Vanity and Validation
Films celebrating the design and construction of projects by celebrity
architects are now ubiquitous. But do we actually learn anything from
them?
By David D’Arcy
March 2004
Remember those “making of” documentaries—the ones that
chronicled the filming of a major motion picture? It was a genre that
promised to give fans the back story, an “inside look” at the
nuts and bolts, a glimpse of the truth behind the legends, maybe even a
peek at Liz, Liza, or Julia before the makeup went on. That formula has
discovered architecture. The now ubiquitous “building doc”
celebrates the design and construction of prominent projects by
celebrity architects. These films are often part of a new building’s
marketing campaign (sometimes with their own budget lines). But since
the same people commissioning the buildings tend to commission the
documentaries, don’t expect any hidden truths to emerge.
Building docs tend to be unabashed tributes. It’s as if a finished
museum isn’t enough: it requires a tremendous story to justify its
tremendous cost—a creation myth. Films have been produced about the
Getty Center, the new Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, the Miho Museum,
the National Gallery of Art, and many others. Several building docs are
currently in the works, including Mr. Gehry Goes to Washington, a
look at the planned expansion of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which
received a $15,000 NEA grant for research. The museum has already
produced a short Gehry tribute, which it uses for fund-raising. Filming
on Mr. Gehry Goes to Washington will resume when the Corcoran
raises another $50 million to actually complete the building.
These films tend to follow a familiar dramatic arc. The process is
depicted as tough but triumphant, the architect is
“visionary,” the trustees who funded his work courageous, and
the public overwhelmingly grateful for the new building, which is often
presented as a “gift” from its creator. It’s clear
everyone involved benefits from these vanity productions (except perhaps
viewers without a direct connection to the project). Museums can reward
patrons of a trophy building with a supporting role in the accompanying
trophy film. They also get an infomercial to bring visitors (and donors)
through the door. The celebrity architect can take the film to potential
clients with a “here’s what you get—if only you have the
courage” pledge.
The genre’s prototype is The National Gallery Builds, the story of
the construction of I. M. Pei’s East Building. The film is just 13
minutes long and was made back in the mid-1980s, but all of the core
elements of the typical building doc are in place: a gentleman
architect, a supportive museum director serving as diplomat, a design
that bewilders construction workers (who rise to the challenge like the
“Mighty Ducks”), a weighty narrative tone, and a happy ending.
Add trumpets, some urgent piano lines as the concrete starts pouring,
stir in crane and helicopter shots, edit well, and serve.
More documentaries are on the way. Two installments of a planned trilogy
on Daniel Libeskind’s Denver Art Museum expansion have been
completed. Selection of an Architect shows Libeskind (dressed in
business casual rather than his cosmopolitan Zen priest outfit) charming
locals with motivational speeches in an effort to win the job over Thom
Mayne and Arata Isozaki. A city official says he’s eager to
“walk through his building” and calls meeting the architect a
“religious experience.” In volume two, Spatial Dance,
Libeskind enlightens earnest, awestruck members of the public with his
usual brand of verbal pyrotechnics. The three films will cost $150,000, a
minimal amount given the building’s $62.5 million budget.
As always, the exceptions show what these films could be. In The Once
and Future Pariser Platz—A Square in Berlin Comes Back,
released in 1999, director Michael Blackwood provided an intriguing look
inside the jury charged with selecting an architect for the U.S.
embassy. Blackwood usually finances his films independently to avoid
being consumed by an institution’s publicity machine. When he
pitched a documentary about the Renzo Piano–designed New York Times
building to the Times, which proposed funding it, discussions stalled
when the newspaper insisted on editorial control. “I told them,
‘That wouldn’t do much good because then it would just be a
New York Times film,’” Blackwood says. “They said,
‘Then why should we do it?’ So the thing kind of died.”
Concert of Wills—directed by Susan Froemke and the surviving
member of the legendary Maysles Brothers documentary team,
Albert—is a surprisingly intimate look at the making of the Getty
Center. For twelve years the filmmakers served as project
“archivists”; two years prior to the museum’s opening,
they began turning the countless hours of raw footage into a
documentary. The Getty agreed to fund it—at a total cost in excess
of $1 million, including archival footage—but insisted on final
cut. The result is an unexpected jolt of “transparency”
(institution-speak for candor). The film is more conflict than
cooperation, with the Getty deflating Richard Meier’s hauteur by
hiring Robert Irwin to design the asymmetrical garden and then drafting
Thierry Despont to design the interior finishes. Amid all the conflict,
however, Concert of Wills still conveys the official Getty
message—that its new home is wonderful (despite the difficult
Meier). “They hired us because they wanted a Maysles film,”
Froemke says. “At first they were nervous about it, but they let it
live.”
The building doc is now common enough to have produced an odd subgenre:
a look inside the unbuilt. The most ambitious example here is the
newly-released A Constructive Madness—Wherein Frank Gehry and Peter
Lewis Spend a Fortune and a Decade, End Up with Nothing, and Change the
World (directed by Jeffrey Kipnis, Thomas Ball, and Brian Neff).
Partially bankrolled by Lewis, the film explores big questions like the
genesis of art, which it follows grandly from Jimi Hendrix to eight
years of experimentation on the unbuilt Lewis house outside Cleveland,
which narrator Jeremy Irons augustly tells us begot the shapes and
courage that inspired Bilbao. Never too far from the frame is client
Lewis, who is called the “most interesting insurance executive in
America in an otherwise lackluster field.” The film winds
ambitiously through meetings and models (Philip Johnson is a constant
presence throughout—we’re never told why) until finally, a
decade and a few large ocean waves later, we reach Bilbao.
So what do these building docs teach us? Not much (although you will
learn in Making the Modern, the new $750,000 paean to Tadao
Ando’s Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, that the architect has a
dog named Le Corbusier). I’ve come to think of them not as films
but home movies, institutional metaphors for the family trip to the
Grand Canyon. The family just happens to be your hometown’s civic
elite, chronicling the making of its newest monument. They can also be
seen as official histories, latter-day filmed monographs. Clearly these
home movies are intended to be critic-proof. But if you’ve seen
enough home movies, you know it’s hard to watch them for too long
if you’re not a close relative. That hasn’t stopped people
from making them—and probably won’t stop the museum trustees
either. |
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Tadao Ando “stars” in Making the Modern, a $750,000
paean to the new Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art.
David Woo |
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