Arquinema Colectivo is an initiative by architects Andrés Angelero, a graduate of the architecture program, and Ignacio Sambarino, a graduate and professor in the Department of History and Theory of Architecture at Universidad ORT Uruguay. The collective brings together its founders’ shared interests in film and architecture. As they explained in this interview, from Arquinema Colectivo’s perspective, a filmmaker’s eye for buildings, cities, and interiors holds greater value than grand special effects.
Angelero and Sambarino teach the elective course “Architecture and Film” at the School of Architecture and have organized film-related events for architecture and interior design students, such as “Cine en el Patio” and “Covideo-19.” Recently, Arquinema Colectivo began a collaboration with the website Ministerio del Diseño, where they review films with content geared toward architecture and design enthusiasts.
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What is Arquinema Colectivo?
Arquinema Colectivo is a cultural, artistic, and professional initiative. It serves as a bridge between two disciplines: architecture and film. The collective seeks to explore the connection and mutual influence between these two fields, as well as other related disciplines such as urban planning, interior design, photography, design, music, dance, and many others.
To bring all of this to life, we see ourselves as a digital gathering place—a platform for consultation and research featuring timeless content that seeks to convey architecture from a different perspective to both insiders and outsiders of the architectural world. In this way, we develop an endless network of interconnected information that allows us to delve ever deeper into these still-uncharted waters.
In other words, we’re a kind of streaming service, but without paying and without having the movie on hand. It’s all about searching for and finding whatever you like best. That said, it’s the buildings, cities, and/or interiors that catch the eye—not the big special effects.
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How did the initiative come about?
The initiative stems from a fusion of profession and passion. This almost organic process led us to realize that the intersection of these two fields and their analysis opened up a vast landscape in which we could explore. Encounters at the university and shared interests led us to think about architecture through the lens of moving images. What about architecture in film? Why is there so much of it, yet so little of it mentioned, studied, or analyzed? Which notable buildings appear in which films?
The literature on the subject is scarce. However, it wasn’t just about reading a book and leaving it at that; rather, it was about training our eyes and understanding our profession from a different perspective: iconographies, atmospheres, and static staging settings. Any kind of analysis requires virtually unprecedented study and research. That is what fuels our interest.
This foundation inspired us to experiment: we created and taught an elective course on Architecture and Film and organized the “Cine en el Patio” film series, both at Universidad ORT Uruguay in Universidad ORT Uruguay. We also created a comic for USINA de Innovación Colectiva, based on stills from Alfred Hitchcock’s film *Rear Window*. A wealth of situations and experiences that served as a bridge for the pandemic-driven baby boom to give birth to the Arquinema Colectivo Instagram account—a space that now belongs to everyone.
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What does cinema offer to design enthusiasts and professionals?
Movies are a passion we all share. To a greater or lesser extent, we all have a connection to the movies, regardless of our tastes or our profession.
We believe in the cinematic experience as a beacon for understanding and appreciating architecture. It offers a sensation that comes close to physically visiting a building or interior that speaks to us, drawing our attention to elements that would be impossible to see in a photograph, a book, or a painting. One can speculate and/or draw conclusions from a scene simply by pausing to observe both architectural and design elements, since their very presence is telling a story.
There are innate elements of architecture, such as scale, that automatically place us in a different context. There is also the way space can be perceived and defined through movement. Based on these aspects, we can map out spaces and understand an entire scene in terms of camera movements, cuts, positioning, and so on.
In particular, the set design—whether it’s an interior or an exterior location—often contributes to the plot and the script itself. It creates an implicit context for the viewer, providing information about a character, their personality, or the physical space itself.
By this we mean that, thanks to Michael Keaton in *Birdman*, the theater spaces are now our own, or that we see our living-dining room reflected in *25 Watts*. We view architecture and design from a different perspective, almost with the same level of clarity as Jeff in Hitchcock’s *Rear Window *.
No matter what you do for a living, cinema offers an endless wealth of material on any topic you might be interested in. It’s just a matter of watching and analyzing films from a perspective that goes beyond mere entertainment.
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What are your favorite movies?
This is a question that, given the breadth of the topic, is very difficult to answer. There are so many factors that contribute to or detract from a film’s appeal that it’s hard to pinpoint any as a favorite. It’s always easier to discuss this in relation to a particular director. Nevertheless, we’ll give it a try, knowing full well that we won’t do it justice.
