architecture
The Brutalist review - we're building to somethingThursday, 23 January 2025
There’s a moment, as we build to a climax in Brady Corbet’s first film, The Childhood of a Leader (2015), when a servant at a grand house unwittingly nudges a candle into the path of a dangling curtain pull. The tassel ignites, unseen by gathering... Read more... |
Megalopolis review - magic from cinema's dawnMonday, 30 September 2024
“What happens if you’ve overstepped your mandate?” aristocrat-architect Cesar Catalin (Adam Driver) is asked. “I’ll apologise,” he smirks. Francis Ford Coppola’s forty years in the making, self-financed epic is studded with such self-implicating... Read more... |
Charles Saumarez Smith: The Art Museum In Modern Times review – the story of modern architectureThursday, 25 March 2021
“This book is a journey of historical discovery, set out sequentially in order to convey a sense of what has changed over time.” Add to this sentence, the title of the work from which it is taken, The Art Museum in Modern Times, and you’ll probably... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Visual AcousticsTuesday, 29 December 2020
One of the world’s leading architectural photographers, Julius Shulman was the subject of a show at London’s Photographers’ Gallery this autumn, “Altered States of America”. That title surely alluded to the visual modernism that changed the face of... Read more... |
Rebuilding Notre-Dame: Inside the Great Cathedral Rescue, BBC Four review - a race against timeThursday, 16 April 2020
One year on the world is drastically altered, but footage of Notre Dame’s stricken spire collapsing in flames is no less shocking. That this event, endlessly replayed, has not paled against the new reality of daily death tolls is testament to the... Read more... |
10 Questions for Irina NalisThursday, 19 March 2020
Normally we'd put a descriptor - "cellist", "film maker", "techno producer" for example - in the title of this interview, but for Irina Nalis there isn't space. Like, "10 Questions for psychologist, ministerial adviser, festival founder,... Read more... |
Bauhaus 100, BBC Four review - a well-made film about the makersThursday, 22 August 2019
The Bauhaus school and its subsequent influence make an extraordinary story, and this film by Mat Whitecross, which has assembled a whole range of different voices and perspectives and woven them together, told it well.As a school, the Bauhaus... Read more... |
My Enemy's Cherry Tree: Wang Ting-Kuo review - a masterpiece from TaiwanSunday, 07 April 2019
Early every evening, Miss Baixiu comes to sit in an isolated café. She is the daughter of Luo Yiming, the respected employee of a successful commercial bank in charge of loans throughout central Taiwan. As a rich man, an aesthete and a... Read more... |
Pitzhanger Manor review - letting the light back inTuesday, 02 April 2019
When in 1800 the architect Sir John Soane bought Pitzhanger Manor for £4,500, he did so under the spell of optimism, energy and hope. The son of a bricklayer, Soane had – through a combination of talent, hard work and luck – risen through... Read more... |
Fiona MacCarthy: Walter Gropius review - a master of modernismSunday, 10 March 2019
The centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus (literally, “Building House”) art school is on us, prompting publications and exhibitions worldwide. Subtitled “Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus”, Fiona MacCarthy’s revelatory biography of the figure... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: ColumbusTuesday, 27 November 2018
The director of this deeply charming debut feature is the Korean-American film critic who writes under the pseudonym Kogonada; one of his principle interests over the years has been the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, and there’s something of... Read more... |
Lost Treasures of Strawberry Hill review - a brave attempt to recreate an important collectionSaturday, 27 October 2018
It took 24 days to sell off the 4,000 items which Horace Walpole had amassed during 50 years of avid collecting. He bought a modest property beside the Thames in Twickenham in 1749 and, by 1790, had extended and transformed it into a fairy tale... Read more... |
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