In that post we looked at a jacket with a horizontal slit and a short sleeved tunic dress with two oval buttons. The designs in this post represent variations along the same themes: the first image shows a tunic dress with two horizontal slits that functioned as pockets and decorative oval buttons.
The second picture shows instead a jacket with a vertical slit, slightly reminiscent of Lucio Fontana's slashed canvases. Luciani also altered the colours in these designs (the ensembles we studied in a previous post came in steel grey or honey beige) opting for a bright camellia or rhododendron fuchsia, showing that architectural details can become less rigorous and more feminine when combined with vivid shades. Have a lovely Sunday!
Archives are extremely popular at the moment. In a way the word "archive" has turned into one of the most abused terms of our times, especially when used in the context of the fashion industry. Here an archive can be a well-organised entity attached to a historically famous house where young creative directors go and steal from the past or, in the case of younger designers and brands, a pile of random boxes in a corner, grandly described as "archive". Yet there are archives with very different purposes and dimensions, as proved by director Francesca Molteni.
In her brief documentary "The Importance of the Archive" Molteni takes us on a journey through the workshop of the Renzo Piano Foundation.
Molteni provides behind the scene footage showing the models being created and stored, plus the dossiers, drafts, sketches and drawings housed in a 3,000 sq meter converted factory in Genoa, and images of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop's Genoa studio, located in Punta Nave, on a terraced plot of land.
Including 60,000 drawings and 5,000 models, Piano's archive has Leviathan-like proportions and represents the "hidden part" of the iceberg. We usually see the final buildings created by Piano, but the archive contains the research and the studies behind them, so the two entities are interconnected and one can't exist without the other.
Yet, while some materials are being sent to or coming back from exhibitions all over the world, the purpose of the pieces stored here is not being merely showcased or displayed, but inspiring new generations. According to Piano, you can't indeed survive if you don't share your creativity.
The archive is therefore conceived as a living entity, a place with a strong didactic purpose: even badly done projects and sketches are stored here in the hope that one day they will be rediscovered or re-elaborated. Besides, we all learn from our mistakes, that's why it is important for an archive to store also those projects that never turned into reality.
The stored materials are also employed by Piano to show young people how an idea can be developed. Interviewed in the documentary, the architect states that it is important to detach oneself from beautiful drawings and computer renderings, that he calls the devil, and form in your mind an idea, an imprecise hologram of what a building may look like, remembering that the practice of visiting a building yard is fundamental to become more conscious about the physical space.
A passionate fan of Jean Prouvé, Piano shares with the students visiting his Fondazione and archives some of his secrets, from being inspired by everything in your life and practice - from Brunelleschi's dome to a humble shed - to learning to talk with ordinary people and with the members of the community you're working for. He also states it is vital to preserve your freedom and humbleness (the architect emphasizes the importance of the studio as a collective of people and not of Renzo Piano himself) and keep in mind sustainability - the possibility of making wisely designed buildings that can preserve energy should indeed put fantasy and imagination in motion.
Though narrated by an excessively enthusiastic and at times irritating voice, "The Importance of the Archive", has therefore got a few interesting lessons for students of different creative disciplines. The same can be said about "Renzo Piano – The Architect of Light" by award-winning filmmaker Carlos Saura. Both the documentaries are on this weekend during the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF; until tomorrow) in New York (check out the film schedule here).
Piano's teachings in Molteni's documentary are turned into practice in Carlos Saura's film. The latter follows the development of the Botín Centre in the bay of Santander, Spain. In 2010 Renzo Piano Building Workshop was commissioned the arts and cultural centre by Fondazione Botín, from an idea of Emilio Botín, founder and chairman of Banco Santander, who died in 2014.
Located on the waterfront of Santander, the cultural centre had to open up on the sea while guaranteeing the view onto the horizon. Though excited at the prospect of being able to play with the "luz" of Santander, the beautiful light bathing the city, Piano had to take into account several issues. Skeptical residents were indeed worried about the building turning into an obstruction and ending up blocking the view.
Inspired by his love for the sea and his passion for building with light that has characterised many of his projects for art institutions and museums, Piano came up with a structure divided into two separate volumes, suspended above the sea and elevated from the ground to allow people to stroll underneath it.
The two buildings frame the horizon and offer a sense of infinite space, they are trampolines on the water and give the sensation of being suspended in the air.
In the documentary the direct account of the construction phases turns into a sort of philosophical pondering about Piano's creative process, which, he explains is a combination of poetry and technê, the result of an equation between beauty, art and craftsmanship.
The documentary is about the theory and the inspirations behind the building and the evolution of a project, but it also looks at the beauty of the construction site: Piano, who developed a passion for visiting building sites with his father as a child, reminds us that after drawing or sketching on the paper you have to look at the real location to perceive the scale of a building and follow the construction phases. For Piano, building yards have got something extraordinary and miraculous about them because, in his opinion, a construction is magical.
There's something else magical for the architect: seeing the building finished and looking at the expressions of the people gazing at it.
