Multimedia
Countless architecture DVDs are pro- Juan Andrés Bello, director
duced every year, the numbers increasing
exponentially, filling more and more
shelves in architecture libraries. Scholars
are increasingly involved in their produc-
tion and new hybrid genres are emerging,
combining film with specialized texts.
Perhaps the most impressive example of
this is the extraordinary Arquia collection
put together by the Fundación Caja de
Arquitectos of Madrid. This substantial
and growing collection constitutes a serious
curatorial effort to identify some of the
best films of recent years and present them
along with an essay by a noted architect or
historian—for example, Joseph Rykwert,
Rafael Moneo, Juan Navarro Baldeweg,
Alejandro Zaera Polo, Josep Quetglas,
Benedetta Tagliabue. The combination of
film and text, sometimes with the addition
of new documentation, allows for rethink-
ing both the films and their architectural
subject. In a relatively short time, the
DVD medium has moved from simple
conversion of existing films or production
of promotional material by architects or
clients to a scholarly medium in its own
right. Likewise, two recent DVDs on
modern houses in Latin America and
Africa by European architects show how
the film itself can be used as a medium of
original scholarship capable of unique
perceptions and interpretations of archi-
val material.
beatriz colomina
Multimedia Review Editor, JSAH
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70, no. 1
(March 2011), 130–137. ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN
2150-5926. © 2011 by the Society of Architectural Histori-
ans. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content
through the University of California Press’s Rights and
Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/
reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2011.70.1.130.  and of the deep friendship with Ponti that
130   
JSAH7001_09.indd 130
developed along the planning and building
El Cerrito
Producciones Triana, Caracas, 2006, DVD,
57 min.
Manthia Diawara, director
Maison Tropicale
Ka-Yelema Productions, Portugal, 2008, DVD,
58 min.
Two iconic modern houses of the late for-
ties and early fifties, by Gio Ponti and
Jean Prouvé, are the subjects of the films
El Cerrito by Juan Andrés Bello and Mai-
son Tropicale by Manthia Diawara. Their
comparison provides the opportunity to
examine how ideas and objects are rein-
terpreted as they travel from one cultural
context to another and the ways in which
the supposed universality and transport-
ability of European modernism was
adapted to the realities of the tropics.
El Cerrito is the historical re-creation
of an architectural journey that bridges
cultural boundaries between Europe and
Latin America in the period after World
War II. Based on the manuscript of the
same title by Hannia Gómez (published in
2009), Juan Andrés Bello’s film takes a bio-
graphical approach to the story of the Villa
Planchart (1953–57) also known as El
Cerrito for its location on the top of a hill
with 360-degree views over Caracas and
the 2,700-meter peak of El Avila. The
documentary alternates photos, historical
footage, letters, press recordings, personal
interviews, and architectural data. Espe-
cially significant is the testimony of Anala
Planchart, recorded shortly before her
death. As a leading voice throughout the
film, she reconstructs the story of the
house with insightful details of her mar-
riage to a prosperous automobile dealer
process of the tropical villa.
The well-documented storyline starts
with the violent changes of the motorized
city in the 1940s and 1950s. Induced by
the oil boom and its consequent immigra-
tion, the cityscape of the provincial capital
was radically transformed by the building
of major infrastructure during the dicta-
torship of Marcos Pérez Jimenez (1952–
58). Dreams of progress and urban
modernity transformed Caracas into a
desirable modern destination and a labo-
ratory for testing urban and architectural
utopias of the modern movement in the
praxis of local architects and some of the
most prestigious international architects of
the time. This is the climate that brought
the Milanese Gio Ponti to Caracas, where
he would find the place “to realize its ideal
of architecture.”1
Ponti first traveled to Caracas in Janu-
ary 1954, invited by Armando and Anala
Planchart. The architect would cross the
ocean by airplane accompanied by his
daughter Letizia. He had been asked by
Mrs. Planchart to design a “house without
walls” when the wealthy couple first visited
the architect’s studio on Via Dezza in Milan
in 1953, trying to persuade him to accept
the commission for their long-desired resi-
dential project. Such a dream was the start-
ing point of a close design relationship
feverishly developed through the “letter-
manifest,” a strategic drawing device for the
delivery and materialization of Ponti’s ideas
for the tropical dwelling. The letters, per-
fectly preserved by Fundación Anala and
Armando Planchart in Caracas, are invalu-
able historical documents of their long-
distance correspondence (Figure 1).
