Making Space in Architecture

The Melbourne social circuit has few secrets left, but the DADo Film Society, screening architecture films both wonderful and obscure, is one definitely worth discovering.

The film arm to the Robin Boyd Foundation, the monthly evening sessions are diverse in subject matter but simple in format, more like a night in at your friend’s house than a night out at the movies. Being held in Robin Boyd’s Walsh Street home sets the ideal scene for shared interests over shared wine.

This Wednesday, DADo’s latest date will screen two films focusing on the contribution of women in architecture. Film sessions are introduced by a speaker of high esteem, be it visionary industry leaders or keen minded academics who leave the audience brimming with ideas as the films fill the darkness.

This Wednesday Melissa Bright, owner and founding director of MAKE architecture and Harriet Edquist, Professor of Architectural History in the School of Architecture and Design, and Director of the RMIT Design Archives will set the tone for the two films, Making Space: 5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture and Lina Bo Bardi: Together.

The DADo Film Society runs on a subscription basis so access is an annual commitment, however membership provides an excellent companion to the winter months with enough cheese and wine to keep you going. One off passes can be secured so keep your eyes peeled.

Navigator Film, Copyright Navigator Film, photo: Joerg Burger, Attila Boa “The Great Museum” (2014).

Making Space: 5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture 

2014, Dir. Ultan Guilfoyle, 50 mins, English.

For the first time in history, women are designing our world. A new generation of women is creating some of today’s most iconic architectural designs. They are the rising stars in what has been an all-male galaxy and they are literally and figuratively changing the landscape.

MAKING SPACE /5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture brings to the screen the personal journeys and outstanding designs of Annabelle Selldorf of New York, Farshid Moussavi of London, Odile Decq of Paris, Marianne McKenna of Toronto, and Kathryn Gustafson of Seattle, Washington DC ,and London.

Lively, engaging and character-driven, MAKING SPACE reveals how these women are succeeding in a profession long dominated by men. We hear about what drives and challenges them, what choices they have made, and what is the nature of their creative process. We see the women both inside and outside their work environments and visit spectacular sites near and far.

Lina Bo Bardi: Together
2012, Dir. Tapio Snellman, 11 mins,  English.
The film installation of Lina Bo Bardi: Together is an emotional journey into the intent of the architect. It is not a conventional architectural documentary explaining a building’s layout and spatial qualities, but rather it teases the spectator to understand the cultural context and the opportunities the architecture gives to the user.

The two hanging projections explore SESC Pompéia, Bo Bardi’s cultural centre in São Paulo in its various reincarnations. It shows how physically unchanged spaces have the flexibility to completely change in atmosphere and quality depending on the time of the day, the event and use. Synced to this imagery is the third projection on the ceiling and reflected in a pool of water, showing the context of the massive, raw city of São Paulo, which surrounds the centre.

A small screen tells another story of SESC Pompéia: Its a symphony of textures and materiality, of chipped paint and rough stone and flowing water. While no people are present in this film, the materials speak about footfall and use, of human creativity and about the tactile world of Lina Bo Bardi.

Two further conjoined screens show a duo of films shot in Salvador, in the Northwestern state of Bahia. One explores Lina Bo Bardi’s inspiration for SESC Pompéia through the Afro-Brazilian craft markets and the life in the colonial neighborhoods of the historic city. The other film shows Solar Uniao, the factory transformed by Bo Bardi into a cultural centre. It explores the historical buildings as reinterpreted by Bo Bardi and occupied by children creating objects for the exhibition with Vriesendorp.

The trailer can be found here.