The centre took almost 8 years to be completed: at a certain point of the documentary Saura confesses he has fallen in love with the skeleton of the building, but, little by little, the structure is radically transformed and covered with 270,000 ceramic eyes that shine under the sun.
Incorporating suspended gangway-like promenades opening onto the sea, once finished the building looks like a vessel, a ship ready to set sail (being born in Genoa, nautical influences have always been strong in Piano's works) that embodies all the principles Piano believes in – an architect's civic duty and social purpose and the possibility of preserving poetic values, since better buildings make better people.
"The Importance of the Archive" and "Renzo Piano: The Architect of Light" tie in with the retrospective "Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings", currently on at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (until 20th January 2019). The latter looks at 16 buildings designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, including The Shard in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, designed with Richard Rogers, and current projects still in the making.
Piano mentions in "The Architect of Light" Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, reminding us that in the book Marco Polo states that even the most horrible city has a corner of happiness, serenity and harmony. Hopefully, he will manage to keep on creating such corners also in further ambitious projects like the new bridge over Genoa that should reconnect the city and regenerate the area after the tragic collapse of the Morandi bridge in August this year.
"Oko nad Prahou" (Eye Over Prague), directed by Olga Spátová and part of the ADFF programme, is a story of triumph and failure and the proof that architecture and politics often don't go well together. The documentary focuses on the story of a talented architect, Jan Kaplický and on a building that never was.
Born in 1937, Kaplický grew up in a suburb of Prague called Ořechovka and studied at the College of Applied Arts and Architecture and Design in Prague. He fled to London during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and first worked with the office of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers (1971-1973), helping to develop the design for the Centre Georges Pompidou. At the end of the '70s he joined Foster Associates, and then co-founded with his then wife Amanda Levet their practice Future Systems.
The firm developed organic forms in a futuristic style: Kaplický's sketches and drawings often featured houses that looked like survival pods from another time and dimension and structures inspired by aerospace covered in shiny and glossy surfaces. At times the architect was accused of designing neofuturist unbuildable buildings, sci-fi bubbles that couldn't have been used for living.
Perceptions changed when Future Systems became known for projects such as the Selfridges building in Birmingham, the Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground in London and the Museo Casa Enzo Ferrari in Modena, Italy, and the studio won multiple awards, including the Stirling Prize in 1999 and the RIBA Award for Architecture in 2004.
Kaplický returned to his hometown when in 2007 his project for the National Library of the Czech Republic was selected by a jury comprising the late Zaha Hadid, UNESCO urbanistic expert Irene Wiese-von Ofen, and the head of the Czech National Library, Vlastimil Ježek.
The proposal was ambitious and certainly unique: for what regarded its irregular shape the building, dubbed "The Blob", was vaguely reminiscent of an octopus or a floppy jellyfish, but it could have been interpreted also as a ghost or an alien creature with one big eye watching the city. It was going to be covered with champagne-coloured anodised aluminium tiles, a reference to the "Golden Prague", but inside it featured different shades of purple.
The ultra-modern structure would have featured a top-level viewing platform and café with a massive eye with magnificent views over Prague and comfortable reading rooms, while the books were going to be stocked underground and distributed by an automated storage and retrieval system.
It was brave, surprising and extremely controversial and could have been a great opportunity for the Czech capital, becoming the first contemporary landmark in Prague since the 18th century, adding to the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque style of the city a touch of futurism, as if aliens had landed on Letna Hill.
The building was also historically important because it was the winner of the Czech Republic's first ever international architecture tender. Kaplický and his studio were honoured about the radical project being chosen, yet, after the first initial triumph, things started to rapidly change.
The debate escalated, turning into a political issue when the Civic Democrat Mayor of Prague Pavel Bém and the President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus became hostile to the project. Locals divided with one group of people claiming the building would have ruined the landscape of the historic area of Prague, while another supported the idea of having a very modern structure built in the city (the documentary highlights how, quite often, nobody likes a new building from the start and it should be fine like that, after all, when an entire population agrees on something it means it lives in a dictatorship...).
Excuses followed, from problems with the tender to the price, and the planned building, estimated to be finished in 2011, was cancelled in 2008 when it was announced the tender process had not been carried out legally. Kaplický died in 2009, on the same day his wife Eliška Kaplický Fuchsová, gave birth to their daughter.
While the story behind "Eye Over Prague" is disappointing for its conclusion, its moral is important - believe in your ideas and fight to realise your vision.
The fight in this case was for democracy, book conservation and the freedom of the nation, as the library represented for the architect the possibility of creating a beautiful European building in a free country. Indeed, as Kaplický highlights in the film remembering Frank Lloyd Wright's lesson, democracy builds.
In the last few years video games have developed in unexpected ways: elevated to genuine works of art, they are even celebrated with dedicated museum exhibitions all over the world. It is hard to disagree with the opinion that video games are a form of art considering the visually intriguing graphics, cinematic angles and fluid movements, not to mention the details featured in some of them. Yet not all video games are re-creative tools: there are games that can help improving memory and neural connectivity or can be used as therapy to relieve stress.
But could they actually have an impact on our living conditions and the architectural environment surrounding us? "Gaming the Real World", a documentary by Anders Eklund looks at three video gaming stories with design and architecture connections.
