Videos

Almost one year has passed since the music video release of 'Do It Right' by French artist Martin Solveig. Although deprived of a star-studded tennis match on this occasion, over 15 million viewers have been treated to stunning vistas of The Red Wall, a vibrant fortress of color designed by Ricardo Bofill in Calp, Spain.

As well as being an inspiration for hundreds of architects, who have admired its striking color palette and interlocking staircases, The Red Wall succeeded in capturing the imagination of Solveig and the team at Monsieur l'Agent, the French agency who produced the music video.

We can all recognise the great architectural landmarks of Ancient Rome: the Pantheon, the Colosseum, Trajan's Column – but do you know how they originally appeared or, perhaps more interestingly, how they sat within the context of the historic city? In this captivating 14-minute-long virtual fly-through by the Kahn Academy and Smarthistory, a YouTube channel dedicated to historical video essays, the ancient splendor of the Eternal City (at around 320AD) is presented alongside expert commentary.

In #donotsettle’s latest escapade, architect Kris Provoost scrutinizes Perkins+Will’s Shanghai Natural History Museum. The boyishly charming and ever-inquisitive vlogger presents a unique POV tour of the unusual building situated in the middle of the Jing'an Sculpture Park.

Over a soundtrack of slick house music, Provoost offers up tidbits that cannot be gleaned from a photo. As he approaches the structure, he points out topographical aspects, the relationship of the structure to its context, and various construction details. The rapid-fire architectural observations are often punctuated by brief cross-sectional sketches that augment the experiential commentary.

Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum is a masterclass in natural lighting, with thin-shelled concrete vaults that feature subtle openings to reflect light into the galleries below. While Kahn’s wing of the Fort Worth Museum opened in 1972, in 2013 a second Renzo Piano-designed pavilion was added to the complex. Piano was selected to design the addition because he had worked for Kahn as a budding architect, and the homage to his former mentor is evident in the building’s similar layout and use of translucent glass panels. In this video, architect-photographer Songkai Liu takes viewers on a serene stroll through the museum’s campus. Time-lapses and pans of Kahn’s concrete are juxtaposed with the clean details of Piano’s glass in a soothing exploration of the two complementary projects.

Steven Holl Architects' new Visual Arts Building at the University of Iowa, completed last fall, has already begun to make its impact on the school's social environment, pairing Art Building West (also designed by SHA, in 2006) to create a revitalized Arts Quad with public spaces the whole campus can enjoy.

These two videos give an in-depth look at the new building. In the video above, Steven Holl and Senior Partner Chris McVoy tour the school while providing commentary about their design process, as well as the history of the site and the building's construction. Also check out the video below to see all the spaces in action.

Gensler has "more than 2,700 active clients, work[ing] across the global economy," as their profile attests. In this interview with Fortune, Arthur Gensler—founder of the firm in question and now 81 years of age—offers insight into his own beginnings, as well as to his company's wild success. With a $1.3 billion revenue bracket last year alone, the largest architecture firm in the world have become "best known for designing interiors – everything from the original Apple Stores to headquarters for Facebook and Airbnb." Read the interview in full, here.

[Architecture can] change the life of people and give them a new one right away. This is not a job for normal people to do. This should be the work of God.

The tragedy of architecture is how stupid architects are... we spend too much time trying to convince people to do things they don’t want to do. That really lowers the level of the discussion, I think.

In this video from the Louisiana Channel, Canadian architect Adam Caruso, founding partner of London-based Caruso St John, provides his take on the current climate of the architectural profession and the influences driving his own personal architectural philosophy. With his firm, Caruso has led the design of numerous art institutions, including the 2016 RIBA Stirling Prize winning Newport Street Gallery in London, that respond to “a deeper idea of place, of the history and culture of the place and how you read it today.

LOHA (Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects) has recently released Amplified Urbanism, a book about its design methodology, which is “rooted in creating fluid interaction between public and private spaces, emphasizing social and civic connections, and harnessing existing ecological and infrastructural patterns.”

Through this publication, LOHA aims to present projects it has developed based on these principles, as well as to provoke discussion about issues in Los Angeles and the wider architectural field.

In order to highlight the book “as a creative process that begins in the studio, and when implemented in the built environment, catalyzes positive connections,” LOHA has collaborated with filmmakers Spirit of Space on a short film.

