Film Review ‘The Big City’
Martin Earnshaw | 25 January 2015 The Big City (1963), directed by Satyajit Ray, is essentially a story of modernity. The superb opening scene traces the passage of a tram cable as it winds its way through Calcutta, a city which in the 1950s and 60s could be considered as India’s foremost modern city. Although this old Imperial Capital was soon to be eclipsed by Mumbai, at that moment, to be at the forefront of change was to be in...
Review: ‘Constructing Worlds’
Felicity Barbur | 02 January 2015 Presenting Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age at the Barbican in London always seemed likely to prove a good choice of venue. However, it wasn’t until visiting the carefully curated spaces of each photographer that I appreciated just how appropriate the Chamberlin, Powell and Bon designed complex would prove to be. After all, over the years the Barbican itself has been...
Film Review: ‘City Visions’ #4
Martin Earnshaw | 9 October 2014 Ecumenopolis: City without Limits, Dir. Imre Azem, 2012 When we think of a World City we think of a globalised hub like London where people from all over the world come to live, work or study. An Ecumenopolis gives the concept of the World City a differentmeaning. Although the term was coined in the 1960’s as an extrapolation of the rapid growth of cities, the idea of a city expanding to cover an...
Film Review: ‘City Visions’ #2
Matthew Bloomfield | 2 October 2014 ‘La Haine’, Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine follows the lives of three young men in the 24 hours after a riot tears through their home in the banlieues of Paris. The film was inspired by rioting in 1993,sparked by the ‘accidental death’ of Makome M’Bowele who died while in police custody. He was shot while hand-cuffed to a radiator. La Haine‘s three...
Film Review: Robin Hood Gardens
Rosalind Alexander | 30 September 2014 “The Smithsons on Housing” Allow me to introduce you to B S Johnson’s 1970 documentary, “The Smithsons on Housing”, which might be better titled “The Smithsons on the Tragedy that is London.” Everything they discuss is from the perspective of their project at Robin Hood Garden in Poplar, east London, which was in mid-construction when they were interviewed. It is also somewhat difficult to get...
Film review: “Rebel Architecture” #2
Magdalena Melon | 4 September 2014 “Greening the city” “If the current way of thinking does not change, sooner or later citizens will actually live in concrete jungles. For a modern architect, the most important mission is to bring back green spaces to the earth.” “Urbanisation is threatening our green spaces in Ho Chi Minh City” – a quote from Vo Trong Nghia, the Vietnamese architectural subject of this short film –...
Film review: “Rebel Architecture”
Pedro Calmon | 29 August 2014 “The Pedreiro and the Master Planner” “The favela is unplanned, it arises spontaneously, with no help or design from government”, Luis Carlos Toledo, Master Planner. Arbitrariness, especially in urban settlements, is a rare feature. From Berlin’s Wall to the plazas of Spanish cities, the question “why is something where it is” – seems to be fundamental to any analysis of a determined...
The Anti-Human Eco-City
By Paul Thomas | 20 April 2014 Before attending this lecture on The Anti-Human Eco-City at Leeds Met, I’d heard of them but was unsure what they were. Apparently, I was not alone. According to the speaker, Austin Williams, Associate Professor of Architecture at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China, there is no agreed definition of what an eco-city is; there are very few that have been built; and the most famous one,...
Critical Subjects
Higher education is in crisis. This summer sees the launch of Critical Subjects, a new architectural Summer School placing the pursuit of knowledge and critical thinking at the core of education. These are troubled times for higher education. In recent years the idea of pursuing knowledge for its own sake has found little support. Instead of creating an atmosphere supportive of open enquiry and free thinking, universities have...
Ordos’ Other Ghost Town
Ordos in Inner Mongolia is synonymous with the phrase ‘Ghost Town’; a term describing cities apparently built on a whim, with no-one to occupy them. With China having already started to fulfil its pledge to build 400 new cities in 20 years, innumerable articles have emerged in the Western press to laugh, pity or gloat at the emergence of such tragi-comical examples of urban desolation. Forbes magazine is typical of many...
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