Lecture: “From architecture to cinema and back again”
Aerial drone view of a building. Followed by a close-up of an architect speaking in front of her/his library. Are these images familiar to you? If you’re an architect, they are: you’ve all seen what’s known as an “architecture film”. But what exactly is an architecture film? A promotional film? An educational piece?
Voices are being raised today that invite us to (re)write the history of our discipline in a polyphonic and sensitive way, questioning the hegemonic narratives and representations that have dominated architecture until now. By placing her hybrid work in the heritage of ethnographic and documentary cinema, architect and film director Elodie Degavre invites us to consider “architecture film” as a tool for gaze shifting.
This is not a lecture on the history of cinema. It is a trip from architecture to cinema and back again, seeking for a creative and unique way of portraying the complex life of buildings.
Elodie Degavre is an architect, educator, and film director based in Brussels. She worked in several architectural offices (V+, A Practice) as a project manager and collaborates since 2015 with the architectural review A+ Architecture in Belgium. Elodie teaches in the International Master’s in Architecture at UCLouvain (BE) and in Maastricht Academy of Architecture (NL). Working also as a researcher in the field of sensitive architectural research methods, she released a documentary film about affordable housing experiments in the 1970’s: Life, assembled. It is possible and recommended to watch the film for free before the lecture as part of the KUMU documentary on February 26th at KUMU Art Museum.
Life, assembled (2022) has been shown at a number of renowned festivals, including Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam, FIFA Montreal, Architecture and Design Film Festival New York and Chicago. It won the Audience Award at the Brussels Art Film Festival and the Best Screenwriting Award at Rijeka History Film Festival.