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Photo © R&R Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

'>As We Saw It – Part 6: Berlin 2 – Shifting Art Bits Fragments of Berlin's Contemporary Art Scene

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Berlin is today “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” for thousands of artists from all over the world. It is estimated 20,000 artists are living and working in the city. Why? Berlin is home to hundreds of galleries and art museums that boast unparalleled collections. For the ambitious artist, this city is overflowing […]

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Photo © R&R Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

As We Saw It – Part 5: Berlin 1 – Architecture Contemporary Architecture Landmarks in Berlin

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Berlin is regarded as one of the most exciting architectural experiments in the world, with a cultural life second to none. On our first visit to Berlin since its reunification, our goal was to try to understand why the city has become a mecca for artists, a place of attraction to architects and filmmakers, internationally […]

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As We Saw It – Part 4: Brushing Art in Paris Art as Integral to Urban Life Quality

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Paris without art is inconceivable. The art world permeates the city at all levels. It impacts people’s lifestyle, what they eat and its aesthetics, their fashion, their filmmaking, their architecture.

As We Saw It – Part 4: Brushing Art in Paris is a potpourri of art seen during the summer of 2018. The focus was on alternatives to traditional tourist art-sites such as the Louvre and the Orsay museums.

The biggest surprise was the Palais de Tokyo. Sitting next door to Paris’ Museum of Modern Art, this place it has an intense program of avant-garde contemporary art that includes all media. In spite of its name, the artists – many women – shown are from many countries. We found remarkable the works of Anita Molinero, Caroline Achaintre, and Laure Prouvost. 

Anita Molinero, Palais de Tokyo
Caroline Achaintre, Palais de Tokyo
Laure Prouvost, Palais de Tokyo

The Museum of Modern Art, besides its own collection, also has periodical shows. During our visit we so a retrospective of Judit Reigl’s fantastic work. She continues to be productive at age ninety-five!

Judit Reigl, Homme (1966)
Judit Reigl, Explosion
Judit Reigl Abstraction

The Centre Pompidou had a large exhibition on the Russian avant-garde in Vitebsk during the 1918-1922 period. Very well curated, it showed artworks by Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich.

Lissitzky and Malevich, 1920
Marc Chagall, Over the Village (1918)
Marc Chagall at the Pompidou Center
El Lissitzky, Pompidou Center
El Lissitzky, Pompidou Center
Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism (1915)
Kazimir Malevich (1923)
Kazimir Malevich, Arkhitektons (1923)
Pompidou Center, 2018

The Picasso Museum was a surprise, not so much for the collection of the master’s work – that can’t match those shown at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona – but of Picasso’s own collection of other artists works, such as Miro and Modigliani.

Crying Woman (1937)
Joan Miro, Portrait of a Spanish Dancer (1921) bought by Picasso
Joan Miro, Autoportrait (1919) bought by Picasso
Modigliani (1915) bought by Picasso
Guard, Museum Picasso. Photo Rick Meghiddo.
Museum Picasso. Photo Rick Meghiddo.

We found the relatively small Musée de l’Orangerie collection exquisite for the quality of the works exhibited. Besides Claude Monet’s large paintings of water lilies, the show included first-rate works by Matisse, Soutine, Picasso, Modigliani, Renoir, Utrillo, and Pollock, to name some.

Musee de l’Orangerie. Photo: Rick Meghiddo.
Musee de l’Orangerie. Photo: Rick Meghiddo.
Pablo Picasso, Woman with a White Hat (1921)
Chaïm Soutine, Le Garçon d’étage (~1927)
Sam Francis, Round the World (1959)
Mark Rothko, Untitled ((1948)
Jackson Pollock, The Deep (1953)
Helen Frankenthaler (1963)

The Guimet Museum of Asian Arts has an extraordinary collection of Chinese, Cambodian, and Indian art. On both the Orangerie and the Guimet, the presence of children being taught about art was uplifting. Its renovation was sensibly designed by architects Henri and Bruno Gaudin. 

Guimet Museum, Cambodian Art
Guimet Museum, Storytelling
Guimet Museum, Storytelling
Guimet Museum
Guimet Museum
Guimet Museum
Guimet Museum
Sarcophage, 2nd Century BCE
Guimet Museum.Architects for the renovation:Henri and Bruno Gaudin
Guimet Museum.Architects for the renovation:Henri and Bruno Gaudin

Other visits included the Grand Palais‘ retrospective on the work of František Kupka, the Petit Palais with great art from the late 1800s, and the new Louis Vuitton Foundation, by Frank Gehry, shown in Part 2: Paris Builds.

Frantisek Kupka, Family portrait (1910)
Frantisek Kupka, Traits n
Frantisek Kupka, Mademe Kupka dans les veticales (1911)
Takashi Murakami, Louis Vuitton Foundation
Auguste Clesinger, Bachante Couchee (1848) Petit Palais
Gustave Coubet, The Sleepers (1866) Petit Palais
Gerges Clarin, Sarah Bernhardt Portrait (1888) Petit Palais
Andre Derain, Andre Derain, Portrait de Madame Paul Guillaume au grand chapeau (1929)
Léon Lhermitte, Les Halles (1895)
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888)
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888)
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888) Detail
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888) Detail

Street art in Paris has become part of the urban components, as in many other cities. Some are very good, like the works of JR.

