Archiculture

- from Entro_py via Flickr.com

After sleeping thirteen hours last night and recouping from the last week of sleepless production, the focus has immediately shifted to two grant deadlines this week. One is the From the Heart Production’s Roy W. Dean New York City Video Grant and the other is the New York State Council for the Arts (NYSCA) Individual Artist Grant for Film, Media and New Technology Production. We have very high chances on both of them but on the other hand when do you ever have a good chance at getting a grant? Throughout our experience of fundraising and filmmaking on this project we have come across many other filmmakers and shared war stories. The ups and downs of attempting to have your vision made. Who to turn to for answers, help or support. We have also slowly come to the realization that we are making this film on the “fast track.” Meaning it will have taken us about 3 years from starting pre-production, to having a final cut. That is lights speed for a lot of documentary project. Most take closer to 5+ years to complete giving them larger windows for fundraising and the ability re-apply to denied grants which usually run on an annual cycle specific to your phase of production. Many grants require you to apply multiply times before they warm up to you and are awarded funds. The financial coffers for the arts are limited, especially for our little know subject matter of the architecture studio, and are only going to get more competitive as the economy swoons. The fearful aspect is that if we do not land a couple of these select grants which have interest in our subject matter and our medium of documentary, then we are in critical shape for meeting our budget. No time to worry, have to get the project’s work sample description down to 2000 characters. Hopefully all the work will pay off at some point.

Should be pretty easy to find the answer to this question in a studio full of architecture thesis students, right? I have asked this question on a continuous basis for the past 4 months. I have asked professors, I have asked students, and I have asked those completely unrelated to the field. I have probably asked the question 50 times and have yet to receive the same answer. Some say it is a profession, to others it is an object, some say it is space, and others a way of thinking. So how do you clearly define something that has no common definition? If those who create/conceptualize/practice architecture can’t explain it, how can the general public understand it?

Despite the multitude of answers and the repetitive “deer in the headlight” response, I think we now have the content and footage needed to answer this question. The only way to understand architecture is to experience the many facets that construct it, and what better way to do this than the medium of film.

780 days down
280 to go

-Paradise Deli & Grocery at Lafayette and Grand Ave in Brooklyn

The sobering reality has begun to settle in about life after production. No more picking up a camera at 3AM to capture that essential moment of a group of students running to the Bodega for coffee and cigarettes. No more balancing the demands of coordinating every facet of production along with following a dozen individuals in depth throughout their daily adventures. Like the students, a major change is about to take place in our lives. We will no longer be filming daily for Archiculture. In a sense the film is done. Our story has been captured. The students are gone. A part of myself feels as if it is about to leave forever. This experience with these people has been deeply rewarding and creative, but normalcy is around the corner. This has definitely broadened the horizon of personal expression, knowledge and potential. For the first time since I left college, the feeling of professional unknown awaits. One thing I do know is that, David and I, will turn into Archiculture missionaries for the rest of 2008. We will spread our message of design through film to anyone who will listen to us. I only hope this provides the funds to give this film the finish product it deserves, and the impact our culture needs. If not, do you know of anyone hiring?

I recently had the opportunity of spending some time with my mother on her visit to New York. I don’t get to see her as often as I would like and was upset when I found out her trip aligned with the FuturePresent Symposium at Harvard and the AIAS quad-conference at Pratt, both of which I had already agreed to present. I invited her to my presentation at the quad-conference even though I knew it was something she would otherwise not have attended. Carlos Zapata spoke before me and discussed some of his works including Soldier Field, Bitexco, and the Horizen Tower. In the middle of his presentation on Soldier Field my mother turned to me and began to comment on the project. I had forgotten the two of us had seen this project last fall on a visit to Chicago, and was moved to hear her discuss and critique the project at such a personal level. I was immediately reminded of why I embarked upon this journey in the first place, to help break down the barrier and language of design. I think we, as designers, can often be egotistical in our attitude towards design and the general public. I hope that we do justice to the original idea of the film and that it reaches people outside of the profession.

- courtesy of New York Times, March 27th 2008

This is a quote from a recent article in the New York Times by Nicolai Ouroussoff from this past Thursday regarding the selected Tishman Speyer development for the West Side railyards in New York. It is a call to arms in a sense for an awakening to the current state of development in our country’s most dynamic urban environment. Nicolai makes great parallels between this current development, which has been consistently in the public’s eye since a new stadium was proposed there for the NYC2012 Olympics campaign, with those that have occurred at the World Trade Center site and at the Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn. I guess what intrigues me most from this article is that it addresses a question which has begun to fester in my mind. What is the current popular perspective on the quality/quantity of urban development in New York City. This is key because the students we are filming are about to embark upon this market to chart their own professional paths.

As a personal reaction to the recent imprints of contemporary urban/architectural design upon this city, I have not been amazed. In general they seem homogeneous, branded cancers without any sense of human scale and a complete disregard for their own context. I think of my visits to Vancouver to see a city full of towers with dynamic variation and scale. Here we have megaprojects the size of whole neighborhoods with one designer that usually ends up being a stripped down bastard interpretation to the original shimmering almost transparent forms. Buildings do not disappear into the sky as so many renderings attempt to convey. Maybe the Vancouver example is not fair due to their verticality coming in the form of residential housing which has a completely different demand for balconies and unit orientation towards views compared to New York’s open-plan obsession of artificially lit cubicle mazes. Has the power of the architect been transformed in the sense of this Times article to become merely the means to generate enough PR and visual sensation to get a project passed by an uneducated public or review board. Dollar signs in their eyes while the public is left with space which continues our societal suffocation for space to engage. According to Ouroussoff and my continuation, is this the professional setting in which our characters enter in little over a month?

- ian’s Vancouver set