Architecture

Part 36 in Heinz Emigholz’s Photography and beyond series, Ecce Mole contrasts two buildings designed by Italian architect Alessandro Antonelli (1798–1888) in Turin, located 500m apart: the private residence Casa Scaccabarozzi, more commonly known as the Fetta di Polenta (1840), and the Mole Antonelliana (1889). The Mole was initially intended to serve as a synagogue but was acquired by the city before its completion and became a monument to national unity, and ultimately the symbol of Turin. Dominating the city’s skyline, it remains the tallest unreinforced brick building in the world at 167.5m. Since 2000 the Mole has housed the National Museum of Cinema (Museo Nazionale del Cinema). 

Under Tomorrow's Sky follows renowned architect Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV, whose work argues for transforming cities with “high rises on a human scale,” stacked structural volumes with open spaces and greenery around them that feel like vertical villages. This inspiring documentary shows Maas’ influence on contemporary architecture, and examines how his designs are offering innovative solutions for the city of the future.

Universal Studios in Florida, a Hilton Hotel in Dallas, Museum of World Treasures in Kansas, and private homes in the Hollywood Hills are just some of the places that slabs of the Berlin wall have ended up on display. From coast to coast, The American Sector documents the present remnants of the wall’s architecture while evoking the past with home video footage, offering a new perspective on history, what we ascribe to it, and how easily it is scattered.

The chronic shortage of housing in Central Havana has pushed the city upwards forcing some to make their homes on building rooftops. This wondrous documentary tells the story of these remarkable and resilient rooftop dwellers - a secret village, hidden from the clamor of the streets below - who have a privileged point of view on a society in the process of major transformation.

Between 1958 and 1960 Walter Hess and Manny Kirchheimer shot black and white 16mm film from Wall Street to midtown New York to the Delaware River. The footage was left unedited. Nearly 60 later, Kirchheimer took up the challenge of editing it, adding music and sound that would mesh with the surrealism of the material. The result is a dynamic and compact symphony of a city.

A director speaks at length to a psychoanalyst, confiding his obsessions, fears, ideas about cinema, and creative blocks. Based on his own six-day psychoanalytic treatment with trauma specialist Zohar Rubinstein, Heinz Emigholz’s latest masterwork is a demonstration of his singular working methods, and a playful, moving treatise on trauma and architecture.

In the late 1950s, a large American-Swedish company established a mining operation in the remote highlands of Liberia and built a sprawling, modernist city, a “true America,” for its employees and their families. Today, all that remain are abandoned buildings and empty pools. Exactly what happened involves mythical beasts, the environment, the promise of industrialization, and the last remnants of colonialism.

Filmed over the course of five years, The Area is a panoramic documentary about a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, home to more than 400 African-American families, that is being displaced by the Norfolk Southern railroad company. It is a complex story of economic revitalization, commercial interests, and community rights.

Born in 1917 in Uruguay, Eladio Dieste created industrial and agrarian works, public infrastructure and commercial buildings whose unique and innovative design, a melding of architecture and engineering, elevated these often humble buildings to masterworks of art. Directed by Heinz Emigholz, this audacious documentary presents twenty-nine of Dieste's buildings.

Both biography and cultural commentary, Perret tells the story of architectural pioneer Auguste Perret, whose groundbreaking works in two countries are mired in their volatile histories, including Parisian buildings destroyed (and later rebuilt) during WWII. Directed by Heinz Emigholz, this visually stunning documentary presents thirty of Perret's buildings.

One of the most inventive and iconoclastic American architects, Bruce Goff’s work, which comprised mostly churches and private homes, combined the harmony of nature with the innovation of modern construction. Directed by Heinz Emigholz, Goff in the Desert presents sixty-two buildings by Goff, who was never formally educated as an architect.

After returning from Vietnam, Paul bought a mobile home for his family. Unhappy with its construction, he decided to build his own house around it. 38 years, 4 floors and 100 windows later, Paul is nearly finished.

The utopian dream of public housing is explored in this incandescent, artful documentary.