JR, Louvre
Jef Aerosol, Chuuuttt! (2011)
L’Atlas
Levalet
Artur Bordalo

 

Muhamad Bourouissa, Urban Riders, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2018)

As We Saw It – Part 3: Paris Green Urbanity Green Open Spaces as Urban Design

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Vision and political will are a good combination. This is the case of Paris 2018, looking into the future with pragmatic imagination.

Anne Hidalgo, Paris’ first female mayor

Stephane Malka Architecture, Paris

Parisians have a high consciousness level of sustainability and climate change. They are now led by their Mayor, Anne Hidalgo, who has decided to turn their city into a green capital of the world. Besides seven major projects under construction to transform famous squares into pedestrian and bike-friendly areas, urban farming has now new legislation that promotes growing vegetables on roofs and public spaces.

in the accompanying documentary, we have chosen three examples of green urbanity: the Parc de Bercy, the Parc de la Villette, and the Promenade Plantee. They show how building green, when integrated with urban design, architecture and public art, can be transformative.

Place d’Italie
Place Gabetta
Place de la Nation
Place du Pantheon
Place des Fetes
Eglise de la Madeleine
Place de la Bastille
Apartment building by Jean Nouvel
Urban Farming in Paris
Urban Farming in Paris
Urban Farming in Paris
Vincent Callebaut Architectures
Vincent Callebaut Architectures
Vincent Callebaut Architectures

PARC DE BERCY

Designed by architects Bernard Huet, Madeleine Ferrand, Jean-Pierre Feugas, Bernard Leroy, and by landscapers Ian Le Caisne and Philippe Raguin, the park is made of three gardens connected by footbridges: The “Romantic Garden”, which includes fishponds and dunes; The “Flowerbeds”, dedicated to plant life; and “The Meadows”, an area of open lawns shaded by tall trees.
In the north-east of the park stands the Cinémathèque Française (the former American Center) designed by Frank Gehry, and on the raised terraces are the 21 sculptures of Rachid Khimoune’s “Children of the World” installation, created in 2001 to honor children’s rights.
The park has also a covered skatepark and is adjacent to a major sports arena, the Palais Omnisports, with a sitting capacity of 20,000.
Parc de Berci – Plan
Viaduc des Arts
Viaduc des Arts
Parc de Bercy – Vegetable Garden
Parc de Bercy – Vegetable Garden
Parc de Bercy – Vegetable Garden
Parc de Bercy – Vineyard
Parc de Bercy
Parc de Bercy – House of Wind
Parc de Bercy

PARC DE LA VILLETTE

The Parc de la Villette is a 37-acre / 55 hectares area that houses one of the largest concentration of cultural venues in Paris. These include the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (City of Science and Industry, Europe’s largest science museum), three major concert venues, and the prestigious Conservatoire de Paris.
The park was designed by Bernard Tschumi, a French architect of Swiss origin, who built it from 1984 to 1987 in partnership with Colin Fournier, on the site of the huge Parisian abattoirs (slaughterhouses) and the national wholesale meat market, as part of an urban redevelopment project. He conceived thirty-five architectural “follies“ to give a sense of orientation to the visitors.
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily as an ornament but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose. One can only imagine what a system of follies could do for a city like Los Angeles, to provide orientation within its vast urban grid. Since the creation of the park, museums, concert halls, and theatres have been designed by several noted contemporary architects, including Christian de Portzamparc, Jean Nouvel, Adrien Fainsilber, Philippe Chaix, Jean-Paul Morel, and Gérard Chamayou. These include City of Science and Industry, ]La Géode, an IMAX theatre inside of a 36-meter (118 ft) diameter geodesic dome; The City of Music, designed by Christian de Portzamparc which opened in 1995 and it includes also a museum of historical musical instruments with a concert hall, also home of the Conservatoire de Paris; the Philharmonie de Paris which opened in January 2015 designed by Jean Nouvel.
Parc de la Villette – Plan
Parc de la Villette – Philarmonie and Follie
Parc de la Villette – Follies Grid
Follie
Parc de la Villette
Parc de la Villette – Follie
Parc de la Villette – Follie
Parc de la Villette – Follie
Museum of Science and Industry
Geodesic Dome / IMAX Theater
Parc de la Villette
Parc de la Villette
City of Music
City of Music
City of Music
At the Philarmonie de Paris
At the Philarmonie de Paris

PROMENADE PLANTÉE

The Promenade plantée (also called Coulée Verte – “Green Stream”) is an extensive green belt that follows the old Vincennes railway line. Beginning just east of the Opéra Bastille with the elevated Viaduc des Arts, it follows a 4.7 km (2.9 mi) (2.9 mi) path to the Bois de Vincennes.
At its west end, near the Bastille, the parkway rises above the surrounding area and forms the Viaduc des Arts, over a line of shops featuring high quality and expensive arts and crafts. The shops are located in the arches of the formerly elevated railway viaduct.
The design was created by landscape architect Jacques Vergely and architect Philippe Mathieux. The Viaduc des Arts was designed by architect Patrik Berger, who also designed the recently completed Canopy of Les Halles.
The project is an ultimate example of “walking urbanity,” with multiple experiences along its path. It includes different types of gardens, it traverses existing buildings, it crosses boulevards. Twenty years later, Promenade Plantee inspired the now successful High Line in New York.