As Bello’s historical narrative shows, the
trip to Caracas would seal the professional
and affective connection between Ponti
1/29/11 4:58 PM

and his Venezuelan clients but, more
importantly, it would also be the begin-
ning of the architect’s fervent admiration
of what he considered the Venezuelan
“spirit of freedom.” In the many letters
exchanged with the Plancharts, and in his
numerous subsequent articles published as
director of the magazine Domus, Ponti
demonstrated his deep fascination with
Caracas for its tropical beauty and scenic
potential for modern architectural dis-
play.2 He witnessed the wave of enthusias-
tic optimism in Caracas, such a contrast
from his own Milan shaped by the trauma
and economic ruin of two world wars. In
the Caracas of the fifties he saw a virgin
ground, an open field of possibilities for
unlimited fantasy and creation.
To capture the architectural artifact
resulting from such optimistic spirit, Bello
provides a detailed overview of the
Planchart’s house, giving a special consid-
eration to the formal solutions of the
design and construction. The architec-
tural tour introduces the observer to the
universe of the Villa Planchart through a
display of spaces, colors, transparencies,
textures, artistic objects and furniture,
orchid collections, marble floors, ceramic
murals, and painted walls and ceilings,
which were rendered in a diamond-line
pattern that sets the theme for the interior
design. Despite his theoretical faith in
standardized mass production and his idea
JSAH7001_09.indd 131
Figure 1  Gio Ponti, sketch
from the first drawing-letter
for Villa Planchart, 21 August
1953
that craftsmanship and industry could be
amalgamated by using a common artistic
process, Ponti believed individual expres-
sion to be the only way to establish an
imaginative treatment of form.
This individualistic spirit guides the
historical reconstruction of El Cerrito’s
building process, whose forms and func-
tions were unique by Ponti’s careful
designing of every detail of domestic
space, and for which most of the non-
reproducible materials and hardware were
specially fabricated in Italy. Rather than
dwelling on the symbolic and material
transits of modern architecture from
Europe to Latin America in the postwar
period, the director focuses on the idyllic
circumstances embodied in the poetics
of the Villa Planchart, an idealistic tone
that is maintained throughout the film.
Together with the subject of Ponti’s
inventiveness, the outstanding natural
location has the other leading role in El
Cerrito. The obsessive desire of the clients
and architect was to build a house to frame
the fantastic cityscape and tropical gar-
dens. By playing with notions of solidity
and lightness, the external walls were sup-
ported rather than supporting, alternating
between opaque and transparent surfaces
that controlled entry of light. In his inter-
pretation of modern living Ponti created
the illusion of a house without weight that
was as “gentle as a butterfly on top of the
hill” strategically illuminated to accentu-
ate the floating effect of the suspended
surfaces and roof. Bello sums up the per-
fect marriage of architecture and site by
quoting Ponti: “the happiness of the trop-
ics is the perfect condition for the flower-
ing of modern architecture.”
Mathia Diawara’s Maison Tropicale was
based on Mozambique-born Angela Fer-
reira’s artistic work for the Portuguese
Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in
2007, whose theme was the African Dias-
pora. Ferreira’s contribution referenced
Jean Prouvé’s Maisons Tropicales, the
prefabricated houses he designed for the
French colonies of West Africa in 1949
and 1951. Ferreira invited Diawara to join
her in the archaeological adventure of
traveling to the original sites of the
houses, in search of “the ghosts, shadows
and ruins” of the structures. The film-
maker reconstructed the story of Prouvé’s
Maisons Tropicales against Ferreir’s per-
sonal view of the houses in a critical dis-
course that has roots in the colonial and
post-colonial history and in the legacy of
European modern architecture in Africa.