Thanks to the location data offered by Google Maps, with unlimited and free access to buildings, roads and famous landmarks from all over the world, game developers can design complex models of cities to present players with rich and engaging landscapes. But the documentary looks at the possibility of creating a digital urban landscape that could then become real.
The video game Minecraft has been used by the Block by Block initiative launched by the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) in collaboration with Mojang, the video game makers; "City Skylines" is instead a city building video game and "Block'Hood", a design game created by architect José Sanches.
There are interesting aspects in all the stories presented: Block by Block offers even to people with basic computer skills the possibility of improving their cities by easily creating three-dimensional sketches with digital Lego-like blocks. This process allows to make suggestions for example about how a neighbourhood can change and immediately visualise them on the screen.
The possibilities offered by Block by Block have changed the UN Habitat approach: in the past a professional would maybe stand in a room and ask people questions, showing them an aerial map of a city. Yet this undemocratic strategy was not successful as people struggled to understand architectural drawings. Using the tools offered by the video game guaranteed instead higher levels of engagement with enthusiastic groups of locals of different ages, who easily built models of areas lined up for redevelopment. Block by Block has so far reached different countries all over the world, with dedicated projects in Kosovo, India, Haiti, Nigeria, Somalia, Palestine and Mexico.
The film then follows the presentation to the Stockholm city council of the regeneration of an industrial area done using "City: Skylines" and the inspirations and work behind "Block'Hood". The latter invites players to understand how environmental challenges can have an impact on designing a project, such as pollution and energy consumption, and could also be interpreted as a diagram of how the city functions.
It is exciting to see that any of us can try and plan the regeneration of densely crowded areas and make suburbs less boring while suggesting how to make streets safer and possibly adding fun recreational spaces for kids. In the case of the Block by Block project the best thing is seeing how it really managed to get entire communities involved.
There is obviously the danger - highlighted in the documentary - that digitally planned cities or simulated urban environments may not work in real life (consider how cities have complex problems going from traffic to the management of sewage systems that can't surely be tackled by simplified games), so the best approach is to use these platforms as experimental problem-solving or educational tools, while maintaining a strong link with reality.
That said, it is intriguing to think that game engines may become more used in future (bear in mind that the same video game-based approach could be used to educate people about other issues, disciplines and industries, fashion included...): will the future of cities pass through a video game and could civic gamification take the place of gentrification, maybe introducing a more democratic planning to fix our cities and create sustainable urban environments? Time will tell.
Released in 2016, "Gaming with Real Life", doesn't indeed hold all the answers, but it poses some questions and suggestions about these issues. The documentary will be screened during the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF; through 21st October) in New York (check out the film schedule here).
All those architecture and design students who feel trapped in their university courses and are starting to doubt about their academic formation, should watch two documentaries - "Enough White Teacups" and "Do More With Less".
The documentaries will be screened this week at the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF; through 21st October) that kicked off yesterday in New York (check out the film schedule here). The two films prove that it is possible to create very innovative objects and buildings when you keep one main aim in mind - improving people's lives.
Directed by Michelle Bauer Carpenter, "Enough White Teacups" moves from two points, sustainability and design, and introduces the Danish non-profit award Index: Design to Improve Life, presenting some of the nominees and winners from the previous years.
Conceived in 2002, the award is open to a wide range of projects from medical devices to tools and safety equipment and architecture. Divided in five categories - body, home, work, play and learning, and community - the projects that it usually presents are based on principles of social, economic and ecological sustainability.
There is a lot to discover in "Enough White Teacups", from the Zipline, sky ambulances that fly medical supplies to remote areas in Africa, to Paperfuge, the world's fastest object operated by hand, essentially a hand-activated centrifuge based on the oldest toy in the world, a spinning gig, that allows to separate blood from parasites without using electricity.
Some of these designers and teams were inspired by personal life experiences: discovering more plastic than underwater life during a diving session prompted Boyan Slat to come up with Ocean Clean Up, a system that allows to gather plastic using the force of marine currents; losing dear ones to anti-human landmines in Afghanistan pushed brothers Massoud and Mahmud Hassani to transform a basic wind toy into a wind powered landmine cleaner, the Mine Kafon Ball, capable of detonating hidden explosives.
Observing instead the lives of people and their immediate needs, Alejandro Aravena and his team at Elemental came with the half house, low-income housing that are only half completed, the other half can be done by the residents on their own.
There's more to discover including the Peek Retina, a portable vision screening tool that can be attached to a smartphone; MamaNatalie, a birth and neonatal simulator; the consumer awareness book PIG 05049; What3Words, a system that turns GPS coordinates into three-word addresses to allow people to be tracked and found (it has so far helped ambulances, emergency teams, relief efforts and mail deliveries), and GreenWave, a responsible crop of kelp, mussel, oyster for food and pollution farming.
Fashion seems to be missing and that's disappointing, but this means that designers in this industry will have to work not on producing the umpteenth T-shirt (an interesting follow up to this documentary may be entitled "Enough White T-shirts" and be focused only on fashion...), but on coming up with more intriguing and sustainable products.
