CITY TALKS: Zac Athfield and Frank Gehry film

CITY TALKS: Zac Athfield and Frank Gehry film — Gehry’s Vertigo

"I don't ask for work. I don't have a publicist. I'm not waiting for anyone to call me. I work with clients who respect the art of architecture" Frank Gehry
City Gallery Wellington, Civic Square
Monday 24 August, 6pm
Free entry

City Talks is an ongoing series initiated by the New Zealand Institute of Architects Wellington Branch and presented in partnership with City Gallery Wellington.

This month, architect Zac Athfield introduces a screening of Gehry’s Vertigo, the fourth project of the Living Architectures series. The film offers a rare and vertiginous trip across the rooftops of the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, shaking up the idealised image of one of the most symbolic icons of contemporary architecture. Surprisingly realistic and highly emotional, Gehry’s Vertigo puts us in the shoes of the climbers in charge of glass cleaning, who tirelessly, 30 meters above ground, fight against a few specks of dust. Suspense and vertigo!

Living Architectures is a series of films by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine that seek to develop a way of looking at architecture and turns away from the current trend of idealising the representation of our architectural heritage. The films focus less on explaining the building, its structure and its technical details and let the viewer enter into the invisible bubble of the daily intimacy of some icons of contemporary architecture.

Ila Bêka is an Italian artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Paris. He trained as an architect with a degree from the IUAV of Venice and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paris-Belleville. Louise Lemoine is a French filmmaker who lives and works in France. She graduated in cinema and philosophy from the Sorbonne, Paris.

Zac Athfield has grown up within the Athfield Architects architectural practice/home in Wellington, establishing a strong grounding in architecture since his youth. Zac, who helped in the office from the early 1990’s and lived around it since 1970, recalls the time when he was the print boy and producer of hand drawn title blocks, and the office flirted with Frank Gehry as a potential collaborator.

Ath was very interested and aligned to aspects of Gehry’s work. The result was a submission for the Te Papa competition. The potential of that scheme probably wasn’t seen by the selection committee. Gehry’s next significant project was the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. As opposed to Te Papa, Bilbao’s Guggenheim was singularly Gehry and represented a step change. However, its strongest defining features are possibly not the aspects of Gehry’s design that drew Ath and the office in.

The screening will be followed by refreshments.
Film running time: 48 min

For more information on Living Architectures please visit: http://www.living-architectures.com/.

ENDS

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