We witness Ferreira’s creative process as
she searches for the traces and follows the
displacements of the aluminum-steel
houses installed in Niamey (Niger) and
Brazzaville (Republic of Congo). Those
houses, airlifted and assembled in Africa
more than half a century ago and long
idle, ill-maintained, and bearing evidence
of civil wars, were dismantled and taken
back to France where they were restored
in 2000 and sold at auction to private col-
lectors, to be displayed in major capitals.
The film begins in the Biennale, where
we discover Ferreira’s constructivist sculp-
ture as a wood interpretation of Prouvé’s
portable housing unit. Inside an open con-
tainer in light aluminum profile frame, the
artist builds her autobiographical experi-
mental display in the white cube exhibition
space. She reflects on the need to work
“with subject matters and contents that
help her understand the violent events, the
images and objects that are around her in
order to propose answers to some of the
more essential questions” which has been a
central issue in her artistic practice from the
beginning of her art studies in the Univer-
sity of Cape Town. In such a questioning,
m u lt i m e d i a     131
1/29/11 4:58 PM
 she addresses notions regarding the use-
fulness of the theories and myths of mod-
ern art and architecture in the application
of modernism in the African continent.3
Through an aesthetic and political
approach that is centered in objectivity,
Ferreira tries to demonstrate how the
ghost of imperialistic French politics still
hang out among the statues, monuments,
and in the visible marks of the “strange”
buildings of the mechanical age that
appeared in Niamey and Brazzaville.
But the leading voice throughout this
film is Diawara’s spoken narrative. By
overlapping interviews with the artist and
the testimony of neighbors, residents,
government officials, and former owners
of the properties in both cities, he exam-
ines the seminal tensions among colonial-
ism, modernism, and architecture in its
journey between Europe and Africa dur-
ing the period after World War II. Along
with realistic storytelling, he explores
underlying concepts of development, cul-
tural patrimony and identity in the appro-
priation and political translation of some
Western aesthetic concepts in Africa.
The Maisons Tropicales were commis-
sioned from the Atelier Jean Prouvé (AJP)
by local government in consonance with
utopian spirit of modernism in post-war
France. The houses were intended as inex-
pensive, temporary structures to be assem-
bled quickly in order to solve the housing
shortage in French colonies in Africa. As a
principal requirement, AJP had to establish
an exclusive sales contract with the Société
Technique d‘Utilisation d‘Alliages Légers
(Studal) and increase the use of aluminum
in the housing designs in order to support
the expansionist objectives of Aluminium
Français in the colonies after the war.4 The
aluminum and steel prefabricated house
complied with the law requiring that all
building components used in Africa be of
European manufacture and its assembly-
line production in keeping with the era’s
machine-age aesthetic.5
Yet Prouvé oversaw the process from
the perspective of an artisan, faithful to his
early training in metalwork. In the three
prefabricated houses for Niamey and
Brazzaville, the architect expresses his
technical philosophy by using a common
portal frame as the principal structural
132    j s a h / 7 0 : 1 , M a r c h 2 0 11
JSAH7001_09.indd 132
Figure 2  The concrete slab after removal of the Niger house Maison Tropicale
device, implementing interchangeable
external and internal wall components.
Sophisticated insulation systems, ventilat-
ing walls, and roof shelters were also
planned to the extreme climate conditions
of their tropical environments.6
The modular architecture designed for
housing and high school in Niamey (1949)
responded to the functional requirements
of the school and its headmaster’s resi-
dence. Following local traditions and the
flat site, the Niamey school was erected
with a floor suspended several inches
above a concrete slap to promote air flow.
To hide what locals would interpret as its
“eccentric appearance,” the building site
was shielded by a concrete-block wall that
remains today, together with the emptied
platform, as “a kind of loss in the existence
of nothingness,” as Ferreira pointed out
during her visit (Figure 2).