This refreshing view of the architectural profession looks at several projects designed and made by young architectural firms and architects in Latin America.
While the projects are different they do have something in common as they try to bring a tangible change to a profession that has inexorably become linked to tenders and money, but doesn't often listen to the needs of real people and clients who may not have a lot of money to invest.
Alejandro Aravena's half house project also gets a mention in the documentary, but there's more to discover including the Casa en el Carrizal (Daniel Moreno + Sebastián Calero), the Casa en La Prosperina (Fábrica Nativa Arquitectura), the tourist Centro de Interpretación del Cacao (Taller Con Lo Que Hay 4 + ENSUSITIO Arquitectura), Torno Co.Lab (Rama Estudio), La Pesca Restaurant (Natura Futura) and Mirador en Quilotoa Shalalá (Jorge Javier Andrade Benítez + Javier Mera Luna + Daniel Moreno Flores).
The firms involved seem to be young and committed to tackling urban challenges in Latin America in their own way: getting away from corporate architecture, some of them choose to work only four days a week and have a longer weekend to keep creative and well-rested; others help clients to get a loan for their buildings or even give them the money to start the project.
All of them have a strong belief in working with local artisans and professionals, but also involve the entire local community or family members to keep costs low.
Another way to keep expenses contained is rediscovering and experimenting with local, natural or recycled materials such as adobe, bamboo, glass or wood from old factories and car tyres (using recycled elements allows these firms to avoid perpetuating the vices of the profession, such as employing only new materials).
One of the key points of the film remains showing how it is possible to build structures with very little money (the buildings created in the film go from $10,000 to $60,000, but there are also experimental structures that only cost $50 or $200) while finding alternative solutions to problems. The film also suggests that the crisis of the architectural discipline can be changed when architects become part of the community and help it building the structures.
Quite a few members of the communities interviewed in the film stated they didn't know anything about architecture or had never met an architect in their lives, but their perspective changed after they worked on specific projects and they developed an interest in the discipline.
The second part of the documentary focuses on education and on the fact that academia seems to have contributed to destroying the practice by forming the architect and deforming his role into that of a successful but passive figure.
The architects and students interviewed state that academia may provide you with the theory, but most graduates don't know how to build anything. The solution was bringing students to work on real projects and teaching them a hands-on approach they wouldn't get in an academic environment (this principle could be applied to fashion courses as well...). This allows them to take responsibility and earn how to work with different materials and techniques (one of the architects interviewed states they calculated that a year of monthly 4-day workshops can be compared to 5 years spent in a university...).
One of the interviewed students in the film came up with a studio with a blissful view over the mountains that he built as a university project together with members of his family.
The Escuela Nueva Esperanza by Ecuadorian firm Al Borde was instead a collaborative community effort inspired by a spaceship for what regards its shape, but made with local materials and levelled by local workers without any special instruments, but only taking into account the sea horizon.
The conclusion of the documentary is natural - architects shouldn't rely so much on waiting for money and funds from huge clients such as governments, but they should take things into their hands and become active players in developing their own projects also for small clients with limited budgets. In a nutshell "hacer" is the word and going beyond the surface of design to discover the genuine needs of people is the path towards the future.
Some modern documentaries about architecture can at times be grand and bombastic stories about starchitects and their achievements. There is instead a soothing quality in "Mies On Scene. Barcelona in Two Acts" by Pep Martín and Xavi Campreciós.
The documentary focuses on an iconic, idealised and idolised structure, the Barcelona Pavilion by Ludwieg Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich.
Built in 1929, the pavilion only lasted for eight months, yet it kept on inspiring further generations of architects.
Its legacy continued after it was recreated decades later in 1984, thanks to the joint effort of a team of architects (comprising also Fernando Ramos and Cristian Cirici), led by Oriol Bohigas, architect, urban planner and professor.
Through a series of interviews (with, among the others, Fritz Neumeyer, German architect, specialist in the work of Mies van der Rohe and author of the book Mies van der Rohe, the artless word; Eduardo Mendoza, Spanish writer and connoisseur of the history of Barcelona, and Xavier Rubert de Ventós, philosopher, writer and promoter of the Eu Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award), the directors try to discover the reasons why the simple structure changed the history of architecture.
The German Pavilion for the Barcelona International Exhibition of 1929 was designed at the time of the Weimar Republic with a precise aim in mind – presenting a modern country and a democratic and open society. Built in two months, the pavilion pointed at an artistic image of Germany, ruled by philosophical ideas and the art and design of the Bauhaus.
As the documentary develops we discover that the pavilion was based on simplicity, it was indeed characterised on the outside by two horizontal lines - a roof and a podium - and inside by a metal vertical structure and an open plan.
The structure features only four materials - travertine, two types of marble and onyx - each of them characterised by different textures, attached to the metal skeleton of the pavilion.
Classical and industrial materials combined with marble and reflective glass playing well with opacity and transparent dichotomies. The roof rests on steel columns and the columns carry the load, even though you don't immediately realise it, while the sculpture inside the pavilion becomes a part of the architecture, like a caryatid. The water incorporated inside the pavilion gives to it a sense of quietness and contributes to give movement to the space.