Promenade Plantee, paris.
Promenade Plantee
Viaduc des Arts
Viaduc des Arts
Promenade Plantee – Parc de Neuilly

The creation of a humane urban quality does not depend only on the quality of a city’s buildings. The design quality of open public spaces, way beyond landscape architecture, is critical. It the demands imaginative long-term thinking accompanied by political vision and will.

Photo © Rick Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

As We Saw It – Part 2: Paris Builds Recently built: Louis Vuitton Foundation, Foundation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, New Palais de Justice, The Canopy of Les Halles

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The four recently completed architectural works that accompany the documentary “Paris Builds” send powerful messages of what is possible to elevate the quality of life in the city.

Side View

Gehry’s Louis Vuitton Foundation is not only an architectural masterpiece and a new icon in a city where icons abound, but it also brings an example of what is possible to cover urban spaces, an alternative to Buckminster Fuller-like geodesic domes.

Renzo Piano’s Foundation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé is a hidden gem that exemplifies what is possible in a small site surrounded by historic buildings.

Paris’ new Palais de Justice, also designed by Renzo Piano, responds to a very complex program – ninety new courtrooms built vertically – while confronting sustainability and the creation of new green spaces on roofs.

Also, the Canopy of Les Halles, designed by architects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti, sensibly responds with daring technology to an urban place crossed daily by tens of thousands of people, in a historic location that Emile Zola called “The Belly of Paris.”

The Louis Vuitton Foundation

Commissioned by Bernard Arnault, head of the LVMH luxury brand empire, the complex houses his collection of modern and contemporary art and hosts temporary exhibitions. Built on public land with private funds, it will be given as a gift to the city in 55-years time.

Inserted in the middle of Bois de Boulogne’s woodland park, the building is an assemblage of white blocks, so-called “icebergs,” clad in panels of fiber-reinforced concrete, surrounded by twelve immense glass “sails” supported by wooden beams. The sails give Fondation Louis Vuitton its transparency and sense of movement while allowing the building to reflect the water, woods and garden, and continually change with the light.

The ground-level entrance hall is designed as an active social space, featuring a restaurant and bookstore. The ample, multi-purpose space directly adjacent to the entrance hall may be used as an auditorium accommodating 350 persons, an exhibition space, or an event venue.

The upper floors accommodate straightforward gallery spaces. Of the 11,000 m2 across which the building spreads, just 3,850 m2 are exhibition rooms. More than 3,600 glass panels and 19,000 concrete panels that form the façade were simulated using mathematical techniques and molded using advanced industrial robots, all automated from the shared 3D model. The new software was developed specifically for sharing and working with the complex design.

The structure of the glass roof allows the building to collect and reuse rainwater and improves its geothermal power. Besides, the Foundation has attained its overall goal to reach HQE (Haute Qualité Environmentale) certification noted as Très Performant. The steps taken to achieve this level of certification could be considered equivalent to LEED Gold.

Scheme by Frank Gehry Courtesy of Frank Gehry Partners
Plan Courtesy of Frank Gehry Partners
Plan Courtesy of Frank Gehry Partners
Section Courtesy of Frank Gehry Partners
Construction
Bernard Arnault and Frank Gehry
Approach view
Dancer – Louis Vuitton Foundation

The Foundation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé

The new headquarters of the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, by architects from Renzo Piano Building Workshop, is an unexpected presence, a curved volume glimpsed floating in the middle of a courtyard, anchored on just a few supports. It is complemented by a group of birch trees, a floral island set in the dense mineral context of the city.

This “organic creature” is located in the courtyard of a 19th-century block that includes a complex of historical Hausmann-era buildings. This structure houses the headquarters of the Foundation Jerôme Seydoux-Pathé, a foundation dedicated to preserving the history of the French film company Pathè and to promote cinematography.

The 839 m2 headquarters are located in Paris’ 13th arrondissement and their construction has been completed in September 2014. The clever use of the site includes a main entrance on a restored and preserved facade along the Avenue des Gobelins which features sculptures by Auguste Rodin. This stone-made building is not only a historical landmark, but also an icon and symbol for the Gobelins area of Paris.

Section – Courtesy of RPBW
Theater area – Courtesy of RPBW
Offices area – Courtesy of RPBW
Upper floor – Courtesy of RPBW
Fondation Pathe
Fondation Pathe

New Paris Palais de Justice

Since the Middle Ages, Parisian justice has been dispensed from the famous building that surrounds the Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité. However, over the years an increasing shortage of space has resulted in many good offices having to be located in a multitude of locations spread out over all four corners of the city. The new Paris law courts at the Porte de Clichy will enable the judicial institution’s courtrooms and offices to occupy the same building.

The new law courts stand 160 meters high, has an internal area of around 100,000 m2 and accommodates up to 8,000 people per day. The building’s facades are fully glazed. On the three blocks of the tower, fine blades extend the glazing beyond the facade, exalting its verticality. The building’s primary structure, robust and orthogonal, ensures flexibility over the long term that will be able to accommodate future requirements and any changes in the way the justice system operates.

