week 12 FILMS ABOUT ARCHITECTS

Nancy Levinson, in the chapter "Tall Buildings, Tall Tales: on Architects in the Movies" from her book Architecture and Film, discusses the portrayal of fictional American architects in film and illuminates how our perceptions of architects as people and of the profession itself have been shaped by the medium of film.  In this very enjoyable reading - I found particular lines to be exceedingly funny - Levinson analyzes a hodge-podge of films from the 1940s thru the late 1990s which include Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), The Fountainhead (1949), Twelve Angry Men (1958), Strangers When We Meet (1960), Two for the Road (1966), The Towering Inferno (1974), Deathwish (1974), Hannah and Her Sisters (1987), The Belly of an Architect (1987), Three Men and a Baby (1987), Mystic Pizza (1988), Jungle Fever (1991), Housesitter (1992), Fearless (1993), Indecent Proposal (1993), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Intersection (1994), The River Wild (1994), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995),  Losing Isaiah (1995), and One Fine Day (1996).  The resulting conclusions are that most of these films portray architects with an element of "silliness" in that the architects in the film do not reflect in their speech, their lifestyle, or their practice, that which most real architects would consider to be accurate.  Instead, these films present a dream reality which "capture the mystique of architecture, that heady mix of high-minded purpose and glamorous lifestyle, of the social weight of business and the romantic aura of art." (p 26)  They dwell on themes of the architect-as-messiah and the libidinous architect - the idea of the ego-driven architect who needs to constantly be producing their own creations.

As a contrast to the portrayal of fictional architects, we also watched a couple of documentaries that focus on real (albeit famous, and thus not the norm) architects. These films were My Architect: A Son's Journey (2003), Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005), and Citizen Architect (2010).

My Architect is the story of Louis Kahn's son, Nathaniel, and his search to discover the true nature of his father since Kahn died when Nathaniel was only eleven years old. Since all he has left of Kahn are the buildings he made, he embarks on this investigation with actually a very simple formula for making a film.  In a chronological order, he began to film his father's buildings while simultaneously collecting interviews from people who have been impacted by the buildings and/or have been impacted by relationships with Kahn personally.  The end result of this simple formula is a complex and fair portrayal of Kahn's life and the motives that drove him to be such a revered master within architecture. The other major result of the film is a beautiful picture of architecture itself. Kahn's buildings, with their stringent geometry and monolithic nature, are extremely photographic and Nathaniel eloquently captures their dynamic power with still shots, slow interior pans and time lapses which highlight the element of the timelessness that Kahn's buildings are so famous for. Vincent Scully (incidentally referenced in Levinson's book for his "exasperated" musings on the merits and influences of Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead during his participation in a 1992 discussion panel of distinguished architectural critics) was Nathaniel's Art History Professor at Yale and colleague of Kahn's.  He commented that Kahn, "from the very beginning he was after symmetry, order, geometric clarity, primitive power, enormous weight - as much as he could get...enduring monuments...materials that will last which is an enduring work in the world - that's what he's after." At the end of the film an architect, Doshi, who assisted Kahn on his final project in Bangladesh says that "if you go into silence, you will hear him."  I think the true gem of this film is that is that it shows how as a medium, film is particularly adept at producing a space of silence and focus in which viewers can realize an intangible, emotional relationship with the primitive power that architecture has.


Sketches of Frank Gehry was directed by Sydney Pollack a filmmaker and personal friend of Gehry's.  I actually love quite a few of Sydney Pollack's films - Out of Africa, The Firm, the remake of the Audrey Hepburn classic Sabrina, and Tootsie. As a narrative filmmaker, Pollack is very skillful at creating multi-dimensional and loveable characters.  Sketches - Pollack's one and only documentary - can be criticized for showing Gehry and by deduction, all architects in a fairly one-dimensional and disconnected context. Gehry's relationship to architecture is almost purely aesthetic and sculptural. We see him designing in a very whimsical and un-academic way that almost seems to over-simplify the job of architect.  Maybe documentaries are not Pollack's forte but I do however, enjoy certain aspects of the film. I always find it illuminating to gain better understanding of an architect's process. Gehry's process - whimsical and un-academic as it may be - is still very interesting as we see him producing ideas from artistic impulses. Also, Gehry's buildings are really loved by a great many people and the film does a good job of capturing the attraction people have to them. In contrast to how Kahn's very orthogonal masterpieces were shown in My Architect, Pollack shows Gehry's curvilinear work with abstract shots and more frenetic editing, maybe trying to capture the looseness of Gehry's process as well as trying to show the montage of experience that occurs when interacting with a Gehry building.

So far we have seen that both fictional movies about architects and documentaries about famous architects paint a pretty unrealistic and disconnected picture about how the profession actually functions and how it can serve the public.

Citizen Architect is the story of Samuel Mockbee's creation of the idea of Rural Studio at Auburn University and the lasting effect that idea has had even after Mockbee's death in 2001. I saw the film screened at the Museum of the Rockies with a Q & A session afterwards with the filmmaker Samuel Wainwright Douglas, Mockbee's daughter Sarah Ann who is deputy director at the Austin Film Society and was a producer on the film, and a member of the first Rural Studio, Ashley Sullivan who is now the partner at local firm in Bozeman. The great thing about this film was that it shows a side of architecture that historically has not had much public presence but is increasingly gaining steam, partly as an impact of Mockbee's work and of this film. Mockbee's idea of building structures for members of the public who desperately need them is an attempt to break the public disconnect that plagues the profession and establish a new perception of the role that architects can have in our society. Despite Mockbee's down- to-earth approach and successful connection with the public, this film still isn't an accurate representation of what everyday architects do since his strategy is so unique. It would be interesting to make a documentary that specifically shows what it is like to work as an average architect with the goal of demystifying the public perception and hopefully revealing the role of an architect within a community in a positive light.