All these elements create a new modernist code inside the pavilion, calling to mind other structures such as the Seagram Building with its serene plaza (designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in collaboration with Philip Johnson and completed in 1958).
The pavilion remains a structure with a great transformative power: it seems to bring a message from another galaxy and another time and people walking through it experience an emotional perception of the space (choreographer Toni Mira did a performance in 2016 inside the pavilion).
Though the structure remains a revolutionary manifesto and an artistic statement in its modernist simplicity, it was surrounded by some controversies: Mies was not generous in acknowledging the contribution of Lilly Reich and of his other collaborators.
Researchers explain indeed that Mies was influenced by Reich for what regards the richness of colours and materials and Reich developed the interior concept and furniture for the space.
The fact that the current pavilion is also copy is also cause for further debates and discussions: though the structure was recreated following the original design and the team that rebuilt it paid attention at materials to recreate the infinite geometries and textures of its original walls (the story of the stonemason who embarked on an adventurous journey to Algeria to find the proper onyx is particularly intriguing...), some critics wonder if the building should have remained confined in the pages of a book.
In its defence it can be said that, having been recreated in Spain's post-Franco era, the pavilion ended up symbolising a new beginning for the city and an incentive for the future generations in Barcelona.
A liminal space between the past and the present, in our times Mies and Reich's building represents a perfect European combination, it is indeed a Germany pavilion, it was built in Barcelona but influenced international architects.
After featuring in the programme of the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR), "Mies on Scene" will be screened tomorrow at New York's Cinepolis during the Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF).
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks caused the collapse of the 110-story World Trade Center towers, the authorities contacted the offices of Leslie E. Robertson, the leading structural engineer behind the complex. Their hope was to study how the structures had been designed, understand the causes that had brought to their collapse and locate survivors or missing people.
This is how Basia and Leonard Myszynski's documentary "Leaning Out" - focusing on the story of the Twin Towers, from their planning to their collapse - opens.
Architect Minoru Yamasaki, better known as "Yama", who had designed the Seattle-based IBM Building, was commissioned the project. Moving from the ideas and concepts behind the IBM Building, but also bearing in mind the diagonal structure leaning on two points of the United Steelworkers Building in Pittsburgh, Yama tried to devise a skyscraper that incorporated more steel than glass.
Young engineer Leslie Robertson was selected by Worthington, Skilling, Helle, and Jackson (WSHJ) to participate in the design of the World Trade Center.
Conceived in the '60s and completed in 1971, the construction became the fulcrum of the lives of the people involved in the project.
This part of the film is extremely interesting for architecture and engineering students: the directors show indeed how the team behind the WTC examined different natural phenomena and the impact they may have had on the buildings to try and understand how the extremely tall towers may have also guaranteed a greater stability to the people moving and working inside them.
Robertson did a series of wind tunnel studies with models to research issues of elasticity, but also put people in motion simulators to see how they reacted. Dampers were eventually integrated in the structure to absorb the swept of the wind, while narrow windows delineated by structural elements around the perimeter were favoured as they offered people working in the building a heightened sense of safety thanks to the closely spaced steel pipes. Load-bearing columns were then placed around the perimeter of each building, a solution that allowed engineers to eliminate all columns within the office space.
Everything they did on the two buildings was extremely new and required so much time that planning the towers ended up having an impact on Robertson's private life and marriage and he divorced from his first wife.
When the towers were finished the WTC received a lot of negative feedback: their austere rectangular structures brutally modified the New York skyline. The towers seemed just interested in themselves and were not engaging in an architectural dialogue with the buildings around them. Yet, when, fascinated by the negative space separating the towers, high wire artist Philippe Petit decided to walk in between the towers, the public perception of the structures started changing. Petit felt indeed that the buildings were alive and soon the locals started agreeing with him, feeling that the towers may have represented an occasion of rebirth for the Lower Manhattan area.
The directors offer an interlude at this point in the film to look at Robertson's life after finishing the WTC: he married Malaysian-born engineer SawTeen See, who became his partner in life and in his firm as well, making him more sensitive to women's point of view in architecture and building, in the meantime his practice went on to develop other projects.
Basia and Leonard Myszynski offer at this point a quick insight into some of the other buildings and structures Robertson's office worked on, among them Puerta de Europa in Madrid, Spain, relying on an ingenious system that controls lateral deflections; the Sony Building in New York, the Miho Museum Bridge in Shigaraki, Japan, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland (both with I. M. Pei as architect), and the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, well-known for its sword-shaped silhouette made more futuristic and less threatening by its supporting horizontal sequence of diamonds.
The documentary then reshifts the attention on the WTC: a bomb detonated in the basement of the North Tower in 1993, representing a first cause of major worries for Robertson, but 9/11 was an entirely different situation and caused a major trauma in his life.
While his wife and team watched what was happening from their offices located a few blocks from the Twin Towers, Robertson was following the events on a TV screen in Hong Kong.
