Gaudi: His Life and Works

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.

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.

Poème Électronique is an 8-minute piece of electronic music by composer Edgard Varèse, written for the Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. The Philips corporation commissioned Le Corbusier to design the pavilion, which was intended as a showcase of their engineering progress. The pavilion was shaped like a stomach, with a narrow entrance and exit on either side of a large central space. As the audience entered and exited the pavilion, the electronic composition Concret PH by Iannis Xenakis (who also acted as Le Corbusier's architectural assistant for the pavilion's design) was heard. Poème électronique was synchronized to a film of black and white photographs selected by Le Corbusier which touched on vague themes of human existence.

A film about the pioneering community-building project of the world-famous architect Frei Otto in Berlin, called the Okohaus-an experimental, ecological, customized housing project in the city center. Including interviews with Frei Otto, Christine Kanstinger-Otto, Hermann Kendel, Yona Friedman, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, and other involved architects, planners, and inhabitants, the film shows the development and the philosophy of the project, which was built for the International Building Exhibition in Berlin 1987 (IBA).

Finding their place between the forest and the sea, the Japanese have always felt awe and gratitude toward Nature. Since ancient times, they have negotiated their own unique relationship with their natural surroundings. Acclaimed photographer Masa-aki Miyazawa discovered the essence of that ancient way of living in Ise Jingu, Japan’s holiest Shinto shrine. Inspired by the idea of sending a message to the future in the same way this ancient shrine keeps alive the traditions of the past, Miyazawa used an ultra-high resolution 4K camera to create a breathtaking visual journey linking the Ise forest with other forests throughout Japan.

Antonio Gaudi, portrait d'artiste

Gaudi, Le dernier bâtisseur

Charles Vandenhove, architecte de l'art

Jugaad is a Hindi word that can be translated as "innovative or effective solution that bends the rules". It refers to the extreme capacity developed by Mumbai's inhabitants to adapt and get around any type of constraint or obstacle posed by the city's urban structure. In a relatively small piece of land where 21 million people live today, the inhabitants of Mumbai demonstrate great creativity when it comes to managing the spaces (for sale, for prayer, for traffic) and the flows that cross them every day. Without using language, Hong Kong artist Chak Hin Leung brings together in this video a dozen unique situations in which people, animals, vehicles and natural elements intermingle and brush up against each other, without ever colliding.

A look at contemporary Paris through the lens of theories and ideologies of the past two centuries, with a particular focus on the utopian socialist ideas of Charles Fourier.

On the occasion of the fourty years anniversary of François Mitterand's election, a look back to the relationship between the President and artists, from admiration to manipulation.

Francesco Borromini, génie du baroque romain

Documentary about 4 large architectural landmarks that projected Portugal abroad.

2005-2008. Video. In 2005 San Francisco real estate magnate Angelo Sangiacomo commissioned Strickland to make a movie that would chronicle final stages in the construction of his new house in Pebble Beach, CA. Amidst the spectacle of the building site, the videographer sought to portray a design project of operatic proportions that involved a sometimes dissonant cast of characters and took more than 6 years to unfold. The owners hoped that this video record might lend future visibility to a structure’s bones and soul that otherwise vanish from sight by the time building is completed.

Under Dorchester Square in Montreal lies the cemetery where 55,000 people were buried in the 19th century. The square is still at the heart of social conflicts in Quebec, 150 years later.

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.

This fascinating documentary explores the collaboration between Marion Mahony, the first registered woman architect in the world and the longest serving designer in Frank Lloyd Wright’s practice, and husband Walter Burley Griffin. Their struggle with unyielding bureaucracy, the philosophies that underscored their life and work, and their passionate commitment to an architecture that expressed a balance between society and the environment and an affinity between the human spirit and the natural world. The film weaves together their personal and professional lives, drawing on archival and contemporary footage of their work, an extensive collection of photographs, the couple’s own correspondance and writing, and interviews with prominent architects, social historians and the people who knew them.

Invisible Water Layers discusses and questions the origins of Teresina and its urbanization over the years. The film deals with the move from the capital of Piauí to Oeiras in 1852, the ideas of modernity at the time and the problems that resulted from this process in people and in the city. Along with the idea of ​​progress of the railway, factories and steamboats, many families and workers were relocated from the central areas of the city to more distant parts. The traditional ways of life of these people coexisted, not free from conflict, with the will of civility of the local elites. With 4 interviewees, including architects, historians and researchers, the film also brings a rich set of images from different places in the city, such as the Center, the Parnaíba riverbank and the Poty Velho neighborhood.

Dresden is famous for its attempt to meticulously reconstruct its once bombed-out historical center and bring the colorful baroque settings of the 18th century back to life. It’s infamous for the right-wing-surge that has since 2015 swept the city and made it a center of far-right activity in Germany and Europe. This film is an exploration of where the two intersect.

A short documentary that takes a look at Pratt Institute's Architecture program and how the first years handle the rigorous workload.