In developing the scheme, the architects sought to reduce the apparent scale of the building by breaking it down into four volumes of decreasing size.

50 desks within the reception areas minimize visitor waiting time, while three atria ensure that space is filled with natural light. A system of vertical and horizontal circulation routes lead to the 90 courtrooms above. The subsequent three volumes, which contain around ten-story each, include offices and meeting rooms: the second is the domain of the magistrates, the third of the public prosecutor’s offices, and the fourth and final volume houses the presiding judges.

The stacked system results in large roof terraces — around a hectare in total — which have been landscaped and planted with trees and other vegetation. From an environmental standpoint, the project employs a range of strategies including the use of natural ventilation, the incorporation of photovoltaic panels on the façade, and the collection of rainwater.

Lobby
View from lobby
Courtroom
Lobby
Courtroom
Courtroom

The Canopy of Les Halles

The long-awaited cultural center and metro station created by architects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti on the site of a historic Paris marketplace is now a new urban reality. The design at Les Halles is known as the Canopy due to its enormous umbrella-like glass roof, which comprises 18,000 pieces of glass supported by 7,000 tons of steel.

Construction on the €1bn (US$1.42bn) project, funded by the City of Paris, began ten years ago following several architecture competitions to choose a design popular with both politicians and the public.

The completed Canopy and the center below replaces a deeply unpopular concrete shopping complex – nicknamed ‘the hole of Les Halles’ – which was built in the place of the market’s original 19th-century glass and iron buildings designed by architect Victor Baltard. They were demolished in the 1970s in an act many critics have described as cultural vandalism.

The new center features shops and high-end retailers, some of which are located underground, and these combine with leisure facilities such as a new library, a conservatory for the arts and a hip-hop center, all underneath the 270,000sq ft (25,000 m2) roof – described by Berger as a “translucent envelope”.

Explaining the design, Berger said: “The shape, its spaces, and its materialization arise from a confrontation between the state of things and the emergence of new energy to Les Halles. “The Canopy is designed as a substance. The ceramic glass material means that light diffuses in the day and it becomes a chandelier at night. It’s also a shelter at an urban scale against the weather, protecting a global space where one can travel at all times and in all seasons. The morphology of the architecture is the result of a balance between the building’s program and its dynamic location.”

Park facing the Canopy
Canopy – Courtesy of Bernard Lege
Canopy – Courtesy of Bernard Lege
Canopy – Courtesy of Bernard Lege
View od Saint Eustache from Les Halles – Courtesy of Bernard Lege
View towards the Canopy
Photo © R&R Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

'>As We Saw It – Part 1: Parisians Paris Part 1 of 4 Parts that covers Paris' living, architecture, spaces for people and the arts.

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As We Saw It – Part 1: Parisians Paris“As We Saw It” is a series of work-in-progress short documentaries centered around the question “what makes cities great?” While not pretending to provide scholarly answers to such a complex subject, we tried to document things relevant to it that caught our attention.   Our journey covered Paris, […]

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ZEVI Bruno Zevi on Architecture, Culture and Politics

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MAXXI’s celebration of Bruno Zevi’s 100th birthday with an exhibition on his prolific production as a historian and critic of architecture, who influenced many of the world’s best architects of his time, poses an important question: can Zevi’s ideas, today, help young people to become finer architects in the creation of a better tomorrow? The video that accompanies this blog tries to give, through Zevi’s own words, a visual answer.

Zevi as Zevi

 Zevi’s capacity to communicate ideas and inject enthusiasm into architects of all ages – and not only to architects – was unique. At the base of his exuberance was a passion for questioning “assumed truths.” He brought to the surface what was really meaningful of a particular place, time, culture and architecture, such as the human scale of Greece, the static space of Rome, the complexity of Gothic space, the movement of Baroque’s space and the “free plan” and organic space of the modern era. He believed that culture and politics should be intimately related, with culture leading politics and not the other way around.
While supporting the positive aspects of 20th Century ‘s Rationalist architecture – the Bauhaus’ architects, Le Corbusier and followers – he acknowledged its limits. He knew that Frank Lloyd Wright’s principles of Organic Architecture where long-lasting because based on nature and history’s essentials. His first books “Towards an Organic Architecture” and “Saper vedere l’architettura / Architecture as Space,” both published when he was in his early thirties, had a powerful impact in  Italy and around the world as well.
You can’t read Zevi’s books lying on a couch. They have to be studied. Similarly, the monthly magazine that he published during fifty years, L’Architettura, was filled with content, not about the on-going fashions, but on projects of relevance.  John Lautner once said that it was the only architectural magazine he read, and Wright himself considered Zevi one of the few critics he had respect for. When we facilitated the connection between Bruce Goff and Zevi, he published an entire issue on one of Goff’s works.

