It's the Holidays: Time for Gaudi! Sagrada x 2 at the Gene Siskel Film Center

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Holiday traditions?  Sure, the Music Box's always kicks of the season with it's Sound of Music Sing-a-Long.  (And not to be outdone,  U of C's Doc Films has now launched their own Sing-a-Long-Alban-Berg's-Wozzeck.) But how many Christmas traditions revolve around architecture?  Not just in, but about it?

I know of at least one.  The Gene Siskel Film Center has made it it's own holiday tradition to show  Hiroshi Teshigahara's mesmerizing 1985 "cult" documentary, Antonio Gaudi from Saturday, December 20th through Tuesday, the 30th.

And this year, the Siskel is upping the ante with the local debut of Stefan Haupt's new (2012) documentary, Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation, which opens with 6:00 p.m. showing this Friday the 12th, with showings through Monday, December 29th.
Both films foncus on the ongoing construction of architect Antonio Gaudi's masterwork, Barcelona's Sagrida Famila.  While work began all the way back in 1882, it remains unfinished, and while a report several years ago speculated on a completion date of 2026 (the centennial of Gaudi being killed by a streetcar in 1926) or 2028, it remains unconfirmed.  Still, much has been done since Teshigahara's film came out nearly 30 years ago, as can be seen in the difference in the images of the structure between the two films.  A roof was finally over put in place in 2000 with the completion of vaulting over the nave.  Pope Benedict consecrated the church in 2010, but an arson-set fire in April of the next year set back the construction schedule even more.

As the work has progressed, controversy has mounted.  Back in 2008, a group of Catalan architects argued for a halt in the construction to preserve Gaudi's original vision, which many claim has been corrupted, moving further and further from Gaudi's original vision the closer it gets to completion.  It's become a cross between a holy site and a theme park, with 3 million tourists paying over €30 million to take the tour each year, a crush that will inevitably increase when Sagrida Famila's 550-foot-tall sixth tower, complete with elevator to wisk tourists to the top, is finished sometime in the future.

Haupt's film has been getting mixed reviews, but for any architecture buff it remains a must-see, telling many fascinating stories of both the building and the people working on it.  If nothing, seeing the images of the building in both films is the best way, other than in person, to experience Gaudi's grand, crazy work at something closer to the scale at which it can be fully appreciated.

The Gene Siskel Film Center is offering a discount for those buying tickets for both films.  Check out all the details and showtimes on the Siskel's website, Antonio Gaudi here, and Mystery of Creation here.

Pecha Kucha 28, Lally's Air from Other Planets, World (Color) Palette 2015+, Dyja's Unbuilt Third Coast, Christmas Gaudi and more - the December Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events

December is all parties and holidays, but that there are still dozens of great items for you to make time for on the just-published December Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

It begins on Sunday the 1st with a lecture on the modernist S.B. Fuller House in Robbins, and continues of Tuesday the 3rd with volume 28 of Pecha Kucha Chicago, and the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois looking at Loyola's new Sports and Student Center. 

The academic theme continues on Wednesday with Patrick Loughran of Goettsch Partners discussing his firm's new home for the Bienen School of Music on Northwestern's Evanston campus.
Thursday the 5th sees Sean Lally at the Graham signing copies and talking about his new book, The Air from Other Planets: A Brief History of Architecture to Come, and a screening of the parkour documentary, My Playground at the Wit Hotel.

On Thursday, the 12th, Kai-Uwe Bergmann of BIG (Bjarke

Ingels Group) is at the MCA, where Pamela Bannos discusses Cap Streeter and the development of Streeterville on Saturday the 14th.


On Wednesday the 11th, RTKL's Diane Legge Kemp and Smith+Gill's Christopher Drew discuss China, Abu Dhabi and Offshore Urbanism: Exporting our Design Capital at AIA Chicago, while over at CAF, William Tyre talks about Howard van Doren Shaw's Second Presbyterian Church.  On Monday, the 16th, Hafele hosts the unveiling of the Color Marketing Group's World Palette 2015+.

Wednesday the 18th, CAF lunchtime, author Thomas Dyja talks about Unbuilt

Third Coast, including such unrealized projects of Mies's convention center, the scorched-earth Ft. Dearborn plan, and Harry Weese's concept of building a string of islands off the Lake Michigan shore.  That evening at CAF, an Archeworks panel including Studio Gang's Claire Cahan, SOM's Phil Enquist and moderators Iker Gil and Joshua G. Stein, among others will be considering Trickle Up: The Scale of Water in Chicago.

And to end 2013, the Gene Siskel Film Theatre will be continuing their holiday tradition of a week of screenings of Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1985 documentary Antonio Gaudi.

There's a lot more we haven't mentioned here, so check it all out on the December Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Will December be the last of our monthly calendars?  We've received a grand total of about 5 responses from readers regarding our possible decision to suspend the calendar for 2014.  If you have strong thoughts on the matter please let us know.

New Music for Teshigahara's Gaudi, plus Zardini, Arets, Lorado Taft, Edward Dart - more for March!

Yes, we're still adding to the March Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

If you missed 60 Minutes' segment last night on Antonio Gaudi and Barcelona's Sagrada Familia, you can check it out in the above video.  The cathedral has certainly come a long way from when I was there over ten years ago - the wonders of substituting concrete for stone, I guess.  And on the Gaudi front, here's something really cool. 

Showing Hiroshi's Teshigahara's mesmerizing documentary Antonio Gaudi has become an annual Christmas holiday staple at the Gene Siskel, but now Access Contemporary Music is giving the film a new spin, with a one-time-only showing at Architectural Artifacts on March 19th accompanied by a live performance of a new score by Chicago composers.  More details here.

The week starts off Monday the 11th with a face-off between Canadian Centre for Architecture ExecDir Mirko Zarini at UIC, and new IIT Dean of Architecture Wiel Arets at Unity Temple.

On Tuesday, the 12th, SEAOI's March dinner meeting at the Parthenon (again, the restaurant, not the bombed-out wreck in Athens) has structural engineer John R. Hillman talking about the striking new 35th Pedestrian Bridge.  That same evening, Lynn Allyn Young talks about her new book on Lorado Taft, Beautiful Dreamer, at the Glessner House Museum.

Wednesday the 13th, Richard Becker, Lisa Skolnick and Susan Benjamin discuss Edward Dart's Ancel House at CAF lunchtime, while in Crown Hall that evening, it's the 127th birthday party for Mies van der Rohe, which also will mark the investiture of Wiel Arets as the new Dean of the architecture school Mies founded.  No more kicking back in a Barcelona chair and smoking a chair, alas, but there will be cocktails and hors d'oeuvres.

Thursday the 14th,  again at IIT, but at the Auditorium at the Koolhaas Campus Center, Kenneth Frampton stops by to talk about The Past and Future Prospects for Architectural Education, while at the Richard Driehaus Museum, Rolf Achilles discusses Great Midwestern Panes from such Chicago artists as Healy and Millet and Max Guler.

That's just a few of the two events this week, and nearly thirty items still to come on the March Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.