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لما نور الشمس يدخل المكان بكسوف،،

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La Chimera (2023, dir. Alice Rohrwacher)

#woher das sanfte und das gute kommt

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Eclipse of the Sun in Venice in July 8, 1842 by Ippolito Caffi.

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i've been reading a lot of Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey books, and I have also just rewatched Peaky Blinders and i am tickled by the fact that tommy shelby and lord wimsey theoretically exist at the same time and could have crossed paths. they could have bonded over their shared trauma in wwi

#lord peter wimsey #tommy shelby #peaky blinders

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If you persevere, in time you will have an entirely different problem – not that life is meaningless, but rather that life has almost too much meaning. As the scales fall from your eyes the world rushes into focus, presenting itself with a kind of vibrational eloquence that can, at first, be almost overwhelming. Everything shimmers, everything clarifies, everything wrestles for your attention. Trees feel super-real, their roots plunged into the earth, their branches stretching to the sky, birds are flesh and blood souls, fragile with life, the sky unfolds and rolls, the ocean crashes, people fascinate, books are beautiful, children are whirling dynamos of chaos, dogs bark and cats meow, flowers shout, your neighbour glows, and God runs like a helix through all things. The world awaits you, humming with meaning. You are alive with potential. You are not dead.

— Nick Cave on getting clean, Red Hand Files #258

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home of vanessa bell, english painter and sister of virginia woolf

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one of my absolute favs

IF WE NEVER MEET AGAIN— a @jilytoberfest bittersweet fic

“I love you,” Lily says, quietly. The night holds the words for a moment, then releases them. She hasn’t yet looked at him. “I’m in love with you, and I’m tired of pretending I’m not.”

Everything splinters after that.

READ | PLAYLIST

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Telling my kids this was The Bear.

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Amber Fort, Rajasthan, 16th century 

FILMS FEATURING NON-WESTERN ARCHITECTURE PART 2: SOUTH ASIA

I shared PART 1: AFRICA, because I'd realised how much my design education benefitted from a childhood home that was full of National Geographics rather than Architectural Digests. Architecture school curriculums can be very western-centric, and often exclude building traditions in which whole communities, rather than a single architect, contribute. When you add this to the relative difficulty of visiting some regions in person, it’s possible to miss works of amazing beauty and innovation. 

1. Rajasthan's 8th Century Chand Baori Step Well was built to conserve as much monsoon water as possible. The distinctive structure was used in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012), THE FALL (2006), BHOOL BHULAIYAA (2007) and BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL (2011).

2. HUMAN PLANET, EP.7 RIVERS (2011) Part of this episode explores the amazing Living Root Bridges of the Meghalaya region of India, which were formed by weaving live rubber tree roots in a symbiosis of natural and human engineering.

3. OCTOPUSSY (1983) In this bizarre Bond Film, Roger Moore infiltrates the titular character's floating home, filmed at what was originally the 18th century Udaipur Palace, Jag Niwas. The site was converted in the 1960s into the Taj Lake Palace Hotel.

4. REBEL ARCHITECTURE: PAKISTAN, A TRADITIONAL FUTURE (2016) This episode looks at the work of Pakistani architect Yasmeen Lari, who helps to rebuild and future-proof villages in the flood-stricken Sindh region, using local materials and indigenous techniques.

5. BHUTAN ARCHITECTURE TOUR (2020) A nicely shot video which follows a group of Indian students on an architectural tour. It doesn't go into depth, but provides an interesting visual introduction to some traditional Bhutanese architecture. The last building visited is the iconic 7th century Paro Taktsang (Tiger’s Nest Monastery). There's some misinformation online about this being a location in Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS (2005), but that was a cgi building, and the scenes were shot in Iceland.

6. Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa blended buildings with nature, and vernacular traditions and materials with modernism. His work has long deserved to be showcased cinematically, and finally two films dedicated to his architecture have come out in the last couple of years, BAWA'S GARDEN (2022), and GENIUS OF THE PLACE (2023). Neither are currently available to stream online, but this video provides an interesting introduction to Bawa's life and work.

7. THE MINARET OF JAM (2018) A short video from UNESCO, which looks at the the spectacularly-sited 12th Century Minaret and Archaeological Remains of Jam, in Afghanistan. The 65 metre minaret is on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger, and this looks at the process of documenting the structure for preservation.

8. STUDIO MUMBAI (2012) A short film by Daniele Marucci looking at the design and artisan construction processes employed by this small but renowned Indian practice, which fuses vernacular architecture with modernism.

9. The 16th Century Amber Fort and Palace in Rajasthan has been used as a filming location for many Bollywood movies and TV shows, including JODHA AKBAR (2013-15), KHOOBSURAT (2014), and BAJIRAO MASTANI (2015). Of the countless YouTube travel vlog offerings about this fort and palace, this short video seems to offer the most succinct and informative video tour. 

10. STUDIO SANGATH (2023)  B V Doshi’s humanist approach to design, and blending of Western and Indian influences has inspired generations of architects. In this nicely-made short video, his granddaughter Khushnu Panthaki Hoof, also an architect, gives us a tour of his studio.

11. SHAH JAHAN MOSQUE THATTA (2019) A short, nicely-shot video, which takes us on a tour of this building, and includes aerial footage of its layout and context. Photo: Amber Fort, by Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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Mildenhall, Suffolk.

