Making a mountain
“Wilkommen, bienvenue” the CEO sang in 2011 when BIG won the architecture competition for a large waste-to-energy plant with a ski slope on top. A camera has followed the process since the tentative beginnings of what became known –from the very first sod cut –as a visionary project that combines waste management and infrastructure with spectacular architecture and a recreational urban space. But it is going to be an uphill struggle…
Richard Leplastrier: Framing the View
Richard Leplastrier is regarded as one of Australia’s finest architects, yet he’s anything but a household name. Shunning the limelight, he tucks himself away in his one-room home in a remote estuary north of Sydney — reachable only by boat. Leplastrier is the architect’s architect, refusing to become a ‘starchitect’. And while he designs beautifully crafted houses for his clients, his own lifestyle is closer to camping.
Americaville
Hidden among the mountains north of Beijing, a Wild West themed community promises to deliver the American dream to its several thousand Chinese residents. Annie Liu escapes China’s increasingly uninhabitable capital city to pursue happiness, romance, and spiritual fulfillment in the town; only to find the American idyll harder to attain than what was promised to her.
Bergamo, Sun, Kasbah, Chicken Coops and Flowered Terraces
Bergamo. The condominiums “Terrazze fiorite” and “Bergamo Sole” (architects Giuseppe Gambirasio and Giorgio Zenoni, 1976), harshly opposed at first, are today among themost desirable residences in town. The buildings are the subject of a lively film research project.
Once the Dust Settles
Amatrice was destroyed in an earthquake in 2016, Chernobyl was the location of the infamous nuclear meltdown in 1985, while Aleppo was considered to be the most beautiful city in Syria before it was destroyed in the war. Local tour guides talk about how tourism has subsequently allowed them to find meaning in their lives, and to dream of rebuilding their cities.
Experimental City
In the year of “Solstice” we return to Chad Freidrichs’ movie, in which many of the challanges we are facing today, have been concretized in an American utopia from the 60′. The Experimental City is a documentary about the Minnesota Experimental City project, a futuristic attempt to solve urban problems by creating a full-size city from scratch in the isolated woods of northern Minnesota.