Zevi and Us

Our relationship to Professor Bruno Zevi spanned over thirty years.  To tell of the many stories that surrounded our long relationship through letters and one-to-one discussions would take many pages, but a few paragraphs can give an idea.
  • As a teacher, Zevi demanded to visit at least once all the important architectural monuments in Rome, and many other across Italy. That meant intense traveling, photographing, writing notes and drawing. We made many trips throughout Italy and across Europe together with our French friend Bernard Lege in his Citroën 2CV (“deux chevaux.”)
  • Occasionally, Zevi and his wife Tulia invited us to have lunch with distinguished guests. One of these was Carlo Scarpa and his wife, who told us about his recent visit to Louis Kahn’s office in Philadelphia. 
  • Zevi was the tutor of both our graduating theses, and  Luigi Pellegrin was our co-tutor. When we first met him, at midnight in his studio, we had a two-hour conversation. We remained in close contact with him until Pellegrin’s death, in 2001.
  • In 1971, when we made our “Wright pilgrimage” across twenty-five states, Zevi introduced us to Edgar Kauffmann Jr., then the director of the Industrial Design Department at MOMA, who facilitated for us exclusive access to Fallingwater. We spent there three days walking in and around, observing and photographing.
  • In 1975 we won the first prize for a conceptual design competition on high density in Israel. He wrote about our project in an article published in L’Espresso magazine. When we finished our first small apartment in Tel Aviv, he climbed ten floors – the elevators were not functioning – to visit us. He asked to send him photographs of it, and also of a project for a memorial in the Golan Heights which we had not won. Over the years he published several of our projects: our house in Westwood, which was the first on record to have had solar panels and a vegetable garden; and our Senior Housing project n Jaffa.
  • For New Year’s Eve of 1988, we visited Rome with our daughter Gabby, who was then eight years old. As it rarely happens in Rome, the city was covered with snow. It was a unique event. Tulia Zevi invited us for lunch.  As Professor Zevi was playful with our daughter, she shot a memorable photograph of him.

Zevi by Gabby Meghiddo, age 8, January 1, 1988,

Letter to Gabby

  • We met Zevi for the last time in 1998, when returning from a three-week workshop in Palermo between Italian, Israeli and Palestinian architects. The news of his passing, in January of 2000, reached us in Los Angeles, while on short visit at the turn of the millennium. When we returned to Tel Aviv, I wrote “Pronto Professore.” The poem was later on read at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles by poet-actor Jack Grapes.
On writing upon his death, Thomas Muirhead wrote in The Guardian (February 29, 2000:) “Zevi was a major architectural scholar and polemicist. With his passing, suddenly everything has gone flaccid; it is a disaster.”

It is now time to go back and learn from Bruno Zevi “How to Look at Architecture.”

Wim Wenders’ Humanism A Tribute to a Film Director who Focuses his Work on People

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The short documentary that accompanies this blog is a tribute to Wim Wenders.

About twenty years ago I discovered Wim Wenders’ work, through his film Wings of Desire. Later on, I fell in love with Buena Vista Social Club. Then came Pina, about the late choreographer Pina Bausch, whom we had first seen perform sitting on the last row of a “loges de côté,” way up at Paris’ Garnier Opera. Then came The Salt of the Earth, about Sebastião Salgado’s photography, whose life work honors the dispossessed and bears witness to the human condition. We saw it at a private screening in Hollywood. Wenders sat next to me, but we didn’t talk. He was much into himself, but we had a long conversation with Sebastião Salgado’s son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, who co-directed the film. And, recently, we went to see Pope Francis, preceding the interview of Ben Mankiewicz with Wim Wenders at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.
Wenders seemed relaxed and willing to bring up some of his experiences and ideas. He confided with an audience of filmmakers how surprised he was when he received a letter from the Vatican, asking him to make a documentary on the first pope from the Americas, also the first Jesuit.
Why did the Vatican or Pope Francis himself choose Wim Wenders to produce a documentary on the Argentinean pope? It was not only because of Wenders’ skills as a filmmaker, photographer, painter, playwright, and author. I think it was, above all, because of the humanism embedded in his work. The two men could communicate intellectually and emotionally. They could understand each other without talking.
Wenders told the audience that when he started his research, he realized that he had to tell something visually about Saint Francis of Assisi (1181-1226.) He watched many films on the subject, however, none was satisfying. Finally, he decided to produce black-and-white vignettes of St. Francis, with a look borrowed from the silent films era – a film within a film – shot on a vintage hand-cranked Debrie camera from the 1920’s.
Four interviews with the pope were recorded with a crew of three: cinematographer Lisa Rinzler, sound engineer Régis Muller and Wim Wenders. Archive footage from the pope’s many trips around the world and encounters with heads of state was later added, to provide context to the story.

My decision to make a short documentary about Wenders came as an urge. I had to offer a tribute.

Pina Bausch’s dancing company in the “Pina” film.
Pina Bausch – Photograph by Peter Lindberg.
Scene from “Wings of Desire.”
Blind Woman. Photo by Salvador Salgado.
Buena Vista Social Club, Adios, 2015.
Omara Portuondo and Gilberto Oviedo of BVSC, in Rome, 2012. Photo: Maria Laura Antonelli.
The Pope with Wim Winders – Photo: Focus Features via AP.
Ben Mankiewicz interviews Wim Wenders. Photo: Ruth Meghiddo.
Wim Wenders. Photo: Donata Wenders.

