Architecture and Architects - American Architects
Frank Lloyd Wright |Maya Lin |Frank Gehry |Hearst Castle| Radio City

December 27, 1932 Radio City Music Hall opens. At the height of the Great Depression, thousands turned out for the opening of Radio City Music Hall, a magnificent Art Deco theater in New York City. Radio City Music Hall was designed as a palace for the people, where ordinary people could see high-quality entertainment. Since its 1932 opening, more than 300 million people have been to Radio City to enjoy movies, stage shows, concerts, and special events. 

Radio City Music Hall was the brainchild of the billionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who decided to make the theater the cornerstone of the Rockefeller Complex he was building in a formerly derelict neighborhood in midtown Manhattan. The theater was built in partnership with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and designed by Donald Deskey. The result was an Art Deco masterpiece of elegance and grace constructed out of a diverse variety of materials, including aluminum, gold foil, marble, glass, and cork. Geometric ornamentation is found throughout the theater, as is Deskey's central theme of the "Progress of Man." The famous Great Stage, measuring 60 feet wide and 100 feet long, resembles a setting sun. Its sophisticated system of hydraulic-powered elevators allowed spectacular effects in staging, and many of its original mechanisms are still in use today. In its first four decades, Radio City Music Hall alternated as a first-run movie theater and a site for gala stage shows. More than 700 films have premiered at Radio City Music Hall since 1933. In the late 1970s, the theater changed its format and began staging concerts by popular music artists. The Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, which debuted in 1933, draws more than a million people annually. The show features the high-kicking Rockettes, a precision dance troupe that has been a staple at Radio City since the 1930s. 

The Bridge 2006 People suffer largely unnoticed while the rest of the world goes about its business. This documentary exploration of the mythic beauty of the Golden Gate Bridge, the most popular suicide destination in the world, and those drawn by its call. Steel and his crew filmed the bridge during daylight hours from two separate locations for all of 2004, recording most of the two dozen deaths in that year and preventing several. They taped interviews with friends, families and witnesses, who recount in sorrowful detail stories of depression, substance abuse and mental illness. Raises questions about suicide, mental illness & civic responsibility as well as the filmmaker's struggles with his complicated material (Click on title to buy)

Sketches of Frank Gehry by Sydney Pollack 2005 Sketches of Frank Gehry by Sydney Pollock chronicles the friendship between director Sydney Pollock and the famed architect every bit as much as it does Gehry and his work, and it makes for a delightful window into the world of creativity and genius. Gehry has made a big imprint (which critics might liken to Bigfoot's) on architecture at the turn of the 21st century; his molten-looking visions have graced buildings small (actor Dennis Hopper's industrial-looking home in Venice, Calif.) to enormous (the sprawling Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain). He's the genius behind Los Angeles's sweeping Walt Disney Concert Hall which, though formidable in shape and size, manages to nod gracefully to its adjoining, beloved predecessor, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. (He also created the controversial Experience Music Project museum in Seattle, which residents have likened to a giant psychedelic beetle crouched at the foot of the Space Needle.) (Click on title to buy)

My Architect: A Son's Journey 2003 A riveting tale of love, art, betrayal and forgiveness in which the illegitimate son of a legendary architect undertakes a worldwide exploration to discover and understand his father's and the personal choices he made. Louis I. Kahn is considered by many historians to have been the most important architect of the second half of the twentieth century. While Kahn's artistic legacy was a search for truth and clarity, his personal life was secretive and chaotic. His mysterious death in a train station men's room left behind three families -- one with his wife and two with women with whom he had long-term affairs. The child of one of these extra-marital relationships, Kahn's only son Nathaniel, sets out on a journey to reconcile the life and work of this mysterious man. Revealing the haunting beauty of his father's monumental creations and taking us to the rarified heights of the world's celebrated architects and deep within his own divided family, Nathaniel's personal journey becomes a universal investigation of identity, a celebration of art and ultimately, of life itself. (Click on title to buy)

Architectures, Vol. 1 An excellent assortment of buildings is highlighted on this disk, and though the architecture is beautiful what truly makes these disks worthwhile is how the filmmakers place the architecture in its society and elaborate on the building's  role in it. Architecture's social, political, and aesthetic aspects are all touched upon in these vignettes, providing one with a unique view of the structures. These videos are better than some books, even, not only in their depth but also because through film one gets a unique view of the building and how it "lives" in its environment. Very informative, always beautifully shot, the "Architectures" series is a thought-provoking addition to any architectural library. (Click on title to buy)

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