Monday, 15 October 2007 |
Let’s just all rewind the movie of our lives a bit and go back to school. We at Coolhunter are thinking of heading to University of London’s Birkbeck College and finding our way to the classes at its Film & Visual Media Research Centre.
You cannot tell from the outside that the odd set of buildings at
London’s Gordon Square offers anything remarkable at all. The older
building does have a pedigree – it is the former home of both Virginia
Stephens (later Woolf) and economist John Maynard Keynes. The drab
1970s extension to the building does not even deserve another look.
Except inside.
Award-winning London-based Surface Architects won the competition to
create within the buildings the permanent home of the Film & Visual
Media Research Centre. Surface transformed the basement, ground floor
and the extension into a unique state-of-the-art 80-seat cinema
auditorium, surrounded by a media study suite, seminar rooms and
offices.
Ian Christie, Birkbeck’s Professor of Film and Media History, describes
the exciting new building “...the new cinema auditorium – already
being referred to as ‘The Screen on the Square’ – is as soberly
dedicated to ideal screening conditions as the surrounding break-out
spaces and stairway are an exuberant display of pure form and colour.
In fact, Surface’s extraordinary projection of intersecting cones has
various filmic associations: the jagged angles recall the Expressionist
set design of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, an influential German film of
1921; and the lurid colours evoke Andy Warhol’s silkscreen portraits of
film stars.”
Key players at Surface are Richard Scott, who formed it in 1996, and
Andy MacFee, who joined Surface in 2001 as director. Both have worked
with Will Alsop and other notables. Surface is also one of 47 practices
worldwide selected to work on the Athlete’s Village for the London 2012
Olympics. By Tuija Seipell
|
Reel Style 
Delicious
Technorati
Digg
Stumble