October 28, 2011
Simon Gardiner’s architectural photography presents the city–usually Paris or New York–as a complete, totalizing environment, unroofed by the expanse of the sky, but rather, turned on itself and rotated at angles. The results vary from vortographs, kaleidoscopic compositions wherein the subjects are reflected and arranged in triangular or multilayered arrangements, to simple, yet highly disorienting fabricated symmetries. More after the break.
October 12, 2011
Nicholas Kennedy Sitton manipulates photos of buildings and cityscapes by twisting and rotating them into marvelously animated scenes. His spiraling neighborhoods and warped architectures seem to be taken directly from a summer blockbuster (need we mention Inception?). Click through for more.
September 30, 2011
In anticipation of the New York Art Book Fair this weekend, we present a little gem found at Printed Matter, the daring Westside non-profit that continues to supply us with some of the choicest contemporary art books, catalogs, monographs, periodicals, and zines around. Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films is the brainchild of Yale School of Art graduate Benjamin Critton. The niche zine examines the representation of modernist architecture in popular film, specifically the association of modernist buildings with evil characters. Click for a flip through!
August 10, 2010
An enormous Philip Johnson archive has been uncovered, containing 25,000 sketches, renderings and photos, mostly from the second “postmodern” phase of Johnson’s career (in which he designed the AT&T Building in New York, among many others). The drawings, according to some, reveal how he was more concerned with how life interacted with his seemingly uncontextual architecture. And, there are plenty of unbuilt projects included as well. [via New York Times]
While Inception’s plot revolves around architecture, Christopher Hawthorne finds the set pieces trite and familiar. “These places aren’t new. They’re architectural clichés, dredged up from Hollywood’s collective memory bank.” It does seem like a missed opportunity to create an imaginative architecture of the mind. [via Los Angeles Times]
In architecture firm merger news, DLR Group has acquired KKE Architects (meaning 66 KKE employees will join DLR’s 500). The large Omaha-based firm is continuing to grow (it also gained California’s WWCOT) in an effort to expand its business in China and government, heathcare and senior housing markets. [via Architect]
July 27, 2010
In 2009, the first Architecture & Design Film Festival descended upon Vermont’s Mad River Valley. The location was a bit out of the way, yes, but lucky viewers saw design-related flicks like Angle of Inspiration (on Calatrava’s bridge in California), Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect, Hella Jorgerius: Contemporary Archetypes and Objectified. Thankfully the 2010 version, a 4-day film extravaganza, will be a bit more accessible, coming to New York City and the Tribeca Cinemas on October 14-17.
The films on this year’s playlist are still up for debate; they are based on suggestions and submissions (and hopefully a few from last year’s); speaking of that, the deadline to send in film ideas is August 15. Inception probably won’t be on DVD by then, but may we suggest movies not just explicitly about “architecture,” but maybe a few classics where buildings serve as characters: Jacques Tati’s Playtime, Antonioni’s The Passenger, or The Fountainhead (okay, that one is easy)?
So, if you have any other ideas, we’d be curious to hear them (or you can submit them directly to the Architecture and Design Film Fest).
July 20, 2010
For a movie about the “architecture of the mind,” much of the design of the blockbuster Christopher Nolan film Inception seems tame—at first. We catch aerial glimpses of Paris, Mombasa (actually filmed in Tangiers), and Tokyo from a camera angle set close to the horizon, underscoring the mass scale and infinite loop of the film’s plot. (See: previous cityscapes — Hong Kong, Chicago — from Nolan’s last film The Dark Knight.)
The pace and tone are ultra-realistic, the lighting crisp, the characters well-dressed, never betraying the seriousness of the affair. It’s the buildings that warp, explode, and shift on screen as they do in the protagonist’s mind.
In Inception, we see an architecture student named Ariadne (Ellen Page) recruited by Cobb (DiCaprio) to break into a wealthy businessman’s mind to plant an idea. Having lived in Paris during her studies (at one point she romanticizes walking across the Pont de Bir-Hakeim on her way to class), she adapts quickly to building mazes in the shared dreamscape. She is also able to bend the rules of physics: her Paris bends and layers itself over her in a dream state, one of the scenes that became a teaser image and poster for the movie. It’s as if we were inside the head of Nolan’s Joker, a world based on reality but without rules.
Overall, we see how the built world is distorted and replayed inside our heads. In a film somewhat devoid of human emotion, the subtle characters let architectural emotions go wild. Maybe Inception’s buildings are mugging for an Oscar or something.
Note: light spoilers ahead.
July 15, 2010
Lateral Office (Mason White and Lola Sheppard) is the winner of the Canada Council’s Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture, and their work–well, you just have to see it for yourself (below). White and Sheppard will use the $50,000 prize to travel to the Arctic to pursue their research project, “Emergent North.” Maybe living in extreme conditions is our future? [via Canada Council]
Architecture historian Alice T. Friedman brings “stories, pleasure and mystery” to the modern architecture of Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra and Morris Lapidus in her new book; this is American Glamour. Friedman’s illuminates a side willfully ignored by critics: “it’s not just rational problem-solving and engineering-based,” Friedman tells the Times. [via New York Times]
More on the Ebert’s modern architecture rant; the results in the reactionary LA Times poll are mixed. Does Ebert oversimplify the case against modern architecture? His view is mores more nuanced: he is pro-Louis Sullivan, Frank Gehry, and Philip Johnson, but a bit anti Mies. But he leaves out a lot of architecture in between. [via Chicago Sun Times]
