Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
At the advent of the the green architecture movement in the 1960s, the US artist and architect James Wines noticed a problem – he thought that many of the designs were so ugly that no one would want to preserve them, and so they ultimately wouldn’t be so ‘sustainable’ after all. In response, Wines developed his own distinctive architectural aesthetic, sketched out in drawings, and centred on creating designs that incorporated and responded to nature. Part of a video series titled Built Ecologies from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, this short documentary explores the work of the architecture and environmental arts studio Sculpture in the Environment (SITE), which Wines founded in 1970 after getting his start as a sculptor. In particular, the video focuses on a SITE project to provide eye-catching designs for nine BEST big-box stores between 1972 and 1984 as part of an unconventional project to ‘put art where you least expect to find it’.
video
Nature and landscape
‘A culture is no better than its woods’ – what our trees reveal about us, by W H Auden
5 minutes
video
Architecture
A 3D rendering of the Colosseum captures its architectural genius and symbolic power
17 minutes
video
Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
video
Art
Background music was the radical invention of a trailblazing composer
17 minutes
video
Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
video
Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
10 minutes
video
Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
video
Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes