Film: The Latest Architecture and News

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

The field of architecture is not exactly a hot topic of study for most undergraduate students. The closest they might get to the subject is an art history survey course in which architecture is presented as a parade of styles across the millennia—just another form of visual expression. 

This article was originally published in Metropolismag.com.

Set to screen at the ADFF:NOLA festival, Frank Gehry: Building Justice showcases how Gehry-led student architecture studios developed proposals for more humane prisons.

Thanks to initiatives like the Art for Justice Fund, Open Society Foundations, and a slew of insightful reporting, the American criminal justice system has been under great scrutiny and pressure to reform. Some of these changes have been quite prominent—such as the increasingly-widespread decriminalization of pot and pending major federal legislation—and have faced opposition from the powerful lobbying of the private prison corporations. However, despite the depth and breadth of criminal justice reform, one critically important element has remained mostly overlooked: the design of correctional facilities.

Today, the overlap of the tools and software products utilized by filmmakers and architects reinforces the historical bond between the two disciplines more than ever. In one of their design studios, Master of Architecture students at the Melbourne School of Design try to master the techniques and methods of filmmaking and employ them in their architectural films and animations.

Etienne-Louis Boullée, though regarded as one of the most visionary and influential architects in French neoclassicism, saw none of his most extraordinary designs come to life. Throughout the late 1700s Boullée taught, theorized, and practiced architecture in a characteristic style consisting of geometric forms on an enormous scale, an excision of unnecessary ornamentation, and repetition of columns and other similar elements.

Lebanon-based firm JPAG has created a short architectural movie titled “Coming Back to Life” which uses an abandoned icon from the Lebanese civil war to generate a modern day fairy tale. The Burj El Murr (Tower of Bitterness) has been reimagined in a cinematic narrative loaded with emotional content and dramatic sceneries, in an attempt to generate new understandings of what an architectural concept is.

The Architecture & Design Film Festival is returning this year from March 13-17 in Downtown Los Angeles. ADFF:LA offers a curated program of 24 films, director Q&As, and a series of discussions on architecture and design. The festival was created to celebrate the creative spirit that drives architecture and design. From events and films to panel discussions, ADFF has become the nation’s largest film festival devoted to architecture.

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The dominating news of the week came courtesy of RIBA and IIT, with the two announcing this year’s laureates of the Stirling Prize and Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, respectively. Foster + Partners were awarded RIBA’s Stirling Prize for their Bloomberg HQ in London. Said jury member Sir David Adjaye, “Bloomberg is a once-in-a-generation project which has pushed the boundaries of research and innovation in architecture.” The project has been a controversial choice, with some citing the tension between the building’s massive price tag and the current UK housing crisis.

How does the built environment--whether fictitious or entirely founded in reality--impact how we experience and process film? From lesser-known indies to blockbuster movies, the ways in which architecture and the built environment inform everything from scene and setting, to dialogue and character development has far-reaching effects on the audience’s cinematic experience. Below, a roundup of everything from recent releases to classic cinephile favorites uncovers the myriad ways in which film utilizes architecture as a means of achieving a more authentic and all-encompassing form of storytelling.

"Moriyama-San" - a film by Bêka & Lemoine - has been awarded the 2018 Best Prize at the Arquiteturas Film Festival in Lisbon. Centered around the famous Moriyama House by Pritzker Prize Laureate Ryue Nishizawa, it becomes part of a developing series called “Living Architectures,” in which the filmmakers aim to “put into question the fascination with the picture, which covers up the buildings with preconceived ideas of perfection, virtuosity, and infallibility.” In its unique approach, the film “masterfully combines image, sound, and narrative in a compelling story about a unique character and its relation to his house and music.”

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