- A Clockwork Orange – Stanley Kubrick
- Zelig – Woody Allen
- The Truman Show – Peter Weir
- Ikiru – Akira Kurosawa
- Departures – Yōjirō Takita
- L'Avventura – Michelangelo Antonioni
- Amores Perros – Alejandro González Iñárritu
- This Is England – Shane Meadows
- Boyhood – Richard Linklater
- Call Me by Your Name – Luca Guadagnino
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How did they first become interested in cinema and movie content?
First and foremost, we are passionate advocates of watching movies in a theater. We don’t dismiss films in other formats, but we firmly believe that a movie must be seen in a theater to be truly and fully appreciated. Nothing can match that visual and auditory experience. That’s where it all began.
The mere act of stepping into the dark, infinite movie theater automatically places us in a secondary role. When the screen lights up, our connection to it becomes symbiotic, and all we have to do is clear our minds and take in every single sensation. Our relationship with the theater is the seed of all this. We are part of the generation that experienced the overwhelming transformation of the film industry—from the theater to VHS, DVD, MicroDVD, Ares, eMule, USB drives, and the ever-erupting volcano of streaming services.
In the beginning—and as we believe is the case with most hobbies—they are influenced by something or someone. Perhaps a family member, a friend, a chance encounter, or a single conversation with someone you no longer remember. As one begins to watch a lot of movies, that ability to glimpse connections and relationships between films kicks in, leading one to want to learn about directors, screenwriters, awards, resources, remakes, and all kinds of information behind the work of art—information that is also essential to understanding it fully. The “whys” behind the “whats.”
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How did your training at ORT help foster this interest in film?
A film critic once told us that cinema—the history of cinema—should be a subject, just another course in educational curricula at the elementary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Through cinema, one is often able to illustrate and visualize things in a more engaging format than conventional methods. Obviously, this should always be used as a supplementary tool, not as the primary material.
At ORT, the use of film as a learning tool wasn’t very common during our time there, with a few notable exceptions led by certain professors. In Theory and Practice of Architecture, for example, we had the opportunity to explore certain themes in the history of architecture by watching films that enhanced our understanding of them. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, The Spring, The Belly of an Architect, Blade Runner, among others. All of these and more are available to students in the ORT Centro video library; all that is needed is to inform and encourage their use.
Understanding architecture from a different perspective—one that’s hard to grasp as a student—allowed us to chart a course that encouraged us to think about architecture in terms of movement. If you find *The Belly of an Architect* or *The Spring* challenging early on in your studies, what comes next isn’t so daunting.
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What does your collaboration with the Ministerio de Diseño website entail?
We’ve had a professional relationship with architect Gabriela Pallares and shared interests for some time now. We find Ministerio de Diseño inherently interesting and follow and read it regularly. Our interest in each other’s content was mutual, and after a fruitful exchange of ideas, we proposed joining forces and working on a project together.
This led to the creation of a column produced by Arquinema Colectivo on the Ministerio de Diseño platform. The main idea is to expand and diversify the content generated on Instagram, which, given the nature of the platform, tends to be somewhat more abstract and fleeting. For MDD, this helps diversify content and thereby attract more readers and followers, and for us, it allows us to continually explore the relationship between architecture and cinema through ongoing practice.
We live in an age where social media gives us the opportunity to forge deep connections with communities or platforms that align with our interests. This isn’t our only collaboration. While we wait for movie theaters to reopen, we’re planning a film and architecture series. We’ll also be collaborating with Primer Plano Cine, a Spain-based online magazine that reached out to us after seeing our account and invited us to collaborate.
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Could you suggest a list of films from the past 10 years for architecture and interior design students in the School of Architecture?
1. Medianeras (2011) - Gustavo Taretto
2. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - Wes Anderson
3. High-Rise (2015) - Ben Wheatley
4. The House That Jack Built (2018) - Lars von Trier
5. The Favourite (2018) - Yorgos Lanthimos
6. Climax (2018) - Gaspar Noé
7. Vivarium (2019) - Lorcan Finnegan
8. Parasite (2019) - Bong Joon-ho
9. Alelí (2019) - Leticia Jorge
10. Labor (2019) - David Zonana