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#earth without art is just eh #focus on creating delight for others #ballett #prix de lausanne #Youtube

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happy galentine's girls

ROMANCE MOVIES FOR ARCHITECTURE / URBAN DESIGN ENTHUSIASTS

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! As always, here's the annual list, with some new additions.

1. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000) Widely considered to be one of the most beautiful films ever made, this is as much a lyrical portrait of 1960′s Hong Kong as it is a tale of doomed romance. The 12th Century Temples of Angkor Wat also make an appearance.  

2. PAST LIVES (2023) A bittersweet musing on romantic destiny and cultural identity, this film is also a fond ode to New York. Brooklyn's Jane’s Carousel, in its Jean Nouvel-designed pavilion, features in a key scene. Its used as a reference to nostalgia, and as a nod to the questions of fate and destiny with which the characters are grappling.

3. EMMA (2020) This was shot on location at the 16th Century estate of Firle Place, whose interiors were refitted to evoke a bright, candy-coloured dollhouse, symbolising Emma’s well-intentioned manipulation of others’ lives. The distinctive macaron-style colour scheme looks contemporary, but is historically accurate: the now-faded decorative items of the Regency era were once very vibrant, with bright colours favoured as a way of indicating prosperity.

4. BERGMAN ISLAND (2021) This gently-paced film provides a cinematic escape to the beautiful Swedish island of

Fårö, a small community where director Ingmar Bergman lived and shot several of his films. Multiple dwellings from the Bergman Estate feature in the film, especially the dark stained mid century 'Hammars', a unpretentious and quietly beautiful house set on a rocky shore, where Bergman lived from 1967 until the end of his life.

5. COLUMBUS (2017) This was marketed as a romance film, but whether or not it is one depends on your interpretation of the central relationship. Either way, there’s no doubt that it’s a great movie for people who love mid century architecture.

6. ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (2014) In the sub-category of Night-time Cities in Films, this has no equal. I’m yet to visit Detroit, but no other movie has captured, for me, the exact feel of after-dark Tangier.  In both locations, Jim Jarmusch has harnessed an exotic, seedy, beauty that perfectly matches his characters and story.

7. CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017) Luca Guadagnino is known as a ‘director of the senses’ - unusually adept at evoking for us the sights, sounds, and even the smells and tactile experiences of a time and place (such as a 16th Century villa in 1980′s Italy). But here he accomplishes something beyond this - enabling us to momentarily feel for ourselves the sensation of falling deeply, precariously, in love.

8. A SINGLE MAN (2009) This story of love and loss stars John Lautner’s 1949 Schaffer Residence. The film’s immaculate Mid-Century style is the result of a collaboration between director Tom Ford and Mad Men production designer Dan Bishop.

9. BEFORE SUNSET (2004)  As in the previous instalment of this trilogy, the pleasures of wandering around an unfamiliar city provide this film with its context and structure, and also reinforce its romantic theme of a journey of accidental discovery.

10. I AM LOVE (2009) A Jill Sander-clad Tilda Swinton is the conflicted matriach of a wealthy Milanese family, living in Piero Portaluppi’s 1935 Villa Necchi.

11. MAESTRO (2023) This biopic was filmed in New York City, Connecticut, and at Tanglewood, a music venue founded in 1938. Much of the film takes place in the Bernsteins' apartment in New York's Dakota building. The home was recreated as sets, but for the scenes which took place at the family's Connecticut weekend house, that actual property was used.

12. HER (2008) Spike Jonze’s near-future LA is a cleaned up, greened-up amalgam of the actual present-day city and the Pudong business district of Shanghai, infused with the palette of a Jamba Juice store.

13. PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019) This film encourages us to gaze, unashamedly, at every detail of its sparsely beautiful 18th Century interiors, spectacular coastal landscape, and cast of four female characters. And it generously imbues that gaze with significance, by aligning it with that of an artist, or a lover.

14. LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003) The loneliness, cultural disorientation, and general sense of freedom and discovery that come with being in an utterly foreign city provide the catalyst for an unexpected romance.

15. MANHATTAN (1979) See this film for a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, and for the fact that its central love story actually takes place not between the characters of Isaac and Tracy, but between Woody Allen and New York.

16. BLADERUNNER (1982) As with some of the others, this isn’t technically a romance film, but its love story is as integral to the movie as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, Sumner Hunt/ George Wyman’s Bradbury Building, and that perpetually rainy cyber-punk city. Cinema’s most beautiful (and romantic) urban dystopia.

17. BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945) One for all the urban designers out there, this is a film about two individuals who are drawn into each other’s lives by the use of public transport :-). For a less iconic riff on the same theme, there’s also the Meryl Streep / Robert De Niro FALLING IN LOVE (1984) (in which De Niro plays an architect). Both films celebrate the kind of chance encounters which are missed when sitting alone in a private vehicle.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS: CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994), WALL E (2008), WINGS OF DESIRE (1987), THE PHANTOM THREAD (2018), THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001), ONCE (2006), LA JETEE (1962), AMELIE (2001), THE FAULT IN OUR STARS (2014), À BOUT DE SOUFFLE (1960). (Photo: Schaffer Residence, John Lautner, 1949 (A Single Man) jasonschmidtstudio for AD France)

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Ursula K. Le Guin, The Child and the Shadow, 1974

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Romy Schneider in 'Le Mouton Enragé', 1974 dir. by Michel Deville

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#earth without art is just eh

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TILDA SWINTON Tim Walker ph. for W magazine (2023)

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Perfect Days (dir. Wim Wenders, 2023)

#wim wenders #perfect days