The two Brazzaville houses (1951–52)
were intended to serve as the information
office for Aluminium Français and the
home of its director. These two proto-
types—separated only by a walkway—
shared the basic structural and functional
concepts as the house in Niamey, as well as
the enclosing mechanical system with slid-
ing holed walls, aluminum venetian blinds
that delimited a passageway around the
house, and a two-layered steel ceiling that
was the principal ventilating and natural
lighting devices. The chief differences
were determined by the terrain; the irregu-
lar topography of Brazzaville and the prox-
imity to the river required elevating those
houses on tall stilts. In the testimony of the
latest resident of the Brazzaville houses—a
woman who describes the comfort and
coolness of the houses despite their state of
abandonment—the mobile houses lost all
appeal when people began to build low-
quality buildings around them, impeding
the panoramic views and the river breezes.
She felt safe while living in the tropical
houses because of the port city inhabitants’
fear of the bizarre metal construction.
At the end of the documentary, Angela
Ferreira talks about her desire to bring
back Prouvé’s houses to their original site,
in a purely symbolic way. Reflecting on
historical preservation and on the crossing
of cultural patrimony between Africa and
Europe, she asks: “Where is home to this
house?”
In the fullness of the conserved archi-
tecture of El Cerrito we become even more
aware of the emptiness of Maison Tropicale,
where heritage has been violently
removed. Two magnificent examples of
the European ethos to remind us of the
lack of knowledge and historical con-
sciousness that shapes the assessment and
preservation of the greater part of the
modern legacy to the south. But we can
also think of these houses as significant
examples of the political use of modern
architecture, deployed as a new form of
cultural and economical colonization that
aimed to conquer territories and resources,
and as evidence that the appropriateness of
applying its universal objectives is still an
issue to be discussed.
carola barrios
Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas
1/29/11 4:58 PM
 Notes
1. Hannia Gómez, El Cerrito: La obra maestra de Gio
Ponti en Caracas (Caracas: Fundación Anala y
Armando Planchart/ULTREYA Edizioni, 2009).
2. Gio Ponti, “Proposta per Caracas,” Domus 295
(June 1954), 9.
3. Jürgen Bock, “Ângela Ferreira’s Modernity at
Large,” in Maison Tropicale, exh. cat. (Lisbon: Institu-
tos das Artes & Ministério da Cultura, 2007), 10–19.
4. Peter Sulzer, Jean Prouve: Complete Works, Volume
III: 1944–1954 (Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkauser-
Publishers for Architecture, 2000), 9–19.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
Arquia/documental, documentary film
collection, DVDs with accompanying
text, each €18, Fundación Caja de Arqui-
tectos, Madrid, http://www.arquia.es/
fq_site/new_documentales.asp
1. (2 films, 2 discs) Marc-Henri
Wajnberg, director
Oscar Niemeyer: Un arquitecto
Comprometido/Oscar Niemeyer, un
architecte engagé dans le siècle
Belgium, 2000, text by Josep M. Botey,
Portuguese with Spanish subtitles, 60 min.
Geraldo Motta, director
Lucio Costa: Brasilia y la Utopía
Moderna/The Line: Lucio Costa and
the Modern Utopia/O risco: Lucio
Costa e a utopia moderna
Brazil, 2003, text by Josep M. Botey,
Portuguese with Spanish subtitles, 76 min.
2. Daryl Dellora, director
Jørn Utzon: El Límite de lo Posible/
The Edge of the Possible: Jørn
Utzon and the Sydney Opera House
Australia, 1998, text by Rafael Moneo,
English with Spanish subtitles, 56 min.
3. Nathaniel Kahn, director
Louis I. Kahn: Mi Arquitecto/Louis I.
Kahn, My Architect: A Son’s Journey
USA, 2004, text by Antonio Juarez, English
with Spanish subtitles, 116 min.
