Videos

In a short film exploring some of the National Participations at this year's Venice Biennale, Monocle Films take a considered look at how different countries have responded to the Biennale theme, Reporting From the Front in both explicit and more indirect ways. Visiting the Austrian Pavilion, the Nordic Pavilion, the Turkish Pavilion, the British Pavilion, the Irish Pavilion, the Australian Pavilion and the Romanian Pavilion, the film studies what discourses are being waged in the compressed geo-political world of the Giardini di Biennale.

Videos

"Scrutinizing the horizon and looking for a new perspective" is what Alejandro Aravena has encouraged in the 2016 Venice Biennale, Reporting From the Front. "[He] has staged one of the most socially charged Biennales," Gillian Dobias reports, by "exploring the different ways that design can add value." In this, the first of two film reportages from the Biennale, Monocle talks to Aravena about his hopes for stimulating the debate on improving quality of life in the built environment, and tour the Central Pavilion and the Arsenale to uncover what's on show.

In this short film, Monocle speaks to Penelope Evatt Seidler about the Modernist home she designed and built with her late husband, Harry Seidler, at Killara on Sydney's north shore. Far removed from the skyscrapers and residential towers for which the Seidler practice is known for, this house—completed in 1967—is a manifesto in early Modern and Bauhaus aesthetics that "are just as forward-thinking today as they were back then," built into the Australian landscape.

The news last year that the Hotel Okura, often described as one of Tokyo´s "Modernist gems," was to be demolished was met with widespread disappointment across the board. Built in 1962 under the design direction of Yoshiro Taniguchi, Hideo Kosaka, Shiko Munakata, and Kenkichi Tomimoto, the hotel has long been considered a significant architectural landmark in the Japanese capital. With only a week to go until the hotel checks out its last guest, Monocle—having been granted exclusive access—have shared with us a film to capture "the gracious ways of this much-loved building."