The Artistry of Bruce Goff

The artistry and architecture of Bruce Goff reflects his innate ability to transform simple shapes and materials into imaginative, embellished artworks that convey texture, color and depth. His architectural style is free from predetermined form and begins with a feeling that grows out of function, much like a painting develops from inspirations. This artistic video, presented by Joe D. Price, is the winner of the 1962 Cannes Film Festival President's Award, Non-Theatrical Division.

Arata Isozaki II: International Projects

Through a blend of Japanese history and Western influence, Arata Isozaki has built a career around his boldly distinctive architectural style. Constantly challenging the concepts of space, form and tradition, Isozaki’s work dares us to imagine a merging of cultures where artistic movements and methods bind together in riveting new forms. "ARATA ISOZAKI II: INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS" follows the architect to many of his most famous sites including the Barcelona Olympic Sports Palace, Disney’s Team Building in Orlando, New York’s Palladium nightclub, as well as the newly completed Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

The Michelangelo Code: Lost Secrets of the Sistine Chapel

Art critic Waldemar Januszczak is on the quest to explain exactly what the Sistine Chapel's ceiling is actually trying to tell us.

Jean Nouvel: Guthrie Theater

French architect Jean Nouvel has long been known in Europe for his bold, shimmering glass museums, concert halls, and high-rise towers. Now the much-acclaimed new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which opened in 2006, is displaying Nouvel's remarkable talents to an American public. With a cantilevered lobby that extends 175 feet over the Mississippi River, the dark midnight-blue, aluminum-paneled structure has captivated the culturally conscious city and helped spur the rejuvenation of a once-industrial waterfront. In the tour, Nouvel takes us through three distinctive theaters he designed for the Guthrie, and out onto the cantilevered deck to view the legendary river that inspired the boldly elevated design.

Tadao Ando: Samurai Architect

Tadao Ando (b.1941) is a world-renowned architect, and a recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. His calm, minimalist architecture with elegant concrete designs reflects the Zen principle of simplicity. In the film he reveals the experience a building should evoke, as he discusses a number of iconic designs, such as The Row House and The Church of Light.

Brasília

Gaudí, l’arquitecte de Déu

“Gaudí, l’arquitecte de Déu” is a story of faith, of overcoming, about five lay that decided to create an assossiation to demonstrate that Gaudí deserves one of most valuable titles of the Church: beatification. The Pro-Beatification Association of Antoni Gaudí has been working more than 25 years to manage to beatify the architect of Reus, picking up all witnesses and proofs that demonstrate that Gaudi lived like a beatus and, the most difficult part, wiaiting for a miracle to happen attributed do Gaudí himself, an essential condition for his beatification. The documentary will follow this case, showing Gaudi’s life and work from a new outlook, more intimate and linked to spirituality and beliefs of the architect.

Toorumi Pojad

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.

Alvar Aalto

A portrait of the renowned Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto by the radical experimental filmmaker Eino Ruutsalo. Shot in the summer of 1972 at Aalto’s experimental house in Muuratsalo the film briefly and accurately covers the growth, development and creativity of the master architect, presenting his most important work.

Kanade

Widely considered an important milestone in Indian Architectural history, the Kanade brothers are a testimony of how life and work can coexist with honesty as the fundamental driving factor. The film ‘Kanade’ gives an insight into the journey and experiences of Shankar & Navnath Kanade as architects and teachers.

Orsay, les grandes métamorphoses

Inaugurated in 1986 by François Mitterrand, a link between the Louvre and Pompidou, Orsay houses the largest collection of Impressionist art in the world. Project after project, the museum has been transformed to modernize and welcome more visitors, while preserving its historic character. Challenges taken up with each new project.

25 Bis

25 BIS is an intimate portrait of a masterpiece from the beginning of Auguste Perret’s career: the building located on 25 Bis, Rue Franklin in Paris. The film looks for the intangible and subjective element of the building’s history: the depth of its human print. The building appears as a sedimentation of life stories where each layer has left the trace of a passage. From the intimate nature of these stories, the film draws this fragile and undefined essence that could be called “the soul of the place”.

Begiak hesteko artean

The six-decade transformation of a block of houses, shown by means of artfully featured archival shots, highlights the beauty and sadness of human-made decay. In the blink of an eye 66 years pass by and a savings bank replaces a church.

Arquitetura, A Transformação do Espaço

A film in three movements. In the first one, we find a historical synthesis of Brazilian architecture, from the slaves' dwellings to the Ministry of Education Building. In the second segment, architects such as Burle Marx, Lina Bo Bardi, Grigori Warchavchik and Joaquim Cardoso talk about architecture's social function. In the third movement, inhabitants of some Brazilian cities discuss the space they live in.

Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova

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)

Así Nació el Obelisco

The construction of the Obelisco in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Inside Prora

On the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea lies one of the most megalomaniac projects built by the Nazis. The ‘Monster by the Sea’, a colossus of brickwork that stretches for kilometres, intended as a futurist holiday resort for the inhabitants of the Third Reich. A paragon of ‘guilty architecture’. Later occupied by the communist regime, it has since the fall of the Wall fallen victim to property developers who have found it a tough nut to crack. Nico Weber’s Inside Prora uncovers the storied history of a project that symbolises the utopian intentions of modernism and the emergence of mass tourism.

Relics of the Future

A documentary featuring internationally renowned photographer Toni Hafkenscheid as he explores hidden stories behind iconic architectural structures once considered "Visions of the Future" from the 1960's. This film is a light-hearted look at the way we perceive life and embrace modern advancements. It is a photography expose that becomes a personal journey of self-discovery while exploring innovative Visions of the Future that celebrate memories of Toni's, and our, collective past.

Building the Eiffel Tower

Explore the revolutionary engineering behind Paris’s iconic landmark. Completed in just over two years for the 1889 World’s Fair, the iron tower smashed the record for the tallest structure on Earth, ushering in a new age of global construction that reached for the skies. How did the engineers do it? Follow the innovations, successes, and failures that made one of the most famous buildings on the planet possible.

If You Build It

A year in the life of one of America's most innovative classrooms where students design & build to transform their hometown community. The film follows Emily Pilloton and Matt Miller as they teach the fundamentals of design, architecture and construction to a class of high school juniors in rural North Carolina.