4. (2 parts, 2 discs) Manu Rewal, director
Le Corbusier en la India, 1a Parte:
Ahmedabad y El Capitolio de
Chandigarh/Le Corbusier en Inde, 1re
partie: Ahmedabad et Chandigarh
JSAH7001_09.indd 133
Le Corbusier en la India, 2a parte:   11. Murray Grigor, director
El Capitolio de Chandigarh/Le
Corbusier in India, 2nd part:   Legado Americano/Sir John Soane:
The Capitol of Chandigarh
India/France, 2000, text by Josep Quetglas
and M. Cecilia O’Byrne, English and French
with Spanish subtitles, 52 and 48 min.
5. Mirjam von Arx, director
Norman Foster: Construir el Gherkin/  Konstantín Mélnikov: La Casa de
Building the Gherkin
Switzerland, 2000–2005, text by Luis
Fernández Galiano, English with Spanish
subtitles, 90 min.
6. Fredrik Gertten, director
Santiago Calatrava: El Socialista,   Alvar Aalto: Villa Mairea: La Esencia
el Arquitecto y la Turning Torso/
Sossen, Arkitekten och det   The Essence of a House
Skruvade Huset
Sweden, 2005, text by Josep Maria Montaner,
Swedish and English with Spanish subtitles,
60 min.
7. Arun Khopkar, director
Charles Correa: Volumen Cero/
Charles Correa: Volume Zero
India, 2009, text by Joseph Rykwert and
Anatxu Zabalbeascoa, English with Spanish
subtitles, 58 min.
8. Markus Heidingsfelder and Min
Tesch, directors
Rem Koolhaas: Más que un
Arquitecto/Rem Koolhaas:  
A Kind of Architect
Germany, 2005, text by Eduardo Arroyo,
German, English, and Dutch with Spanish
subtitles, 97 min.
9. Hartmut Bitomsky, director
Hans Scharoun: Arquitectura
Imaginaria/Imaginäre Architektur:
Der Baumeister Hans Scharoun
Germany, 1993, text by José Morales,
German with Spanish subtitles. 65 min.
10. Christoph Schaub and Michael
Shindhelm, directors
Herzog & De Meuron: En China:
Nido de Pájaros/Bird’s Nest:  
Herzog and De Meuron in China
Switzerland, 2008, text by Alejandro
Zaera-Polo, German, English, Chinese
with Spanish subtitles, 88 min.
Sir John Soane: Arquitecto Ingles,
An English Architect, An American
Legacy
USA, 2005, text by Juan Navarro Baldeweg,
English with Spanish subtitles, 62 min.
12. Rax Rinnekangas, director
Mélnikov, La Utopía de Moscú/The
Melnikov House, A Moscow Utopia
Finland, 2007, text by Ginés Garrido. Finnish
with Spanish subtitles, 58 min.
13. Rax Rinnekangas, director
de una Casa/Villa Mairea,  
Finland, 2009, text by Antón Capitel, Finnish
with Spanish subtitles, 50 min.
14. Rax Rinnekangas, director
Tadao Ando: La Casa Koshino/ 
Tadao Ando: The Koshino House
Finland, 2009, text by Alberto Campos Baeza,
Finnish with Spanish subtitles, 59 min.
15. (2 films, 2 discs) Gustavo Cortés
Bueno, director
Enric Miralles: Aprendizajes del
arquitecto
France/Spain, 2000, 60 min.
Bigas Luna Studio, director
Enric Miralles: Estado de las Obras
Spain, 2002, text by Benedetta Tagliabue
and Josep M. Rovira, 35 min.
16. Gabriel Petit and Claude Haim,
directors
Antonio Gaudí: Un Arquitecto
Mesiánico/Une architecte
mésianique Antoni Gaudí:  
The Messianic Architect
France/Spain 2007/2010, text by Daniel
Giralt-Miracle, 52 min.
Forthcoming
17. Marc Petitjean
Renzo Piano: Visita de obra/Renzo
piano, architect au long course
France, 1999, text by Peter Buchanan, 52 min.
m u lt i m e d i a     133
1/29/11 4:58 PM
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.