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Anish Kapoor: Fluidity, Reflections, Space A spatial stainless-steel installation in Hollywood

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Anish Kapoor is known as one of the world’s great living artists.  Since he won the Premio Duemila Prize at the 44th Venice Biennale back in 1990, his sculptural installations had a significant presence in many cities, including London, at the Tate Modern, Paris, at the Grand Palais, and Jerusalem, at the Israel Museum.

 

“Double S-Curve,” Regen Projects Gallery
“Double S-Curve,” Regen Projects Gallery
“Double S-Curve” – Angle
“Double S-Curve” – Angle
“Double S-Curve” – Detail
Passing Bus
“Double S-Curve” – Angle
Go Pro Selfie

Anish Kapoor was born in Mumbai in 1954 to an Iraqi-Jewish daughter of a rabbi who immigrated to India from Baghdad with her family when she was an infant. His Punjabi Hindu father was a hydrographer for the Indian Navy.  This mixed and complex background had a powerful influence in his attraction to dualities: concave and convex, matter and void, light and darkness, negative and positive, earth and sky, mind and body.  The range of materials he uses and pushes to their limits is astonishing: stone, steel, concrete, fabrics. Many of his projects are at an architectural scale.  He collaborated with architects Frank Gehry in Chicago’s Millenial Park, Arata Isozaki in Japan, and engineer Cecil Balmond at the ArcelorMittal Orbit in London’s Olympic Park.

Although his reflective artworks in highly polished stainless steel are easily recognizable, it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole Kapoor into this style only.  His crude artworks in sculptural painting and amorphous concrete tell us of an artist in continuous research for new forms of expression.

“Tall Tree and the Eye,” London
“Tall Tree and the Eye,” London – Detail
“Cloud Gate” at the Millenium Park, Chicago
“Arcelor Mittal Orbit” at London’s Olympic Park
“Arcelor Mittal Orbit” – Detail
“Marsyas,” Tate Modern, London
“Leviathan,” Grand Palais, Paris
“Leviathan,” Grand Palais, Paris
“Art Nova Inflatable Concert Hall,” Japan – With architect Arata Isozaki
“Monadic Singularity,” Beijing
“Turning the World Upside Down,” Israel Museum, Jerusalem
“Dismemberment of Joan d’Arc,” Buenos Aires
At Gladstone Gallery, New York
Printed Cement, Lisson Gallery
Printed Cement, Detail
Wax Canon at the Royal Academy of Arts, London
Sculptural painting detail at the MACRO Museum, Rome

The exhibit of Kapoor’s stainless-steel Double S-Curve at the Regen Projects gallery in Hollywood is good art news for Southern California.

Filmmaking Resume Segments of Documentaries Shot over the Course of Several Years

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This documentary is titled Filmmaking Resume as a reference to short bits of architectural footage shot over the course of several years, and published in Architecture Awareness, Cultural Weekly and in this website.

 

Although I have also created short films on art, politics, and cultural events, my focus here is on architecture-as-space, the essential language of architecture. This short documentary illustrates fragments on the works of twenty recognized contemporary architects. As such, it expresses how good design can resonate on a much deeper level and lead to a higher quality of life.

 

Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris. Architect: Frank Gehry
Disney Hall, Los Angeles. Architect: Frank Gehry
Lou Revo Center for Mental Health, Las Vegas. Architect: Frank Gehry
Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral. Architect: Rafael Moneo
Pavilion of Japanese Art, Los Angeles. Architect: Bruce Goff
The Wallis Center for the Performing Arts. Architect: Zoltan Pali
Paris Courthouse. Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Pathe Foundation, Paris.Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop
MAXXI, Rome. Architect: Zaha Hadid
Jewish Museum, Berlin. Architect: Daniel Libeskind
Reichstag, Berlin. Architect: Norman Foster
The Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen Soldiers. Architect: Kimmel Eshkolot
Porter School of Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv. Architect: Axelrod-Grobman, Joseph Cory
Supreme Court, Jerusalem. Architect: Ram karmi and Ada Karmi-Melamede
Tel Aviv Museum of Arte. Architect: Preston Scott Cohen
The Broad, Los Angeles. Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Mamilla Mall, Jerusalem. Architect: Moshe Safdie
Chords Bridge, Jerusalem. Architect: Santiago Calatrava
Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Architect: Albert Mansfeld
Tongva Park, Santa Monica. Architect: James Corner Field Operations

In dealing with the human condition in the 2020 decade, some of my future films are likely to focus on topics such as housing, sustainability, and open urban spaces.

