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Archiculture, 2010
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Many have mused that an architecture studio would make the perfect setting for reality television: The combination of caffeine-fueled all-nighters, high stress, and unsympathetic critics would be sure to produce dramatic footage. Ian Harris and David Krantz are taking this idea a step further by making a feature-length documentary about studio culture.
Co-producer/director Ian Harris interviews Design Corps executive director Bryan Bell under a recent migrant farmworker flea market project in Newton Grove, N.C.
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Harris, an architecture graduate, and Krantz, a landscape architecture graduate, met in 2006 at their first professional jobs in a San Francisco firm. They bonded over their mutual love of film and frustration that the architecture profession fails to engage the public. Krantz recalled his fourth year of school, when he realized that “everything I had studied came together and made sense.” This moment of enlightenment was the inspiration for the film. “Studio culture becomes the vehicle for telling the bigger picture,” Krantz believes.
Originally dubbed Architorture, the film is titled the more PR-friendly Archiculture, but Harris and Krantz don’t shy away from the gritty realities of the studio. “How do you explain that experience to outsiders?” contemplates Harris. But the film is more ambitious than that, tackling issues of sustainability, technology, and environmental psychology, as well as the social responsibility of making architecture. Interspersed throughout will be interviews with professionals offering insights, including “starchitects” Zaha Hadid and Thom Mayne; nonprofit pioneers Bryan Bell and John Cary; Charleston, South Carolina, mayor Joe Riley; and musician David Byrne.
Harris and Krantz selected Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, as their host school, where they filmed hundreds of hours of footage chronicling fifth-year thesis students. Once the editing process began, the directors narrowed their focus to five students, taking care to avoid reality-TV typecasts. While the core audience of Archiculture — students, professors, and practitioners — has lived the experience, the directors hope the characters and story line will appeal to the general public, much like the documentary Spellbound, which followed National Spelling Bee champion hopefuls.
The trailer premiered in September at the New York City Center for Architecture. Currently in postproduction, the directors are aiming for a final cut in summer 2010. Raw, unedited footage and photos can be viewed online, depicting the students working as well as taking breaks — such as in a game of tracing-paper basketball — hinting that the film will contain plenty of comic relief. It is this sort of camaraderie that creates lifelong bonds in the studio: “Half of your education is who is sitting next to you,” Harris affirms.
For more go to: www.archiculturefilm.com
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