Sustainability, Vanguard Art and Pop Music Two Trailers and a Music Video Share Time and Space

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One: My Green Journey Trailer (2:30)

Two: Jasper Johns and Vanguard Art Today Trailer (2:30)

Three: My Believer Music Video (3:21)

The connection of three short videos on sustainability, vanguard art an pop music is time and space. They were all three produced during May 2018;  all three share space here. Why?

The trailers and posters for My Green Journey (17:48) and for Jasper Johns and Vanguard Art Today (35:34) were done in connection with my submission to several film festivals, as part of the required press kit (both films on Vimeo Private for now). My Believer, a music video, was produced in connection with an advanced video editing class that I took at Golden West College.

  1. My Green Journey

This documentary is a brief “autobiography of a vision.” It tells of Ruth Meghiddo’s path from architecture to urban farming and shows how sustainability can be improved by using the principles of permaculture design. Combining earthy pragmatism with futuristic visions, she shows how her concepts of permaculture and eatable gardens within our habitat may help to transform the world we live in.

Bill Mollison and Permaculture
School in China
Roof edible garden
Roof planting
Lobby
Vertical industrial farming
Luigi Pellegrin Architect

2. Jasper Johns and Vanguard Art Today

What was supposed to be a short video reporting on Jasper John’s exhibition at The Broad evolved into a short documentary that illustrates Johns’ path from being an unknown artist in New York during the 1950’s to becoming one of the leading artists during the 1960s and 1970s. My research lead to the questions “what is vanguard art today? Who are today’s Jasper Johns working within the present reality? Is there an equivalent in architecture?” The documentary tries to establish a link between one of the most important artists of the 1960s avant-garde, and some of today’s avant-garde artists in multiple disciplines and media: painting, sculpture, film, video-art, choreography, architecture. It provides a stimulant example for the young generation of artists.

Target
Jasper Johns – Map
Jasper Johns, Painting with Two Balls, 1960.
Jasper Johns, Summer, 1985.
Jasper Johns with composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham.
Jasper Johns with Leo Castelli.
At the Broad, 2018.
At the Broad, 2018.
At the Broad, 2018.
Scene fro film by Nataša Prosenc Stearns.
Photograph by Ralph Gibson
USA_Mexico border picnic. Artist: JR.
Sculpture by Janet Echelman.
Tamara Kostianivsky
Photo: Shirin Neshat.
Photo: Shirin Neshat.
Hotel in Spain. Architect: rank Gehry.
Art Gallery in Alberta. Architect: Frank Gehry.
Theater in Melbourne.
Rick Meghiddo by JR.

3. My Believer

My Believer is an experimental music video, my first and so far only one covering this genre. It is the result of my explorations during an advanced video-editing class that I recently took at Golden West College, taught by Thien A. Pham, a professional editor.

A long story short. In taking care of my “continuous education” in filmmaking, I enrolled in the class during the Winter semester of 2018. There were about students, out of which I was one of the few older than twenty years old and the only one above the teacher’s age. During the classes, we reviewed films’ techniques and special effects, and edited trailers, commercials, and segments of feature movies. Thien A. Pham, originally from Viet Nam, also gave us some insight on Chinese and South Korean filmmaking, which rarely reaches the American Public.

One of the assignments was to edit a music video. We were given the original music of “Believer,” created by Imagine Dragons, and also some clips produced by Adam Henderson, winner of the Adobe Creative Cloud’s Grand Prize.  We were asked to re-edit the visuals freely while covering the entire original recording. Although neither the music nor many of the clips on violence were “my cup of tea,” I took the opportunity to experiment.

Advanced Video Editing Class “selfie” by Thien A. Pham. May 22, 2018.

'>Jasper Johns in L.A. and Vanguard Art Today Who are today's Jasper Johns? What is really 'avant-garde' today in art and architecture?

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Jasper Johns’ exhibition at The Broad, titled “Something Resembling Truth,” is revealing. It illustrates the integrity of a life-long research and provides a stimulant example to the young generation. At a time when art flows in all directions without clear distinction and criteria between serious or trivial, committed or casual, Johns shows us how one can be an explorer of meaning and forms of expression without falling into platitude. The documentary tries to establish a link between one of the most important artists of the 1960s avant-garde, and some of today’s avant-garde artists in multiple disciplines and media: painting, sculpture, film, video-art, choreography, architecture. 

White Flag, 1955
Target with Plastic Casts, 1955
Green Target, 1955
Jasper Johns – Flags, 1958
False Start, 1959
Painting with Two Balls, 1962
Diver, 1962

The show raises some questions: What is really ‘avant-garde’ today? Who are today’s Jasper Johns? Are there any ‘Leo Castelli-like” art dealers around? Are today’s architects connected to the art scene, and artists connected to architecture?