12/12 in L.A. & 3 Pianists A link between long-term thinking and what is doable today through architecture and the arts

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This short documentary tries to connect dots between three disparate experiences that happened in a single day, 12/12/2019. The dots are a brainstorming session with old friends, a visit to a new working environment in Hollywood, the discovery of an art studio by the Los Angeles River dedicated to environmental art, and three piano performers.

Second Home Hollywood in context
Second Home Hollywood in context
Second Home Hollywood
Second Home Hollywood
Second Home Hollywood
Second Home Hollywood
Second Home Hollywood
Second Home Hollywood – Bookstore
Second Home Hollywood – Bookstore
View from Metabolic Studio
Metabolic Studio
Metabolic Studio
Metabolic Studio
Metabolic Studio
Metabolic Studio
Yuja Wang performing at the Kennedy Center Honors 2019
Joanna MacGregor
Marco Mezquida at Bogui Jazz, Madrid
With Alex Norman, Jack Humphrey and Bill Crampton
Selfie at Second Home

It all started with a scheduled breakfast at Coffee Cup, a reunion of four former members of a group known as “Rethinking Greater Long Beach.” At the table were Professors Alex Norman (UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs,) Jack Humphrey (Demography) Bill Crampton (Education) and myself.

After ordering sunny side up eggs for breakfast – out of the ordinary for me – and updating ourselves – we had not seen each other several years – we started our brainstorming session. This time, instead of rethinking Long Beach, we posed several questions at a global level. China thinks and plans long term, why can’t the US? Is Singapore urbanity number one, as Jack thinks after his recent visit? How many people can planet Earth take sustainably? What revolution is needed in education to face the future’s challenges? What are the dangers generated by Trumpism beyond Trump? Summarizing the results of our discussion, we voted. “Optimistic vs. Pessimistic.” The result: 1 to 3, respectively.

In the afternoon, Ruth and I made an unplanned visit to Second Home Hollywood. I only knew that it had been designed by the same architects that designed the Serpentine Pavilion near LACMA, Jose Selgas, and Lucia Cano, from Madrid. They had recently completed this new kind of working environment in London and in Lisbon.

We found Second Home Hollywood’s design impressive. Built with low-cost materials, and making intensive use of planting, the place is full of light, spatially vibrant and stimulates socialization. It is out-of-the-box thinking. Its success with young people is evident.

In the evening, we went for a first visit to Metabolic Studio, by the Los Angeles River, close to downtown L.A. Once again, we were surprised to discover a stimulant space to produce arts and crafts within an existing industrial warehouse.

Inspired by these three events in a single day, I decided to produce a short documentary, included here. While watching the Kennedy Center Awards 2019, I discovered Yuja Wang. Immediately it triggered the idea of bringing into the film the piece that she performed, “You Come Here Often?” by Michael Tilson Thomas. While researching for another two piano pieces, I first discovered Marco Mezquida, from Barcelona. He has played in many international jazz festivals. Then I discovered Joanna MacGregor. She is a British concert pianist, conductor and composer, who is also Head of Piano at London’s Royal Academy of Music. I found her playing of a Piazzolla arrangement fantastic! I couldn’t resist connecting the dots through a film collage.

Doc Snippets Selected Documentary Segments

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On a recent event at U.C.L.A., the 43rd Congress of the Romanian Academy of Arts and Science, I was invited by its Interim President, Prof. Ileana Costea, about what I do as an architect-filmmaker. I decided to edit “an extended trailer” of selected segments from my films. I called it “Doc Snippets.”

