RECONVERSÃO

RECONVERSÃO

    Price: $350.00

    Code: 2494

    Directed by Thom Andersen
    2012, 67 minutes
    Purchase: $350 | Classroom rental: $125

    A master of the essay film, Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself, Red Hollywood) surveys the work of Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura ' winner of his profession's highest honor, the Pritzker Prize ' whose astonishing, often-controversial projects embrace decay, the passage of time, local history, and nature.

    Eduardo Souto de Moura is one of the world's leading architects. As a student, he worked for the much-respected Alvaro Siza, before establishing his own architectural studio in 1980. Since then, he has completed more than 100 projects ranging from private houses such as his Casa do Cinema for film director Manoel de Oliveira in Porto to larger projects such as Porto's understated modernist subway network and the monumental sports stadium in Braga, the venue for the 2004 European Championships.

    In its Jury Citation, the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honor, noted, 'Eduardo Souto de Moura's architecture it is not obvious, frivolous, or picturesque. It is imbued with intelligence and seriousness. His work requires an intense encounter not a quick glance. And like poetry, it is able to communicate emotionally to those who take the time to listen. His buildings have a unique ability to convey seemingly conflicting characteristics'power and modesty, bravado and subtlety, bold public authority and sense of intimacy'at the same time.'

    Focusing on 17 buildings and projects (completed, abandoned or unrealized), accompanied by Souto de Moura's writings, as well as an interview with the famed architect, and employing Eadweard Muybridge's filmic technique (of shooting only one or two frames per second), Andersen masterfully brings forward what makes Souto de Moura an original: the incorporation of the passing of time into architectural designs, positing them within a history fraught with class struggle and societal changes, in a continuum with ruins'from which they may originate, and to which they will return'and with nature'which they frame, and by which they are framed.

    Reconversão is a provocative and thrilling investigation into great architecture.

    Subjects & Collections



    Reviews

    "Highly RecommendedA wonderful examination of Souto de Mouro’s work. A comprehensive introduction to the architect’s work."- Educational Media Reviews Online


    Further Reading

    "Mr. Souto de Moura is the subject of Reconversão, a new film by the Los Angeles filmmaker Thom Andersen, who could be the architect"s cinematic doppelgänger. Mr. Souto de Moura incorporates shards of the past " half-demolished walls, 14th-century waterworks, even his own disintegrating older structures " into new designs, choosing to embrace, rather than elide, the crumbling remnants of history. Mr. Andersen too has constructed a career around shoring up ruins, recombining and recontextualizing fragments of cinematic history into dazzling new forms." " Saul Asterlitz, The New York Times (read entire article)

    "Architect Edourdo Souto de Moura wins Pritzer" " NPR (listen to the story)

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