A new exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art reconsiders urban renewal in Pittsburgh — and America. Aerial view of Pittsburgh, 1954. After years of combating its soot-covered-metropolis-on-the-skids image, Pittsburgh is on the march. It has remade itself from a smoky blue-collar steel town into a green white-collar information hub that lures tech companies like Google and Uber. The resurgent Pittsburgh was named America’s most livable city last year by the Economist, and, for the first time in decades, it’s a place people go to by choice rather than necessity. But this isn’t Pittsburgh’s first rebrand. From the early 1950s
A new PBS documentary explores Frank Lloyd Wright’s little-known architectural photographer. The best architecture photographers use light and perspective to elevate what could be static images into single-frame movies, documenting places as organisms full of verve, mystery, and life. Ezra Stoller might be the first name in the architectural photography conversation, but PBS’ American Masters series makes a strong case that it should be Pedro E. Guerrero. The inspiring, albeit limited, 60-minute documentary profile Pedro E. Guerrero: A Photographer’s Journey, which aired Friday, September 18 and can be viewed online at PBS.org, introduces us to a photographer who deserves far
In recent years, Pittsburgh has become the envy of the Rust Belt. After years of hard work, the city shed its grimy, “Hell with the lid off” image and recast itself as one of America’s most livable (and attractive) cities. Today it’s a midwestern tech hub, a center of higher education, and a national health care leader. Drive 15 miles east of downtown and the story is grimmer. In the small town of Braddock, once a thriving community of laborers and immigrants manning some of the most important mills in the country, there’s no end in sight to the city’s
Contentious museum redesigns have become commonplace lately, from Diller Scofidio + Renfro's plans for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to Peter Zumthor's divisive proposal for a new LACMA superstructure. But as the documentary The New Rijksmuseum: Years of Metamorphosis shows, it's not a problem confined to the United States. The film, which opened in Los Angeles June 19, tracks the decade-long renovation of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum in almost excruciating detail. Begun in 2003, the project intended to bring Pierre Cuypers' 1885 building up to 21st century "museological" standards.Seville and Amsterdam-based architects Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz's original plan
Tomorrowland's futuristic set was based on Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia. Disney’s big non-superhero movie this summer, Tomorrowland, which opened in theaters Memorial Day weekend, is all about a mysterious place full of wonder and whiz-bang.
A new film series at BAM offers a rare view of a country in transition. Cuba: Golden '60sThe First Charge of the Machete, 1969. A gentleman, nattily attired in a slim suit and sunglasses, saunters through his bustling urban environment with cosmopolitan ennui en route to his achingly modern apartment. It’s an image we’d expect to find in a 1960s Italian film, with actor Marcello Mastroianni gliding through scenes directed by Antonioni or Fellini. But when it appears in a post-Revolution Cuban film, like Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s 1968 masterpiece Memories of Underdevelopment? That’s unexpected. It’s a view of Havana and
Chris Hemsworth stars as Nicholas Hathaway in Blackhat, from director/producer Michael Mann. The movie is set within the world of global cybercrime, from Chicago to Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta. Beyond plot devices, Hollywood has never had much use for cities as real locations. They're loud, crowded, unpredictable—all of which is anathema to a micromanaged industry. A few filmmakers have embraced the urban cacophony with gusto, though. Jules Dassin shot The Naked City (1948) verite style on the streets of New York, as did William Friedkin 23 years later when making The French Connection. But they were only
The 79-minute documentary Design is One: Lella & Massimo Vignelli, released on DVD last week, is a biography, of a kind, of the designer and his wife, originally hit the festival circuit in 2012. It neatly tracks Massimo and his wife Lella’s careers as the preeminent design team of the postwar era at something of a breakneck pace. A series of images of the Vignellis’ work flashes by at the start of the film as if we were quickly flipping through a retrospective (or high-end product) catalogue, and things don’t get much slower from there. Directors Kathy Brew and
The film crew, including Bassett (center) talks to John Boiler, CEO of 72andSunny, a design and advertising agency. By day the CEO of design and brand strategy firm Bassett & Partners, Tom Bassett moonlights as an occasional filmmaker. His first film, the 18-minute Connecting released in 2012, was co-produced by Microsoft Design and focused on the “Internet of Things.” His latest work is more ambitious. Briefly, a 26-minute film released for free online last month that explores how some uber-creatives work with, bend, manipulate, and subvert the document that kicks it all off—the project brief—to accomplish great end products. “We
Adam Reed Tucker, a Chicago-based architect, conceived the concept for Lego Architecture, an elegant series of building sets celebrated in Lego Architecture: The Visual Guide, published last month. The relationship between Lego and architecture began in 1962 with the company’s Scale Model Series. It only lasted until 1965, but its impact was massive thanks to the introduction of the Lego plate. One-third the size of a traditional Lego brick, the plate added an element of stability that opened up a world of building possibility for kids and adults alike. But few took to the potential quite like architects. Moshe Safdie,