JR, Kibera Slum, Kenya
Natasa Prosec Stearns, Mud
Janet Echelman, Urban Sculpture
Janet Echelman, Urban Sculpture
Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, 1994
Tamara Kostianovsky, The Persistence of Agony, New York
Emmanuelle Moreaux, Forest of Numbers
Emmanuelle Moreaux, Installation
Mark Bradford, Hirschhorn Museum
Florentijn Hofman, kraken, Shenzhen
Barke Ingels, VIA W57, New York
Barke Ingels, VIA W57, New York
Frank Gehry, Art Gallery, Alberta
Frank Gehry, Hotel Marques de Riscal, Elciego, Spain

Fast backward: the display triggered some memories. During the late 1960s we were students of architecture in Rome. Since the National Academy of Modern Art was next door to our school, we visited it frequently. The Gallery’s director, Palma Bucarelli, was a strenuous promoter of Abstract Expressionists as well as Neo-Dada, Pop, Minimalist and Conceptualist artists. It was during that time when we first came across some of Jasper Johns’ paintings.

In parallel, while working as apprentices at the studio of architect Luigi Pellegrin, we listened to time and again his insights on the new American art. Opening a publication illustrating contemporary American art, he would say “Look at this well: it is acid, it is crude, it is purposefully not-finished. It reflects our time.” The design of his house in via Aurelia carried some of these attributes.

Bruce Goff, Bevinger House, Oklahoma, 1955
Luigi Pellegrin, Residence, Rome, 1964
John Johansen, Mummers Theater, Oklahoma City, 1971
Mummers Theater Plan
Herb Green, Prairie Chicken House, Oklahoma, 1961
On the road to New York, 1971

When we traveled to the United States to visit and photograph Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture across the country, we started our trip in New York. It was 1971, and we were in our twenties. At the time, Soho was the epicenter of contemporary art. Leo Castelli had just opened two branches of his gallery on 77th street, one on the second floor of 420 West Broadway, and an even larger one at 142 Greene Street. It was there we saw newer works of Jasper Johns, along with those of several vanguard artists of the time: Frank Stella, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Sol LeWitt.

A month later, when having a private stopover at Phillip Johnson’s glass house in New Canaan, we visited, within his estate, Johnson’s ‘buried’ panting gallery and his underground sculpture gallery. They both contained multiple masterpieces of contemporary art.

Did we see any reflection of the art-of-the-times in architecture? Wright was out of all trends. The architecture of the establishment  “didn’t talk” to the on-going art vanguard. A rare exception was John Johansen’s Mummers Theater in Oklahoma City, built in 1970, outrageously demolished in 2014. Bruce Goff and Herb Green’s architecture were in-between organic and dissonant.

Fast forward to the present. The Broad exhibition of over one hundred Jasper Johns’ works, spanning sixty years of his career, is not a retrospective.  Works from different decades and in various media have been curated thematically, to demonstrate Johns’ career-long preoccupations.

And today? Art is breaking away from the confines of museums and art galleries. Perhaps the more strident example street art is the work of JR, which surpasses in scope that of Christo. He is not alone. There is a good number of forefront artists breaking new ground in film, video art, dance, sculpture, painting, music.

Medal of Freedom, 2011
Leo Castelli
Leo Castelli by Andy Warhol
Jasper John – Photo: John Lund

And in architecture? It is a tough call. Gehry led the way to liberate architects’ forms of expression, but the results come with many question marks about their social content. There seems to be an infatuation with the endless possibilities offered by new 3-D technology, but is… are these result also socially responsible?

Something Resembling Truth -Cover
Something Resembling Truth 1
Something Resembling Truth 2
Something Resembling Truth 3
Something Resembling Truth 4
Something Resembling Truth 5
Something Resembling Truth 6

And The Winner Is… Q&A with the five Foreign Films directors nominated for the Golden Globes Awards 2018

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“And the Winner Is…” brings segments of a Q&A with the five Foreign Films directors nominated for the Golden Globes Awards sharing their thoughts and experiences on the making of their latest films. Angelina Jolie, Ruben Östlund, Andrey Zvigagintsev, Sebastian Lelio and Fatih Akin sat next to each other at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theater and answered questions posed by the moderator, Mike Goodrich, on their films: FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER, THE SQUARE, LOVELESS, FANTASTIC WOMAN AND IN THE FADE respectively, dealing with contemporary themes addressing the world today.

Golden Globes Awards 75th Anniversary
Golden Globes Awards
Foreign Films’ Directors Nominees
Symposium with the Nominee Directors
Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) Sponsorship
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie
Director Ruben Östlund
Director Fatih Akin
Director Angelina Jolie
Director Angelina Jolie with Writer Loung Ung
Director Ruben Östlund
Director Fatih Akin
Director Sebastian Lelio
Director Andrey Zviyagintsev

The day preceding the Golden Globs Awards night we sat at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood surrounded by a public of creative people from the filmmaking community. The Q&A was moderated by Mike Goodrich. The directors, in spite of being competitors, were friendly and unassuming. Although my preferred film among the very good five was Ruben Östlund’s The Square, whom we had encountered the preceding day at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, I was very impressed by the humanity, eloquence and thinking of Angelina Jolie, well beyond her beauty and talent as an actress. Being acquitted with Cambodia’s genocide – back in 2008 we were commissioned to design a memorial in Long Beach, which has the largest Cambodian community outside of Phnom Penh – I thought that They Killed My Father First was important to raise the public’s awareness of the Cambodian tragedy.  The film was well crafted, besides its content.

