Untitled (The Things Around Us)
The video assembly _Untitled (The Things Around Us)_ presents a heterogeneous scenario of constituent elements—environments, conditions, objects, and figures—that play a distinct role in the conceptual processes and design methods of the Brussels-based architecture and urbanism agency 51N4E and the research agency Rural Urban Framework (RUF). Formulated as a catalogue of “things,” in the philosopher Bruno Latour’s use of the word, the assembly presents the expanded ecology in which the architects work, and draws focus away from design or buildings as such. Instead, a dynamic panorama of natural and social forces across territories foregrounds context. The narrative unfolds as an aggregation of voices with which the architects engage in dialogue.
| Directors | Francesco Garutti, Irene Chin |
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Untitled (The Things Around Us) moves through the accumulated debris of contemporary life. Edited with remarkable patience and a rigorous eye, the film traces the toxic inheritance embedded in our built environment: the asbestos sealed behind plasterboard, the groundwater no one tested, the soils that will hold their poisons for centuries after the last resident is gone. Architecture, here, is not a backdrop but a protagonist: one that promises shelter and delivers exposure, that claims to organise human life and quietly fails it.
What distinguishes this documentary is the idea that it does not mourn the lost city. Instead, it watches steadily, without sentimentality, the machinery of disposal at work. The crane, the skip, the surveyor's report. The human figures who move through these spaces, improvising dignities in places never designed to hold them.
Untitled (The Things Around Us) is a portrait of our era that registers what most films prefer to look away from.
Joyce Joumaa
Writer and visual artist
-
Français
30 mn
Language: Français -
English
30 mn
Language: English
- Année 2020
- Pays Quebec
- Durée 30
- Producteur Centre Canadien d'Architecture (CCA)
- Langue English
- Sous-titres French
- Résumé court Through a catalog of "things", this essay film shifts the focus from architectural design to an extended ecology, revealing natural and social forces in dialogue.
- Ordre 4
- TLF_Applismb_CA 1
- Date édito CA 2026-04-10
Untitled (The Things Around Us) moves through the accumulated debris of contemporary life. Edited with remarkable patience and a rigorous eye, the film traces the toxic inheritance embedded in our built environment: the asbestos sealed behind plasterboard, the groundwater no one tested, the soils that will hold their poisons for centuries after the last resident is gone. Architecture, here, is not a backdrop but a protagonist: one that promises shelter and delivers exposure, that claims to organise human life and quietly fails it.
What distinguishes this documentary is the idea that it does not mourn the lost city. Instead, it watches steadily, without sentimentality, the machinery of disposal at work. The crane, the skip, the surveyor's report. The human figures who move through these spaces, improvising dignities in places never designed to hold them.
Untitled (The Things Around Us) is a portrait of our era that registers what most films prefer to look away from.
Joyce Joumaa
Writer and visual artist
-
Français
Duration: 30 minutesLanguage: Français30 mn -
English
Duration: 30 minutesLanguage: English30 mn
- Année 2020
- Pays Quebec
- Durée 30
- Producteur Centre Canadien d'Architecture (CCA)
- Langue English
- Sous-titres French
- Résumé court Through a catalog of "things", this essay film shifts the focus from architectural design to an extended ecology, revealing natural and social forces in dialogue.
- Ordre 4
- TLF_Applismb_CA 1
- Date édito CA 2026-04-10
