Lectures
Eva Franch i Gilabert
Office US: The Architects
The Architects, 2014, HD video
by Amie Siegel
November 17-23, 2014 at Stage D in the Arsenal
Venice, Italy
Commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture as part of Office US , the U.S. Pavilion at the 2014 International Architecture Biennale, La Biennale di Venezia, The Architects cuts transversally through the city of New York, moving through ten architecture studios—from Fifth Avenue to downtown to Brooklyn- unveiling the operational territories and landscapes of global architecture production.
A singular visual unfolding, the film deploys silent conversations among the architectures, locations, objects and characters that inhabit the picture frame, raising questions of scale, agency and power.
Parallel tracking shots through the working offices chart the office typology through sameness and difference, revealing the reappearing elements of the spaces of architecture production: the long horizontal desks, screens, renderings, models, framing the wide spectrum of practice from large firms to smaller studios, between the lens of the camera and the view of Manhattan, always, and only, just outside the window.
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