Artist and photographer Rob Carter shared with us a video in which, through montages and digital collages, shows the urban growth of the city of Charlotte, in the state of North Carolina, USA. The video, titled Metropolis, is "an abbreviated city narrative [...] that uses stop-motion animation to physically manipulate aerial imagery, creating a landscape in constant motion."

Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the US and Carter's production features the changes that have taken place in recent years in its central region. Verticality and density of buildings (not necessarily people) continue to mark the urbanization of the city.

Videos

Richard Meier is well-known for his love of the color white, describing it as “the most wonderful color, because within it you can see all the colors of the rainbow” in his Pritzker Prize acceptance speech. As such, many of his buildings, including the City Hall of The Hague in Netherlands (completed in 1995), are painted head-to-toe in the snowy pigment. But now, all that white has given the building a new unintentional function: as a perfect canvas for the world’s largest Mondrian painting.

Videos

This is a story about a girl..... her red tricycle, and of a beautiful house. Inspired by “The Shining” from Stanley Kubrick.

In this film, by architects Spaceworkers and produced by Building Pictures, of Cabo de Vila House instead of using the tricycle and the space to install a sense of madness, the idea of the project is to show that the house has no barriers between the different spaces. The house is set up as an organic geometry that establishes hierarchies between spaces allowing mutual visual contact. What better way to show this than to follow a young girl as she travels through the house on her tricycle.

Check out the full video and more about the project after the break. 

In the latest video from architecture vlogging favorites #donotsettle, the infectiously energetic duo of Wahyu Pratomo and Kris Provoost team up to take us inside Herzog & de Meuron's newly-completed Elphilharmonie in Hamburg. Filmed during the music venue's "family day," part of its three-week-long opening festival, #donotsettle gives us an engaging look into the building's many spaces—cleverly accompanied by an annotated cross-section of the building which allows us to track their progress through the project's labyrinthine interior.

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“Who would’ve thought a parking garage could be so interesting?”

In this video aired by the Louisiana Channel, Kathrin Susanna Gimmel and Jan Yoshiyuki Tanaka, both co-founders of Copenhagen-based firm JAJA Architects, explain the ideology behind the “Park ‘n’ Play” parking garage. Bright red, atop the 24-meter high car park, sits a playground which, in combination with a rooftop garden, provides a unique public setting offering sought after views of the Copenhagen harbor. Watch the video for more insight into JAJA’s design methodology and how the playground helps redefine roles of public space and usage while integrating into a historical urban identity.

Located along banks of the Tagus in the Lisbon neighborhood of Belém, AL_A's recently completed Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology (MAAT) has brightened up the Lisbon waterfront with its sleek form and glimmering materiality since its opening last October. These qualities have now been captured in a 4K timelapse video by photographer and filmmaker Alejandro Villanueva. The video shows how the building’s presence transforms throughout the day, as the sun reflects off of its unique ceramic facade.

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We always attempt to work with a material and try to see what it can do in relation to the sculptural or in relation to the place

In this video from the Louisiana Channel, Dorte Mandrup discusses the design philosophy behind her firm’s nearly completed Wadden Sea Center, a visitor’s center located in within Denmark’s largest national park. The design employs local construction traditions, creating a sculptural roof and facade from a modernized thatch roof system. Watch the video for more on how Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter approaches a design challenge, and how their buildings belong to their sites.

I’m a relationship builder

In this TED Talk, Jeanne Gang makes a case for the architect as community builder, and how design choices should begin with creating connections between people. In the 12 minute video, Gang walks through some of her firm’s more recent and successful projects, including the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, Chicago’s Aqua Tower and a proposal for a completely reimagined police station, outlining the architectural decisions that helped to foster a sense of community.

"Through architecture, we can do much more than create buildings," says Gang. "We can help steady this planet we all share."

Videos

Architecture, I believe, changes your life. It changes the way you can live life – the way you can see, the way you can feel. Like Winston Churchill says, ‘First we shape our buildings, and then they shape us.’ I think this house has that shaping ability.

In this video by directors Spirit of Space, architects Steven Holl & Dimitra Tsachrelia explain the core concepts and exploratory mission driving the architecture of the firm’s recently completed Ex of IN House. Watch as the architects lead you through the home's unique layout and construction, describing how the house “explores a language of space, aimed at inner spatial energy strongly bound to the ecology of the place - questioning current clichés of architectural language and commercial practice.”