Films, has shared with us this insightful short film on Jonathan Segal’s new concrete and glass house in La Jolla: The Cresta. According to Durkin, “The film explores the relationship between nature and architecture, father and son, and how clean minimal design can save us from the suburbs.”