Bauhaus - The Face of the 20th Century, written and narrated by Frank Whitford, is an art documentary depicting the visual science generated from the outpouring of avant-garde ideas of this innovative educational undertaking.
Frank Whitford
as Narrator (voice)
Christopher Frayling
as self
Kurt Kranz
Philip Johnson
The Piccirilli family settled in New York City and started the largest and most prolific marble carving studio in America. For nearly 50 years, Piccirilli sculptors helped shape the architectural landscapes of Washington and New York through hundreds of monuments, memorials, and artworks, many of which are preserved in museums and private collections.
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.
Uncommon Sense: The Life and Architecture of Laurie Baker" explores both the personal and the professional storyline of the architect. Baker's philosophy was more a way of living than just a way of building. He didn't advocate simplicity while designing, and then lead a lavish life.
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.
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.
On the tiny island of Martha's Vineyard, where presidents and celebrities vacation, trophy homes threaten to destroy the islands unique character. Twelve years in the making, One Big Home follows one carpenters journey to understand the trend toward giant houses. When he feels complicit in wrecking the place he calls home, he takes off his tool belt and picks up a camera.
As a Bauhaus photographer, Lucia Moholy (1894-1989) was a pioneer of New Objectivity. Her husband László Moholy-Nagy was appointed to the Bauhaus in 1923. They worked there together and László became famous as the inventor of the photogram, a photo without film. Lucia's contribution to this only became known later. When the Czech-born Jew was forced to leave Germany in 1933 after the Nazis seized power, she was unable to take her most important possession, her glass negatives, with her. She struggled to keep her head above water in London and worked for the British secret service on the microfilming of valuable documents. With her vision of microfilm as freely accessible information for all, she is now regarded as a pioneer of the Internet. After the war, Lucia set out in search of her glass negatives.
Documentary about the architecture of the Swedish housing boom in the 1960s and how it's viewed today.
An examination of the Olivetti store in Venice, Piazza San Marco -- a true icon of Italian architecture of the twentieth century restored in the 1950s by Carlo Scarpa.
The city of Ordos, in the middle of China, was build for a million people yet remains completely empty. Ordos is not so much a place but a symbol of babylonic hype. But nothing will change - as long as people believe.
The human side of town planning, as exemplified in Baltimore, Maryland. The Coldspring Project concerned a proposed housing development for lower and upper income levels on a three hundred-acre site adjoining a wildlife sanctuary. The film records the differences aired in meetings of various interest groups that tried to modify the plan according to their views, and the compromise reached, based on plans drawn up by Montréal architect Moshe Safdie.
A documentary about the concrete sections of the Berlin Wall that have been acquired by institutions or individuals since 1989 and are now scattered across the USA. Cherished or abandoned, they have become silent witnesses to recent history.
Travel through the streets of Rochester and you’ll find some extraordinary architecture. From California bungalows to English Tudors, French colonials to Victorians, the Flour City is home to so many beautiful dwellings. WXXI takes you on a private tour inside some of these exquisite house in Great Homes of Rochester.
The Eames House and Studio is explored via a series of slides.
Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect is a feature documentary film that considers many of the key architectural questions through the 70 year career of Pritzker Prize winning Irish-American architect Kevin Roche, including the relationship between architects and the public they serve. Still working at age 94, Kevin Roche is an enigma, a man with no interest in fame who refuses retirement and continually looks to the future regardless of age. Roche's architectural philosophy is that 'the responsibility of the modern architect is to create a community for a modern society' and has emphasised the importance for peoples well-being to bring nature into the buildings they inhabit. We consider the application of this philosophy in acclaimed buildings such as the Ford Foundation, Oakland Museum and at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for whom Kevin Roche was their principal architect for over 40 years.
Famed Swiss architect and artist Robert Maillart was renowned for his concrete bridges; this documentary examines the elegant design of his engineering masterpieces, which, the film argues, embrace both functionality and aesthetics. Instead of following a traditional journalistic structure, director Heinz Emigholz's spellbinding film reads more like ethereal visual poetry, allowing the beauty of Maillart's work to speak for itself.