Berlin Philharmonic
The Reichstag
Memorial, Jerusalem
Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen,” Mount Herzl
Paris’ La Defense from Louis Vuitton
The Broad, Los Angeles
MAXXI, Rome
Pathe Foundation, Paris

Beyond some short notes on my architectural practice and of my passion for film since I was a student, I saw the question “Why are architectural documentaries important?” as the most relevant. Why?

The transformation of the planet to accommodate 10 billion people by 2050 will demand the active input of all its inhabitants, which would include self-help. Architecture awareness is critical to confront planetary challenges such as climate change, sustainability, population growth, mobility, food production, conservation of natural spaces, visual pollution, and over-crowding.

My films, most of them on architecture-related subjects, try to inform the viewer about the relationship between quality-space and human scale, and about meaning in the configuration of spaces.

Architecture + People in San Diego Architecture 2019 in San Diego: Downtown, the Central Library, the Salk Institute

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San Diego’s downtown transformation conveys an important message to many cities’ challenges. It is possible to increase density while maintaining high standards of design quality. It is possible to mitigate traffic by bringing efficient public transportation. It is possible to build high-quality public buildings within the budget.

It was late May when we first considered the possibility of registering for a Brendon Burchard “Influencer” seminar in San Diego in October. “We haven’t been there for about a decade. It sounds like a good excuse,” I said. We signed up. It was a good decision. What we saw and learned in a few days well exceeded our expectations.

“What’s new to see in architecture?” I asked Google while doing basic research.  A small, five-story, zero energy mixed-use building, Torr Kaelan, caught my attention. It had been designed by Rob Quigley, an architect unknown to me. Some of the building’s details reminded Carlo Scarpa’s design.  Googling more on Rob Quigley, I reached the San Diego Central Library project. I couldn’t tell much by looking at the photographs that I found online, but I marked it as a place to visit.

Torr Kaelan

We decided to set our base in Little Italy. I found a lovely small hotel, Urban Boutique, next to a European-style piazza known at Piazza della Famiglia.  It was located a mile-plus from the event we planned to attend. “We could do some exercise by walking the distance in less than a half-hour,” I said to Ruth. Once we arrived at the hotel, we parked the car and didn’t move it until we left.

We found the downtown area transformation, since the last time we had been there, very impressive.  It had become a thriving center easily accessible by foot, bike, car, or public transportation. Its urban scale was right, the traffic was moderate, and we noticed a number of new, well-designed condominiums.

Downtown San Diego
Downtown San Diego
Downtown San Diego
Downtown San Diego
Downtown San Diego

Yet the biggest surprise was the central library. According to the architect, it had been conceived as “a 9-story archive of flexible space, sandwiched at the top and ground floors, with diverse and accessible public amenities.”  The library opened in 2013, following a protracted 17-year period of design and construction. This may explain the 1970s–1980s flavor. The material of choice was concrete, for both cost and maintenance.

San Diego Central Library
San Diego Central Library
San Diego Central Library – Atrium
San Diego Central Library
San Diego Central Library – detail
San Diego Central Library
San Diego Central Library

A spacious atrium and a roof garden, accented by a symbolic dome, provided an urban identity to the building. We found the different areas well crafted, with some of the spaces quite spectacular.

The “Influencer” event, structured as good content (psychology, physiology, productivity, persuasion) wrapped with entertainment, was remarkable for the diversity of over two thousand participants. There were people from all over the United States and also from many other countries. Our new chanceful acquaintances included a woman from Soroka, in the Republic of Moldova, an actress from Istanbul, a French couple from Montpellier and other people ranging in age from teenagers to adults in their seventy’s.

Brendon Burchard “Influencer” Seminar

We couldn’t leave San Diego without revisiting Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute in La Jolla. It triggered memories. When we were in our late twenty’s, we worked in Tel Aviv for Ram Karmi. When Kahn visited Israel, Karmi invited him and his wife for dinner at his condo, and asked us to join them. At the end of the evening, he said “pick up Kahn at his hotel tomorrow morning and take him to see the Central Bus Station,” of which I had been working on its details for several months. The gargantuan building, then under construction, was mostly done in exposed concrete.

