Great Expectations
by Jesper
Watchmeister, Director
First Run/Icarus Films, Brooklyn, New
York, 2007
DVD, 52 mins., color
Sale/DVD: $390; rental/DVD: $75
Distributor’s
website: http://www.frif.com.
Reviewed by Florence Martellini
University of Wales, Newport
martellini@btinternet.com
This documentary provides a fascinating
journey through a series of visionary
architecture projects that aimed to improve
man’s life by changing the society
he evolves in, his relationships to his
surrounding and others. At the end of
the 19th century, industrialization
and rapid technological progress encouraged
the development of a new spirit of ideas
and creativity and the later consequences
of two World Wars were an opportunity
to test them out.
The series starts with the spiritual buildings
of Rudolf Steiner constructed in 1919
and 1928 in Austria. He aimed at solving
the daily problems of humankind by bringing
together the scientific and the spiritual,
applying his ‘anthropology’
concept to architecture projects. And
it sounds as though his Goetheanum
architectural models have a potential
for the future in that they oppose the
functionalism principles which have tended
to reduce everything to terms of function.
Small ‘Steiner’ villages are
still being developed today.
The film moves on after the World Wars
with the Unité d’Habitation
of Le Corbusier that were built in 1952
and 1960 in France to cope with the shortage
of houses. Efficiency and function were
the chief preoccupations at the time——efficiency
and functionalism not only in the actual
construction of the habitat but also in
the ways in which its inhabitants would
live their life. For Le Corbusier it was
a response to criticism made against the
depressing tower blocks built in the USA.
Addressing the same problems, Levitts
& Son built between 1947and 1951
Levittown, in Long Island. These
pre-fabricated houses gave for the first
time the luxury to become house owner
to the American lower social class. In
1958 Brasil, Oscar Niemeyer was building
his functionalist city Brasilia
that was planned for car users only. Influenced
by Le Corbusier, he wanted to create a
socialist city that would give to all
its inhabitants equal access to a wide
range of services.
The documentary then ventures with Peter
Cook, member of the Archigram, who designed
his Instant Cities between 1960
and 1974. This was an anti-puritanism
act, opposing the functionalism that dominated
the era. He carried on his atypical projects
in 2001 with Kunsthaus in Graz,
Austria. It houses a museum and has become
and icon in itself thanks to its mysterious
container like shape. The interaction
between the building and the city is an
important feature in this design. The
documentary moves too briefly on to Buckminster
Fuller’s lightweight Geodesic
domes presented at the World’s fair
Expo 1967.
Moshie Safdie presented at the same World’s
fair his Lego like Habitat 67 of
which the aim was to re-invent the apartment
building by creating many orientations
and, thus, bring a sense of uniqueness
to each flat within it. However, like
the previous functionalist projects, Sfadie
aimed at a mass production and middle
income families - not really achieved.
Antti Lovag from the 1970s designed curved
surfaces buildings such as the Palais
Bulles in Theoule sur mer, France.
He attempted to re-invent spaces in architecture
by claiming the need to understand better
those of the human being that are not
naturally horizontal, vertical with right
angles. He does not move away from functionality
in that the furniture is integrated, but
it is also customised for the house as
Lovag acknowledges the uniqueness of each
space created for a particular kind of
individual(s). The 1972 principle of a
Supersurface following, which gives
an alternative model for life on the earth,
is the odd project out in that it seems
to have been included in this series with
very little thought put into it.
From then on, the documentary enters a
series of eco-architecture projects beginning
with Nine earth houses designed
in 1993 by Peter Vetsch in Dietikon, Switzerland.
His rounded houses are integrated into,
subordinate to nature e.g. the garden
becomes a good insulator by covering the
house. In 1970 Arizona, Paolo Soleri designed
the Arcosanti a functional eco-city
to maximise people interaction and minimise
the energy consumption and land use e.g.
multi-use buildings, living next to one’s
job. Based on the idea that man belongs
to something bigger than himself, it encourages
the development of multi-function communities.
Finally, the Venus project of Jaque
Fresco materialises the cities of the
future. Similar to Brasilia in
that it aims to work on a whole integrated
system, the Venus project is based
on the organic forms and functioning of
the human body and each house/flat is
customised for its inhabitants thanks
to a completely mechanised construction.
Equality and accessibility are key words
used throughout the documentary, but as
time goes by the uniqueness of each human
being and its interrelation with nature
becomes also a central concern. The selected
projects date from the end of the 19th
century until today; thus, the responses
to man’s problems have evolved unfortunately
the documentary does neither stress nor
substantiate enough the ways in which
these visionary ideas attempted to adapt
to new needs throughout time. And it makes
it difficult for the viewer to relate
a particular project to an overall context,
unless he is already knowledgeable about
it.
The documentary covers all sorts of social
and eco architecture projects, and it
is comforting to see that Rudolf Steiner’s
Goetheanum projects have not been
omitted. Being built on an anti-functionalist
model in an era dominated by functionalism,
Steiner’s designs are often relegated
to the shelves. This series gives no benefit
of the doubt on the success of all these
projects as no mention is made of their
failures - e.g. it took years to populate
Brasilia, a car driven city built in a
poor country - their lifespan and reasons
for not having been widely replicated.
The quality of the soundtrack and subtitles
is rather poor; consequently, if viewers
do not concentrate enough, they can easily
miss out the name and title of a project.
Archival footages link the various projects
to a set of succinct historical, social,
or geographical context.
All in all, Great Expectations
is a very interesting documentary, but
could be definitely improved.
