A civilization’s architecture tells you a lot about its values. Theocracies pour their resources into lavish cathedrals, dictators embrace harsh brutalism, and unbridled hedonism produced the Las Vegas and Dubai skylines. It might be the ultimate artistic indicator of cultural priorities because — as a couple filmmakers have recently pointed out — buildings have to reflect both the individual creativity of their architects and the priorities of the powerful people who commission them.
Russian documentarian Victor Kossakovsky’s new film “Architecton” examines our contemporary approach to architecture in an attempt to figure out what we actually worship. And this might come as a shock, but its findings are not particularly flattering!
The film is primarily concerned with our relationship between two building materials: stone and concrete. Every architectural wonder that has stood for thousands of years was made out of massive blocks of stone, while our phoned-in modern monstrosities are made of easy-to-pour concrete. Kossakovsky and his primary subject, Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, clearly love stone and abhor concrete. One of them comes directly from the earth, is capable of lasting forever, puts us in direct dialogue with the great architects who came before us, and allows Mother Nature to seamlessly take it over with plant life when human civilization no longer needs it. The other is synthetic, manmade, utilitarian and crumbles within decades but pollutes the environment forever.
It’s an important point, but Kossakovsky takes his time getting there. Much of the documentary consists of slow, stunning footage that places the relationships among man, nature, stone, and concrete front and center. He takes us inside collapsing Turkish skyscrapers that were destroyed by a deadly 2023 earthquake, showing us the ways that the structures have been utterly demolished while the human kitchens and living rooms appear disturbingly untouched. That footage is juxtaposed against ancient stone ruins (which are arguably holding up much better) and a seemingly endless shot of an avalanche that shows us the many different shapes of stone and sediment that nature places at our feet.
At first, it’s easy to think of the film as part nature documentary, part exploration into human industrial activities. But it could just as easily be argued that the entire film is a nature doc, as humans are ultimately a single species whose impacts on the environment are as much a part of nature as any other animal. Every time a majestic shot of stone is juxtaposed against a pathetic excretion of wet concrete, it becomes clear that we’re permanently changing our planet’s ecosystem by cutting corners on the things we build.
But, “Architecton” argues, there’s more than just our planet at stake. Our souls and humanity are also on the line. The depressing irony at the film’s core is that humans clearly understood how to make buildings that last for thousands of years, but are now actively choosing to build ones that last for 40 years instead. If the entire point of organizing ourselves into civilized societies is to preserve our knowledge and to get better at all of these artistic and technological pursuits, the crap we’re currently churning out is nothing short of insulting to the people who figured out how to build the Pyramids and the Parthenon.
It’s an uncomfortable reality that De Lucchi wrestles with every day. A decorated architect and designer with half a century of experience, he admits that he’s ashamed to have accepted a new assignment building a concrete skyscraper in Milan. The film occasionally checks in on him as he builds himself a garden, an implicit form of penance for his creative blasphemy. He takes pride in ensuring that a ring of stones are arranged in a perfect circle, something he notes has no functional purpose other than beauty and the joy of pursuing excellence.
Nobody is under any delusions that his small act of creative protest balances out the skyscraper he’s building. It’s a drop in the bucket — especially when, as the film notes, concrete is now the second most prevalent substance on Earth after water. But the film ends on a hopeful note that suggests if more of us start thinking about the construction materials that we walk by every day, maybe our civilization will stop letting the forever be held hostage by the now.
Grade: B+
An A24 release, “Architecton” opens in theaters on Friday, August 1.
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