Why was The Square my preferred film? Because I saw it as one of those films that mark a “before and after” point of reference, like La Dolce Vita in the 1960’s. It is a breakthrough in filmmaking, and I am glad that the Cannes Festival acknowledged that by awarding it the Palme d’Or. Many professional critiques disagree, and in fact, contrary to my predictions, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association did not award it, neither did it award Jolie’s film, which I considered the second best. The critique is that it is “disjointed.” Sure, and that’s the point. Östlund is perfectly coherent in the way he presents his social critique in a language consistent with the message. In a way, its satirical aspect reminded me the films of Luis Buñuel and the plays of Eugene Ionesco.

Fatih Akin’s input at the symposium was genuine. In the Fade is a very good thriller, but I agree with him that he would not have been there without the participation of Diane Kruger’s fabulous acting. The importance of this film dealing with terrorism and neo-nazi racism is that it focuses on the victim, rather than on the terrorists or the police investigators.

In Fantastic Woman, Sebastian Lelio confronted a difficult subject in telling the story of a transexual as a social message, to a great extent thanks to the performance of its star, Daniela Vega. He acknowledges that before the film he had had many prejudices about the subject, and only after long research he changed his mind.

Last but not least, Andrey Zviyagnitsev’s Loveless develop a theme that, unfortunately, it is quite universal: the victimization of children from an ugly divorce. The filmmaking is masterful in a  classical cinematographic way of painting a drama, but, like In the Fade, it is essentially a thriller.

Why would a filmmaker of architecture documentaries step on the field of feature films’ critique? An easy answer is ‘why not’? But the truth is that I see architecture as the ultimate expression of life itself, and it is nourished by all the arts and sciences. In many ways, I find that architecture and filmmaking have a similar process. As a personal note: in my first year at the School of Architecture of the University of Buenos Aires, we had a course named “Cultural Integration,” taught by Jorge Romero Brest. As part of the course, we had to go to watch assigned good cinema (Fellini, Antonioni, Tati, Kurosawa) every Saturday morning, and write a review by Monday. It was the way the school saw how to develop critical thinking in students that didn’t know a jota about architecture.

“And The Winner Is…” Obviously, YOU! 

Radio Day A Radio Interview Hosted by Nancy Pearlman

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 Radio Day from Rick Meghiddo on Vimeo.

 We went to the open-house day of the “Pearlman Cabin” in Idyllwild, designed by John Lautner.  While being at the event, Nancy Pearlman asked me if I would be willing to be interviewed for her  KBPK 90.1 FM Environmental Directions program. I said, “Yes, when, where?” “Today, here,” she said. “OK,” I answered, surprised.

Pearlman Cabin, Idyllwild. Architect: John Lautner.

Pearlman Cabin, Idyllwild. Architect: John Lautner.

Nancy Pearlman

Nancy Pearlman

Nancy Pearlman is an award-winning broadcaster, environmentalist, college instructor, anthropologist, editor and producer and who has made safeguarding the earth’s ecosystems a career. Since 1977, she has hosted and produced the country’s longest-running environmental radio show: Environmental Directions. 

I thought the main subject of the radio interview was going to be John Lautner. Unscheduled, and spontaneous, we touched many subjects: Wright, organic architecture, sustainability, Lautner’s architecture, the cabin’s integration to nature, Idyllwild, organic architects, Ruth’s Farm Urbana, solar energy, desalination and irrigation in Israel, population growth and a view of the future.  Several weeks later Nancy sent me an unabridged copy of the recorded interview, edited by Robert Payne. I decided to produce an abridged version of it, including relevant images and background music. The result is in the documentary included here.

John Lautner / Bob Hope Residence

John Lautner / Bob Hope Residence

John Lautner is one of the few Frank Lloyd Wright’s disciples I appreciate for his originality. He absorbed the essence of Wright’s philosophy without becoming an imitator of “the Wright’s style.”

I met him once. The encounter was circumstantial. During the late 1980s, a couple of clients we had planned to buy the Concannon Residence in Bel Air, designed in 1960, and wanted us to remodel it. We went to visit the site. The house was in very bad shape. It had been abandoned for more than five years by its owner, and puddles of water from leakings were everywhere.

Concannon Residence

Concannon Residence

Since Lautner was still an active architect, I suggested to visit him and check if he wanted to do the job, or if he had any particular suggestions. We went to his office, on the 7000-block of Hollywood Boulevard. In the middle of the waiting hall there was a huge model of a house at scale 1:20. When we entered his private office, a tall man with a grave voice stood up and shook our hands. I explained to him why we came. Facing my clients, he asked “with whom of you two shall I talk? I deal only with one person. If you have any differences of opinion, you solved them at home.” After listening what they had to say, he decided to delegate the project to us.  Before leaving, he handed to me a complete set of working drawings.

Our clients had indeed different opinions. So much so, that they ended up divorcing before the house was bought, and the project vanished. Recently, thirty years later, I learned from Lautner’s daughter, Judith, that the Concannon Residence had been demolished.

 

Stevens Residence, Malibu.

Stevens Residence, Malibu.

Segel Residence

Segel Residence

The problems ahead of us are not only quantitative, they are also qualitative. The message is how to create spaces for people in tune with resources and Nature.