City in Film

Getting under the city’s skin.

This seminar was part of the Spring residency at the Center for European Studies and Architecture [CESA] in Riva san Vitale, Switzerland. The primary aim was to allow the students to “get under the skin” of the cities we visited by providing views on and into the urban fabric that one might not get as a visitor. We studied how space and time are constructed through film by applying findings to alternative forms of representation (such as drawings and models). This seminar laid the groundwork for the Berlin workshop’s study of the inhabitants of public space, who both occupy space and move through time. Ideas toggled between the two fields of inquiry: in the seminar, seeing through the lens and transcribing what is seen in another mode; and in the workshop, being behind the lens and directing how those decisions are made through the camera work itself.