In 1945 a B-25 crashed into the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth floors of the Empire State Building, killing fourteen people, so while working on the WTC, Robertson had considered what may have happened if a building had been hit by a plane, but he designed the towers to withstand a Boeing 707 and not two fully-fuelled 767s travelling at hundreds of miles an hour.
Via archival images, footage and interviews, the directors attempt a reconstruction of what happened: the plane hit a number of external columns, the gravity loads were redistributed, but jet-fuel fires spread through, affecting the steel that rapidly lost its strength. The buildings couldn't stand the load anymore and collapsed, killing 2,754 people.
Robertson lost his joy after the Twin Towers collapsed: known for his humanity, his commitment to pacifism and organising marches for the abolition of nuclear warfare, he was deeply shaken, devastated and traumatised by the event, and started feeling guilty and responsible for what had happened, wondering if he may have saved more people.
As investigations proceeded it was eventually proved that the way the towers had been built gave enough time to people to safely evacuate the buildings.
Though the towers destruction felt like losing a child for Robertson, the engineer, who turned 90 this year, managed to find his strength back.
Inspired by one of the principles he applied to some of the structures he worked - leaning out (if you're climbing and you lean in you easily slip and fall, but if you lean out you drive your feet into the rock and your hands are in tension, so you can hold on) - he went on to work on further projects, including the Shanghai World Financial Center and Seoul's Lotte World Tower, one of the ten tallest buildings in the world.
"Leaning Out" is not your average film about a starchitect, but it is an investigation with a human dimension, exploring not just structural engineeering, but looking at the work of a man whose life seems suspended between art and science and whose life story went from triumph through trauma to resilience.
Though the documentary focuses on the Twin Towers, it also indirectly points at other similar tragedies (think about the Morandi Bridge in Genoa and how the structure based on a revolutionary system that was supposed to represent the Italian boom when it was built, ended up causing death and devastation in August this year), becoming a call for the public to pay more attention and get more interested in the architectures surrounding us rather than waiting until a building collapses or is destroyed by a major disaster. So while the film is centred on an iconic project, it looks at the lessons you may learn from life.
Produced by the American Institute of Steel Construction, "Leaning Out" premieres at the Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF), in New York, running from 16th to 21st October.
Curated by founder and director Kyle Bergman, the event, currently in its tenth year, will include this year over 30 feature-length and short films, two world premieres and two U.S. premieres.
"Leaning Out" will be screened at the SVA Theatre and will be followed by a reception at the Cinépolis Chelsea, with two special guests - Leslie E. Robertson and SawTeen See.
Image credits for this post
1. "Leaning Out" Poster
2. Young Leslie Robertson with WTC sketch. Courtesy Leslie Robertson
There is always a lot of talk about architectural styles in fashion and at times the most complicated and conceptual designs are described with this adjective. Yet, quite often, the best architectural styles are the simplest as proved by these designs from 1960 by Mario Luciani (Italian journalist Irene Brin used to collaborate with him and with Giovanni Battista "Bista" Giorgini in the early days of Italian fashion shows).
The first ensemble included in this post came in wool shantung or silk and wool (so fabrics that were soft but at the same time still had some structure) in steel grey and consisted in a jacket and a dress.
The jacket had an almost traditional silhouette and was characterised by two distanced functional and decorative oval buttons. A horizontal slit added a minimalist dynamic to the garment. The same architectural motif was repeated in the matching dress that had an oblique fastening with a single oval button and a fabric belt around the waist.
The second design was a "fake skirt suit": this was indeed a wool jersey dress in a dark grey shade that incorporated a straight skirt with a cropped top slightly detached from the body but anchored to the skirt with two buttons.
The third design is probably the most interesting: it is a short sleeved Shetland wool honey tunic dress with a wide boat neck and a profiled silhouette that created a sense of movement on the front, punctuated by two decorative oval buttons. The dress was matched in this image with a black leather handbag decorated with a minimalist slit and a button that called to mind the horizontal slit in the jacket of the first ensemble included in this post. Have an architectural Sunday!
Image is everything nowadays, but this statement is even more true when it refers to fashion. The industry has always thrived on iconic, dreamy, powerful, strong and unusual shoots created by famous photographers and published on glossy magazines.
The Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum in Getaria, Spain, looked in previous exhibitions at the power of images and at their impact on fashion: last year for example the museum analysed during special workshops and exhibitions the influence of José Ortiz Echagüe's photographs of Spanish popular events on Balenciaga and his Haute Couture collections.
A recently launched event - "Distinción: A Century of Fashion Photography" (until 27th January 2019) - looks instead at the images created by influential photographers on the Spanish national scene over the last 100 years.
Produced in collaboration with the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona (Barcelona Museum of Design), the event includes rarely seen images from the fashion photography collection of the Catalonian institution.
Through the 107 images taken by 37 photographers in Catalonia and Spain, curators invite visitors to wonder if there are any common features between different photographers, if fashion photography has evolved and why it keeps on fascinating us.
Curator Juan Naranjo interprets the title of the event - "Distinction"- in a dichotomic way, referring to differences and constrasts, but also to elegance and a form of excellence that sets someone or something apart from others.
