Videos

Videos from around the world including architecture and design films, interviews, and lectures

My Place: Massimo Vitali

My Place: Massimo Vitali

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This Barbara Anastacio-directed episode takes us away from the crowds and into the tranquil Tuscan city of Lucca where Vitali lives with his wife and son.

Sophia Kalkau Interview: Bubbles of Humour

Sophia Kalkau Interview: Bubbles of Humour

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Kalkau uses herself as well as her – often “egg-shaped” – sculptures in her photographs: “I think my objects take on a different life when they are in my photographs.” She applies different techniques while developing film, one of them being solarization, which she also uses to revive old pictures with an added layer: “It creates a strange, obscure and dream-like state in the photos.”

When she creates art in public spaces or buildings, such as churches, Kalkau feels that it has to be “as simple as possible so you understand why it’s placed there. And on the other hand, I’d like it to have an element of surprise.” In continuation of this, Kalkau feels that humour is necessary for art: “Humour undermines power or diffuses a situation.” 

Sophia Kalkau (b. 1960) is a Danish artist, who primarily works with sculptures and photography. Kalkau has exhibited widely and her decorative commissions can be seen in venues throughout Denmark including Grøndal Church and Skejby Hospital. She is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the 2008 Eckersberg Medal. In addition to her sculptures and photographic works, Kalkau has also written prose and books on aesthetics. For more see: kalkau.dk/

Sophia Kalkau was interviewed by Nina Humphrey at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark in November 2018 in connection with the exhibition ‘Sophia Kalkau – The Material and the Egg’.

Camera: Nina Humphrey, Sofie Høyer, Susi Castelo and Patrick Lang 
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner, Nina Humphrey, Sofie Høyer, Susi Castelo and Patrick Lang 
Edited by: Nina Humphrey, Sofie Høyer, Susi Castelo and Patrick Lang 
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2019

Supported by Nordea fonden

Nanna Ditzel Design Interview: An Image of Life

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“I want to have ideas about design that create an image of life as I see it,” said ‘The First Lady of Danish Design’, Nanna Ditzel (b. 1923-d. 2005). Watch her daughter, Dennie Ditzel, talk about the experimental and innovative designer, who became a leading figure in the renewal of Danish design.

“They wanted to leave the conventional world that they believed they lived in. They wanted to get away from the typical living room with a sofa, two armchairs and a coffee table.” Dennie Ditzel shares how her parents got the idea of taking advantage of a room’s three dimensions, by standing on the dining table one evening to see what the view was from up there. This, she feels, reflects how their design was about allowing people to live and to think in a different way – to have unconventional seating arrange-ments and hence unconventional ways of being together: “She wanted all of us to enjoy a setting where it was possible to be free and creative.” In a time where the norm was furniture with angles, Ditzel’s furniture was very organic, imitating nature in shape and function.

Although Ditzel is now among the most influential in Danish design, being a female designer in the 1950s and 1960s wasn’t easy “because you weren’t considered a man’s equal.” To Ditzel, however, nothing was impossible, and Dennie Ditzel talks of how her mother always managed to persuade foremen to try out things that they thought were impossible: “In most cases, it could be done. So she was very ambitious and innovative and experimental.”

Nanna Ditzel (b. 1923-d. 2005) was a Danish designer. As part of the vanguard of the reinvention of functionalist design traditions, Ditzel created furniture designs that were sculptural, vibrant and fashion-forward, and she has left a firm imprint on private homes and public spaces alike. Ditzel shared a design studio with Jørgen Ditzel (b.1921-d.1961), and the young couple designed in a wide range of disci-plines – in furniture, textiles, wallpaper, jewellery and utility objects. In this period they won several competitions including the Lunning Prize in 1956. After Jørgen’s death in 1961, she continued their joint project alone. Ditzel was awarded numerous prizes including the Gold Medal in the International Furniture Design Competition, Japan (1990) as well as Denmark’s highest design honour in 1995, the ID-prize. In 1996, she was elected Honourable Royal Designer at Royal Society of Arts in London (1996) and was awarded the lifelong Artists’ Grant by the Danish Ministry of Culture in 1998. For more see: nanna-ditzel-design.dk

Dennie Ditzel was interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg in Copenhagen, Denmark in November 2018 in connection with the exhibition ‘Danish Modern – Nanna Ditzel’ at Trapholt.

