His buildings are garish, colorful and completely overloaded. Columns and glittering chandeliers everywhere, and way too much of everything. The Bolivian civil engineer and architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre (*1971) builds houses in El Alto for a nouveau riche upper class of the Aymara, the largest indigenous ethnic group in Bolivia.
In the same vein as Meri's other documentations, this one takes advantage of the glasnost policy to discuss the social and ecologic impact of the Russian oil industry on the natives and the lands they inhabit.
Toorumi Pojad
1989
0
In 1959, a government employee named Richard Oyler, living in the tiny desert town of Lone Pine, California, asked world-famous modern architect Richard Neutra to design his modest family home. To Oyler's surprise, Neutra agreed. Thus began an unlikely friendship that led to the design and construction of an iconic mid-century modern masterpiece.
The Oyler House: Richard Neutra's Desert Retreat
2012
0
A core group of architects embraced the West Coast from Vancouver to LA with its particular geography and values and left behind a legacy of inspired dwellings. Today, architects celebrate the influence established by their predecessors.
Coast Modern
2012
8
A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient.
Valldaura: A Quarantine Cabin
2022
6
Visiting examples of Herzog and de Meurons ground-breaking style, this film reflects their capacity to astonish and explore the way in which they transform what might otherwise be ordinary through new treatments and techniques.
Architects Herzog and deMeuron: The Alchemy of Building & The Tate Modern
2001
0
The fifth project of the Living Architectures series, Inside Piano is composed of three films on three symbolic buildings of Renzo Piano's career. A visit throughout the prototype-building of the Centre Pompidou. An immersion in the soundproof world of a submarine floating in the depths of the Parisian underground. A journey aboard a luminous magic carpet of a highly sophisticated architectural machine. A humorous, caustic and quirky point of view.
Inside Piano
2013
0
In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.
Bauhaus 100
2019
6
Phillis Wheatley Elementary School was a significant landmark in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans, serving as an important educational institution for African-American students for nearly half a century. The school was known for its innovative modern design that was unique to the region, reflecting the area’s cultural and historical roots. However, the school sustained significant damage during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in 2005. Despite the damage, the school’s unique design caught the attention of DOCOMOMO Louisiana, an organization dedicated to preserving modern architecture. They advocated for the restoration of the school through adaptive reuse, citing its historical significance and architectural importance. The organization produced this short film, “A Plea for Modernism,” narrated by actor Wendell Pierce, to raise awareness of the school’s cultural and historical value and promote its restoration.
A Plea for Modernism
2011
0
In the rich hill of Potosí in Bolivia there is a silver mine that was the largest in the world. It has been exploited since 1546 with the arrival of the Spanish who enslaved the indigenous people to steal the precious metal. To this day, hundreds of meters underground, the indigenous miners continue to exploit the mine in extremely precarious conditions, Martín Cádiz is one of them; hi works in the depths of the hill and desires that his children do not enter these tunnels of hell.
Nuna potosí
2005
0
A docu-art film about Kyiv and the contemporary problems of the capital. The film raises the issue of the dilapidated state of Kyiv's old buildings and the search for effective mechanisms to preserve the city's architectural heritage.
Місто, яке зникає
2020
0
One week in the extraordinary-ordinary life of Mr. Moriyama, a Japanese art, architecture and music enlighted amateur who lives in one of the most famous contemporary Japanese architecture, the Moriyama house, built in Tokyo in 2005 by Pritzker-prize winner Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA). Introduced in the intimacy of this experimental microcosm which redefines completely the common sense of domestic life, Ila Bêka recounts in a very spontaneous and personal way the unique personality of the owner: a urban hermit living in a small archipelago of peace and contemplation in the heart of Tokyo. From noise music to experimental movies, the film let us enter into the ramification of the Mr. Moriyama's free spirit. Moriyama-San, the first film about noise music, acrobatic reading, silent movies, fireworks and Japanese architecture!
Moriyama-San
2017
7
A film commissioned by architects Vitangelo Ardito and Nicoletta Faccitondo (Polytechnic University of Bari) as a companion piece to the book 'Umberto Riva. Perciò è sempre una sorpresa - 19 conversazioni'.
DUE SEGNI
2022
0
In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)
Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova
1968
7
In the midst of the chaos of México City, a group of eight bachelor millennials who call themselves ´The Hermits´, open the doors to their tiny apartments in the historic Ermita Building, in the yet-to-be gentrified neighborhood of Tacubaya, and share their life experiences in a time when precarity changes the way in which we love, feel and relate to each other. As we explore the homes of these eight neighbors, we also witness their personalities intersect in a Whatsapp chat, a virtual space that functions as a supporting system that helps them face the adversities that living alone in this city brings.
Ermitaños
2019
2
A Bolivian by birth, who grew up with adoptive parents in the Swabian town of Mössingen, is looking for his family in the mountains of Potosí. Out of poverty, his mother gave the little boy away when he was just a few months old. The search carries a story that goes far beyond personal fate. Because Manuel was born in a region known for the ruthless exploitation of silver. It's a film about identity, homeland and equal opportunities.
Mein fremdes Land
2022
8
Viva El Vedado presents the history of the Havana neighborhood of El Vedado from the last quarter of the 19th century through the Cuban Revolution and highlights its varied and outstanding architecture. Known as a cultural center of Havana, Vedado is particularly notable for its unique collection of Cuban architecture of the 20th century. The film’s goal is to introduce its audiences to the neighborhood’s remarkable architecture, its vibrant life, and the need for preserving Vedado as part of Havana’s heritage. It is a glimpse beyond tourist fantasies and stereotypes, a rare view of one of Havana’s most important neighborhoods.
Viva El Vedado
0
In 1959 Hiroshi Teshigahara shot the following 16 mm footage of he and his father’s first trip to Barcelona and the outlying Catalonian countryside, including a visit to the home of Salvador Dali in Port Lligat. The footage was recorded without sound.
Gaudi, Catalunya
1959
0
Amancio Williams
2013
5
"Solid States: Concrete in Architecture and Structural Engineering" offers examples and insights into the ever-adapting possibilities of concrete. With the participation of prominent architects and engineers such as Steven Holl, Toshiko Mori and Bernard Tschumi, the lectures consist of footage and theories pertaining to the developments of concrete as a material within the architectural world.
Solid States: Concrete in Architecture and Structural Engineering
2009
0
Known for his bold, abstract and stark white buildings, American architect Richard Meier now takes on the challenge of building the Jubilee Church in Rome. Holding the location in high regard, Meier praises the vibrant visual layout of the city and tells us, "Rome is a city of architecture; it's a city of walls and columns and spaces and places and defined places and wherever you look there's architecture" (Richard Meier). Staying true to his signature design style, Meier has created a structure resembling grand soaring sails which appear steady and peaceful as they stand in striking opposition to the city's landscape. Three curved walls separate three distinct spaces: the main sanctuary, the weekday chapel and the baptistry, each with its own entrance. As a contrast he shows us his favorite churches in Rome by his famous colleagues from earlier times.
Richard Meier in Rome Building a Church in the City of Churches
2006
0