The event develops in a chronological order and it is divided in seven sections: the origins of fashion photography are presented via the works of Pere Casas Abarca, a Modernista who experimented with photography in the field of advertising.
His images call to mind photographs by Mariano Fortuny: Casas Abarca was indeed influenced by allegorical, mythological and exotic themes and was a representative of Pictorialism, the first ever photographic artistic movement which advocated a style of photography that imitated painting at the turn of the 20th century.
As the years passed, Spain started developing its own visual language, also thanks to magazines D'Ací i D'Allà, Tricornio, Las cuatro estaciones and Imatges and Ford.
The images produced around this period of time and included in the section of the exhibition entitled "New Vision" had two main aims - illustrating articles that presented new trends when it came to Spanish couturiers and advertising their work.
Among this first generation of Spanish fashion photographers that emerged during this period, there was also Ramón Batlles who destabilised in his images the more conventional symmetries, taking his shots from unusual points of view.
The arrival on the fashion scene of the magazine Alta Costura (Barcelona 1943-1969), the first major fashion publication that showcased fashion photography in Spain, introduced new ideals and hopes.
During the long post-war period photographers presented a seductive woman at times inspired by Hollywood stars, portrayed in refined interiors or urban settings.
Dior's New Look triumphed in these images, but Oriol Maspons and Juan Gyenes also took images of models in sculptural gowns by Spanish designers Saint Eulalia and Rosina.
The '60s brought on the scene counter-cultural groups, Pop Art, Mods and hippies, radical debates and social revolutions and photographers started to introduce in their static images a sense of movement with models in dynamic poses and gestures.
One of the many examples in this section is a picture of a model shot by Juana Biarnés twirling in a dress by Miguel Rueda.
Biarnés is an important figure as she worked her way in a man's world and had to confront in her life many prejudices. She was very determined, though, and ended up developing important photojournalism series like the ones focused on pearl fishers in Japan and on the women connected with Pancho Villa in Mexico.
Extravagant fashion narratives and manipulated, simulated and recreated stories prevail instead in "Stagings and Fantasies", a more modern section that combines film and literature with a Surrealist magic (check out Eugenio Recuenco's Tim Walker-inspired "Cinderella" Haute Couture shoot) or futuristic aesthetic, introducing also provocative and erotic fantasies courtesy of Txema Yeste.
Portraits in the past were a sign of status and power, but things changed more recently: new trends and social movements have prompted photographers and fashion to look at identity and differences and celebrate them, breaking all sorts of conventions and boundaries, from class and sex to age and religion.
Images included in the "Identity and Difference" section go from Bèla Adler & Salvador Fresneda's to Enric Galcerán photographs taken in Bali that, featuring models posing among real people in urban environments, act as a sort of link between this part of the exhibition and the very last one - "Landscapes".
The latter takes visitors on a journey through urban or natural landscapes, on a trip through real or fictional architectures, from densely populated areas with skyscrapers in the backgrounds to desolate untamed, wild and barren spaces in which natural elements such as water or rocks prevail.
Though the images are divided in these even themes, it is not difficult to spot here and there some unifying elements and links between different eras, artistic vanguards and currents of thought that prompted social changes in each period and inspired the various photographers (seduction, provocation and glamour are indeed common themes in some of these shoots).
There is a further point of "distinction" between this exhibition and other ones about photography and fashion images: the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum values the importance of images and, to allow all visitors to enjoy this event, it has devised a programme for people with special needs.
Visitors with visual functional diversity will be able to enjoy the exhibition content thanks to a series of services and resources incorporated in the exhibition content - from laminated flyers in relief and braille to audio-descriptions and accessible guided tours. After all, fashion is at its best when it speaks the language of diversity and inclusion and reaches out to all sorts of people.
Image credits for this post
1. and 2. Pere Casas Abarca (1875-1958) 1902-1903 Silver gelatin on baryta paper, printed in 1902-1903
3. Juan Gyenes 1940-1950
4. Ramón Batlles (1901-1983) Barcelona, 1934 El Dique Flotante collection Silver gelatin on baryta paper, printed in 1934
5. Oriol Maspons (1928-2013) Barcelona, 1956 Dress by Saint Eulalia Silver gelatin on baryta paper, printed in 2012
6. Oriol Maspons (1928-2013) Barcelona, 1966 Pertegaz collection Silver gelatin on baryta paper, printed in 2012
7. Antoni Bernad (1944) Barcelona,1968 Lambda on baryta paper, printed in 2012
8. Juana Biarnés (1935) Madrid, 1960-1970 Dress by Miguel Rueda Silver gelatin on baryta paper, printed in 1960-1970
9. Eugenio Recuenco (1968) Cinderella, 2005 Giclée on UltraSmooth Fine Art cotton paper, printed in 2012
10. Txema Yeste (1972) There Somewhere Delta del Ebro, 2011 Giclée on Photo Rag Baryta paper, printed in 2012
11. Bèla Adler & Salvador Fresneda (1959 and 1957) Barcelona, 2009 Giclée on Photo Rag paper, printed in 2012
12. Enric Galceran (1973) Bali, 2006 Giclée on Fine Art Baryta paper, printed in 2013
13. Manuel Outumuro (1949) Tokyo, 1995 Giclée on Fine Art paper, printed in 2010
The use of tortoiseshell dates back to ancient Greece when musical instruments such as the chelys or lyre were often made using an entire carapace. Veneers of tortoiseshell also became popular in Roman times for furniture.