Until a scheduled late-lunch, at 3:00 PM, to be joined by Carmela, Karmi’s his first wife, we spent five hours with Louis Kahn all for ourselves! During the three-hour-long lunchtime, Louis Kahn talked most of the time. It was like listening to Socrates. Kahn’s intellect was very high, and his language was, at times, incomprehensible to us.

Back in 1971, we had made our first visit to the Salk Institute at the end of our “Frank Lloyd Wright’s pilgrimage,” during which we visited and photographed over one hundred of Wright’s works across twenty-five states.  At the time, the Salk Institute was one of the most famous buildings in the world. Seeing it again forty-five years later was less impacting, although now I could read that, while its work in concrete remained impeccable, its greatness was in its scale and in the way the large court opens to the ocean. 

Salk Institute, Chiuli Sculpture
Salk Institute Plan
Salk Institute
Salk Institute
Salk Institute
Louis Kahn
Louis kahn

Ram Karmi
Tel Aviv Central Bus Station
Tel Aviv Central Bus Station
Tel Aviv Central Bus Station
Tel Aviv Central Bus Station project

The link between the architecture we discovered and the people we met produced a highly productive and rewarding weekend!

Shirin Neshat Magic Realism Without Smiles

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Shirin Neshat is a great artist. She captures depth from the subjects of her photographic portraits, and she creates fiction in her films and videos at a quality level comparable to some of the works of Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Their uniqueness also derives from her feminine sensitivity and her understanding of ancient cultures. In doing so, she opens for the Western World a window to look at the other, beyond itself.

Shirin Neshat at her studio

Photography by Shirin Neshat
At The Broad
At The Broad
At The Broad
At The Broad
At The Broad
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
The exhibition at The Broad is named “I Will Bring the Sun Again,” from the title of a poem by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad. It presents over 230 photographs and eight video installations, curated by Ed Schad. The images take us to ancient cultures that include not only Persia’s ancient history and traditions but also to Morocco, Mexico, Egypt, and Azerbaijan, not as tourists, but as observers of displacement, alienation, and political oppression.
Venice Film Festival 2009
Filming
Directing
From the film “Women Without Men”
From film
From film
From the film “Passage,” 2001
From “Looking for Oum Kulthum” film, 2017

The exhibition inspired me to produce a short documentary as an homage to Shirin Neshat’s work.

¡SÍ, SE PUEDE! Women of Action in Architecture and in Politics

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This short documentary, “¡Si Se Puede!” is dedicated to women of action on two subjects: architecture and politics. Unseemingly related the two disciplines follow a similar process: DREAM > PROGRAM > DESIGN > BUILD. Both crafts demand courage, imagination, and tenacity.

Dolores Huerta, 89.
Rick Meghiddo

The cry used as the title was conceived by Dolores Huerta (89) during the 1970s and has been since then the motto of the United Farm Workers of America. President Barak Obama adopted the English version “Yes, we can!” first during the 2004 Illinois Democratic primary race for US Senate. It became a slogan of his 2008 presidential campaign.

Dolores Huerta, neither an architect nor a politician – she has always been an American labor leader and civil rights activist – is chosen here as a symbol of a woman fighting for ideas.

