Directors who set upon shooting films about architecture often end up focusing on buildings, drawings, documents, blueprints and photographs. But Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine usually approach their subjects from an unconventional point of view and in a refreshing way, as proved also by their first work, "Koolhaas Houselife" (2008) , discovering the house in Bordeaux, designed by Rem Koolhaas / OMA through the stories and daily chores of Guadalupe Acedo, the housekeeper.
Their latest documentary, "Tokyo Ride", is a journey with Japanese architect Ryūe Nishizawa, co-founder of the SANAA architectural firm with Kazuyo Sejima (the acronym stands for "Sejima and Nishizawa and Associates").
The peculiar thing about the documentary is its format: rather than doing a conventional interview with Nishizawa, the directors jump in his car, his iconic vintage Alfa Romeo Giulia 2000 GT Veloce, for a trip through Tokyo. The journey took place on 25th April 2019, the only rainy and foggy day in an otherwise rather warm season, and the trip starts at 9.00 am with a visit at a temple.
Then follows mystery destination - Sejima's house - where we learn more about the division of spaces in this building designed by Nishizawa with an ample patio area, but we also discover more about their professional contrasts, especially while Nishizawa was working on Sejima's house, and the fact that they have left all the fighting and quarrelling about projects behind them as they grew older.
Viewers are also invited to SANAA's studio, located in a warehouse in the Tatsumi area of the city, a space filled with work stations, partitioned by free-standing shelves stacked with books and magazines.
As the journey continues we discover Nishizawa's process behind designing a house, that dreaming phase in which he imagines how a kitchen or a bedroom will be used and his thoughts about the longest projects he will ever work on - his own house.
Nishizawa's beloved Giulia becomes a living room on wheels: in the car he talks to Bêka and Lemoine about his admiration for architects such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Oscar Niemeyer, his views about European and Japanese culture and Kenzo Tange's Yoyogi National Gymnasium.
Around them Tokyo is in constant transformation, a mutable city of canals now criss-crossed by the elevated highway, a jungle that grows constantly: Nishizawa talks about the passion Japan seems to have for new things, opposed to the "architecture of addition" in Europe where new things are built on old things, creating in this way monumental cities.
There is a final destination in the film - Nishizawa's Moriyama House (2002-2005) - a structure that could be defined as an experiment in semi-communal living, located in a part of Tokyo that still preserves a traditional Japanese atmosphere.
The project became well-known among architecture and design fans for being rather peculiar and throughout the years it achieved a cult status: it comprises indeed ten units rather than one house, scattered on one level. Each unit is similar to the next one, yet different in its configuration.
Made of thin sheets of steel and painted in white, the units never touch: five of them are mini-houses with kitchens and bathrooms, others function as single rooms and the owner decides which ones he can use and which ones he can rent. In this way the house owner enjoys various spaces and lifestyles. The project radically transformed the life of its owner blurring the line between solitude and togetherness (a very relevant theme in our times marked by lockdowns and social distancing due to Covid-19).
Nishizawa's moody Giulia has a key role in this documentary shot in black and white (a tribute to Japanese directors Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujirō Ozu): like the motorcycle in André Pieyre de Mandiargues' La Motocyclette (The Girl on the Motorcycle, 1963) or the car in Dino Risi's Il sorpasso (The Easy Life, 1962), Nishizawa's car is a "psychogeographical" element and has one specific function, that of moving the characters in space or moving them through past memories, present impressions and future intuitions.
The architect is passionate about Italian cars that he conceives as biological machines, almost like creatures with a mechanical heart (as opposed to German cars, industrial and cold, or to Japanese cars, that he defines "electricity" and "computer"). It would be interesting to see what Nishizawa may come up with if he ever redesigned for Alfa Romeo a new Giulia.
So, rather than being your usual documentary about architecture (you may not learn a lot about specific buildings, materials, dates of constructions or even about SANAA's practice while watching this film), "Tokyo Ride" is an engaging road movie, especially because Nishizawa and his Giulia are a formidable couple.
"Tokyo Ride" won the Artistic Vision Award, Depth of Field Competition at the Docaviv Film Festival, 2020 and the Best Prize at the Milano Design Film Festival, MDFF 2020. It will be available to watch online from December 2020, while architecture and design fans based in the U.S. and Canada will be able to enjoy it during the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF: 2020). Due to Coronavirus the festival was rescheduled online and it is now possible to watch the 17 films part of the virtual programme until December 3 (tickets for individual films and all-access passes are on sale at this link).
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