Following Oriental custom in the Middle Ages tortoiseshell started being employed as a material to enrich the work upon ivory caskets. As the time passed, though, artisans became more experimental and started softening the material to make with it objects going from tables to vases, caskets, boxes and other assorted utensils.
Little by little, tortoiseshell started being considered as a material that could be incorporated into precious works. The material became particularly fashionable in the 17th century: Neapolitan craftsmen became well-known for creating unique pieces with it and the art reached its highest point in 17th and 18th centuries in France.
Artisans would inlay a mass of gold in the tortoiseshell to create figures, monuments and floral motifs. Then there was the "piqué" phase that consisted in inserting golden or silver pins into the shell to form patterns representing leaves, flowers and foliage. By altering the positions of the pins, light and shadow effects could also be created, and the master artisans could come up with intricate scenes, designs and arabesques. Combs and boxes were often decorated with these motifs and, during the 19th century, piqué was widely employed for small tortoiseshell jewelry.
An exhibition currently on at Galerie J. Kugel (25 Quai Anatole France) in Paris celebrates this little known art. "Piqué: Gold, Tortoiseshell and Mother-of-Pearl at the Court of Naples" (until 8th December 2018) features over 50 objects - from small ones such as snuffboxes, inkwells, platters, ewers, mirrors, vases, chess boards, walking-cane handles and cabinets to larger pieces.
The highlight of the exhibition is a table made between 1730 and 1740 by Neapolitan Giuseppe Sarao - the ultimate masterpiece made using this technique (on loan from the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg).
The pieces on display at the Kugel were created between 1720 and 1760 for connoisseurs and the court, and in particular for Charles of Bourbon, the younger son of Philip V of Spain who, in 1734, became king of Naples. Here the artisans working with tortoiseshell were called "tartarugari".
Tortoiseshell was used for veneering on cabinets and other objects already in the mid-17th century in Naples, a city that had also refined the art of mother-of-pearl marquetry on tortoiseshell. But it was the unprecedented combination of gold, tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl that took the art to a new level (in France André Charles Boulle, cabinetmaker to Louis XIV perfected this art).
The talented "tartarugari" would join and mould the tortoiseshell using boiling water and olive oil, and inlay gold and mother-of-pearl into the still-soft tortoiseshell. In this way they created the most extravagant shapes, which they adorned with "piqué" decors such as singeries (scenes where monkeys engage in human activities), chinoiseries, humorous and grotesque stories and architectural scenes.
This art was considered as a virtuoso skill and Sarao became the most famous tartarugaro, owning a workshop located next to the royal palace. The table is not the only piece made by him included in the exhibition, but it remains the most iconic as it featured an inventive and elaborate top decorated with over a hundred chinoiserie figures, plus animals, insects, birds and dragons.
Six main medallions depict Chinese couples in gold and mother-of-pearl, while the compartments are decorated with small Chinese figures made of cut out and engraved gold.
The centre is adorned with a small cartouche in which two Chinamen rock back and forth on a seesaw and the four gold vases around them symbolise the seasons.
Underneath the medallion with the Chinese couple there is the monogramme "GS FN", which stands for "Giuseppe Sarao Fecit Napoli" (Sarao made it in Naples; interestingly enough also his son, Gennaro, had the same initials, but the two can be distinguished from their style).
The court of Charles of Bourbon was among the most splendid and cosmopolitan in all of Europe. During his reign Charles brought to Naples craftspeople from different places, founding the porcelain factory of Capodimonte and installing workers from Dresden there. The king also invited Florentine weavers and opened studios for the making of furniture, gold- and silver-smiths work and hardstone carving.
When he became King of Spain, Charles took his craftspeople with him, weakening the arts in Naples, but the piqué workers remained and went on creating unique pieces till tastes changed in the 18th century.
The work of the tartarugari was eventually rediscovered by collectors during the Second Empire and interest in this art returned again in the 19th century (among the collectors of these pieces there were several members of the Rothschild family), but the main point of the exhibition at Galerie Kugel is to highlight how there was the same level of craft in all the pieces on display, from the smallest to the largest (compare Sarao's table and the cutlery handles by craftsman Tomaso Tagliaferro and you will easily spot the same technical skills).
The pieces in this exhibit are extremely unique as piqué is now a lost art and craft: the trade of tortoiseshell worldwide was banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1973, and the material is often recreated in stained horn, cellulose acetate and other plastic based materials and synthetic substitutes such as Tortoloid and Tor-tis. Yet studying the technique and the details in the pieces in this exhibition may help a younger generation of creatives to come up with other innovative decorative processes. The event "Piqué" seems to be also on trend with the current interest in genuine craftsmanship and in exhibitions rediscovering artisanal techniques.