Women-Architects and Women-Politicians

Elizabeth Diller
Zaha Hadid
Jeanne Gang
Benedetta Tagliabue
Anna Heringer
Alison Brooks
Maya Lin
Gae Aulenti
Ray Eames
Ada Karmi-Melamede
Kazuyo Sejima
Lise Anne Couture
Caroline Bos
Amanda Levete
Roisin Heneghan
Michal Kimmel-Eshkolot
Gabriela Carrillo
Elora Hardy
The first two Democratic debates of twenty candidates running for President included six women: Senators Elizabeth Warren, MA; Kamala Harris, CA; Kirsten Gillibrand, NY; Amy Klobuchar MN; Representative Tulsi Gabbard, and Self-help author, Mariane Williamson. Their platforms have many overlapping, similar subjects. From all these, the most related to architecture are sustainability, the environment, infrastructure, education, affordable housing, and food production.
Included are also Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY, who won her nomination to the Congress at the age of twenty-nine, and Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, the first woman to hold the office. Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed Green New Deal is likely to influence political decision-making in the foreseeable future. Anne Hidalgo’s major part of her development program is the improvement of the environment. The infrastructure development plan also includes a 24-hour subway service, a ban on parking in certain areas and days, and the creation of new green areas, including urban farming.
Elizabeth Warren
Kamala Harris
Anne Hidalgo
Kirsten Gillibrand
Amy C\Klobuchar
Tulsi Gabbard
Mariane Williamson
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
The women-architects presented in the documentary come from different countries – Canada, Irak, Poland, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the UK, and the US – and they have built, besides their countries of residence, in Bangladesh, China, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinean West Bank, and New Zealand.
There is a gap between the politicians and the architects on the broadness of worldview. While most of the politicians look widely at climate change, their vision on the physical implications of some of their subjects is limited to what is known. Architects, by training, learn to think globally and in multiple layers of complexity, and only then they work on the details. They use not only logical thinking but also lateral thinking, which implies infinite possibilities.
Besides Zaha Hadid, who died in 2016 at the age of sixty-five, the most innovative of the women architects brought here is Elizabeth Diller, a Partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Her works include the High Line in New York and The Broad in Los Angeles. The Shed, currently under construction at the northern end of the High Line, is scheduled for completion in 2019. When completed, it is likely to become a revolutionary new icon of multi-use architecture. The $500m Center for the Performing Arts will house a vast transformable space and a big open piazza able to be covered by the extension of the movable outer shell, clad with an inflatable skin of quilted pneumatic cushions.
The Chicago skyline would not be the same without American architect Jeanne Gang. Aqua, the unique skyscraper that has become well-known for its wavy facade, is the third tallest building in the world designed by a woman. Most recently, she was named to the TIME 100 most influential people of 2019.
Also significant is the use of bamboo as a building material in the works of Anna Heringer in China and of Elora Hardy in Bali. Bamboo, an eco-friendly construction material, is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world.
Another architect to follow is Benedetta Tagliabue. In 1991 she founded the studio Miralles Tagliabue EMBT with Enric Miralles (1955-2000.) Her works include the Scottish Parliament in Edinburg, The Santa Caterina Market in Barcelona, and the Spanish Pavilion in Shanghai, shown here.

Architects can take initiatives without waiting for a commission, but, in the final event, moving from paper-architecture to built-buildings requires other decision-makers: clients, city authorities, bankers, the community. The role of politicians is critical when the decisions needed are related to the urban environment, housing, and public institutions.

Politicians may – and should – dream big, yet moving from dreams to legislation to implementation demands, to a great extent, relaying on imaginative architects, who should possess, besides their skills, high moral standards.

A Personal Note

Influential women occupied a dominant place in my life. My mother, Fanny Frenkel de Maghidovich, was a strong presence not only at home but also publicly. As Secretary-General of Argentina’s WIZO (Women International Zionist Organization,) she influenced thousands of listeners with her rhetoric in impeccable Spanish.
I grew up surrounded by loving aunts. From these, my aunt “Chichi,” Dr. Marta Luz Frenkel, is an attorney still going to work every day at ninety-four. She is more “a big sister” than an aunt, and I rely on her judgment. I was also blessed by women-teachers of Spanish, English, and Math and I befriended some extraordinary women: Nancy Reeves, a pioneering feminist; Irena Kovaliska and Ilana Offer, committed artists; Sylvia Manheim, a political activist still fighting for human rights at ninety-four. The list goes on and on.
Last but not least, are my wife Ruth, also a partner as an architect, and our daughter Gabby, who, after practicing psychiatry, is still looking for new challenges. They both make a dent on my daily decision-making.
Fanny Frenkel de Maghidovich
Marta Luz Frenkel
Ruth Mrghiddo
Gabby Meghiddo