Camera: Jacob Solbakken 
All photos included in this video: Courtesy of Nanna Ditzel Design 
Cover photo: Stairscape, ca. 1965 by Nanna Ditzel Design 
Produced and edited by: Kasper Bech Dyg 
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2018
Supported by Nordea-fonden

Alejandro Aravena – To Design is to Prefer

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“I work in a ‘do tank’ not in a ‘think tank’.” In this personal video interview, the Chilean Pritzker Prize-winning architect Alejandro Aravena shares his unorthodox path to architecture and offers us insight into the important working process of his socially conscious – and highly innovative – architecture office, Elemental.

“Physically shaking a building, everything that was not strictly necessary falls. So why wait for the earthquake? Can’t we submit design to a mental force that has taken out everything that is not strictly necessary?… Hence the name of our practice, Elemental.” Because they primarily work in Chile, which is prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes, Elemental seek to understand and respond to the forces of nature in the same way that they respond to cultural or emotional forces. An aspect of this, Aravena feels, is the importance of bringing their work to its innermost core, when there’s no more to remove: “That moment of irreducible existence.” In continuation of this, Aravena, who is “trained in a context with a scarcity of means,” argues that the fewer resources they have, the more meaning every single thing that you were given has to have.

In architecture, process is key, Aravena stresses, and in order to succeed, one must try to understand what it is that really matters to a given society – try to understand the uniqueness of a question and resist the urge of thinking we know the answer in advance: “We spend time designing the question before jumping into the answer.” As a consequence, they never know in advance what a project will look like, an example of this being the headquarters of the Inter-American Development Bank Group in the middle of a poor neighbourhood in Buenos Aires. A building that became a bridge – also physically with a raised linear park – between the wealthiest and the poorest in society. This project, Aravena feels, combines in one single building, everything that they’ve learned: “Architecture has in its innermost core a very powerful tool, which is that the project is synthetic. It can by nature coordinate things that otherwise may be dispersed.” Because they are used to working with constraints and willing to risk their reputation as well as failure every time they do a project, they work hard in advance to anticipate any conflicts. The opinion which matters most to them is that of the user, and so they like to “think out loud with the user” and build projects “around those moments of consensus.”

Alejandro Aravena was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in October 2018

Inside the converted orangery that Muller Van Severen call home

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Fien Muller and Hannes Van Severen—the creative duo behind Ghent-based design studio Muller Van Severen—are no strangers to having unknown visitors explore their carefully curated home. For the 2017 edition of Design Miami, the couple created an exact replica of their living room as an installation, collaborating with global room-for-rent service Airbnb. Earlier this year, filmmaker Emile Rafael travelled to the Belgian city to meet the designers in the space they call home, bringing the usual In Residence treatment to a space that we would become softly obsessed by.

The home itself, a large 19th century building accompanied by an adjacent studio, was originally an orangery that has later been renovated into a modern workspace. Prototypes and samples sit alongside materials and references, hinting at the thoroughly-researched process by which their highly refined furniture and objects come into existence.

The objects conceived and produced by Muller Van Severen tend always toward the deceptively simple, favoring geometric lines and subtle silhouettes over complicated fussiness. Their home also plays host to many collected objects, as well as a small wooden chair designed and built by their daughter. Bloc colours, supported on legs and frames of black, copper, and gold, mean that the objects remain light and uncomplicated, while also revealing—on closer inspection—their finely balanced engineering. Soft leather seats are suspended in frames of sharp metalwork; while plastic shelves rise confidently and sparsely against the wooden floors. Honest, solid materials prevail over fussy and complicated resources. The resulting furniture speaks confidently for itself.

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