The late architect Lebbeus Woods once wrote, “Architecture is a political act, by nature. It has to do with the relationships between people and how they decide to change their conditions of living.” This sentiment is echoed throughout the whole of “Architecton,” the latest work from documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky, though no more explicitly than in the film’s penultimate moments, as Italian architect Michele de Lucchi converses with none other than the director himself about the nature of his lifelong discipline. “Architecture is just a way to think about how we live,” de Lucchi explains. “When we design something, we design the behavior of people.”
Derived from “architekton,” which roughly translates from Latin to “master builder” or “craftsman,” “Architecton” opens on a site of destruction. The camera hovers in mid-air, flanked by the ruins of two apartment buildings in a Ukrainian city, scarred by explosive residue as stone, concrete, and ephemera spill from their interiors like gaping wounds. This sober exposition gives way to a globe-spanning odyssey, as audiences bear witness to the grandeur and beauty of nature juxtaposed with human structures, new and old.
For the better part of a decade, Kossakovsky has turned the focus of his work to examining the elemental forces that undergird our existence as we know it. 2018’s “Aquarela” meditates on the beauty and simplicity of water, as well as the ramifications of human intervention when it comes to melting sheet ice and the rise of global sea levels, while 2020’s “Gunda” examines the quotidian existence of farm animals in such a way as to challenge the viewer’s notion of their relation to livestock and, implicitly, the food they eat. With that in mind, “Architecton” feels like the climax to an informal triptych; a thunderous, meditative testament of the raw power that stone, metal, and concrete exert over our daily existence.
Composed predominantly of static shots, drone footage, monochromatic montages, and slow-motion sequences, “Architecton” transforms the transportation, destruction, and recreation of otherwise inert physical matter into a spectacle of profound consequence. Kossakovsky’s cinematography captures the immense scale and intransigent beauty of mountain ranges, quarries, forests, and ruins, as well as areas of devastation and sites of renewal. From Italy’s Valley of the Temples and the modernist structures of Nuova Gibellina to the so-called “Eye of the Sahara” and beyond, “Architecton” surveys the vast expanse of our planet and the ephemeral, yet impressive, attempts by humanity to assert dominion over it. Hardly any words are spoken throughout the film’s runtime, save for de Lucchi’s occasional ruminations. Given the totality of the awe-inspiring visuals on display throughout “Architecton,” hardly anything needs saying at all.
In the absence of words, however, is music. Composer Evgueni Galperine’s score for “Architecton”—released as a standalone album titled Theory of Becoming in 2022—does ample justice to the sheer monumentality of Kossakovsky’s subject, as swelling violin ensembles, tremulous cymbals, and discordant brass horns crash together in fits and waves, not unlike controlled explosions scattering masses of earth and rock in cascades of texture and color.
It feels as though we’re watching the world being undone and remade several times over throughout Kossakovsky’s film. From earthquakes in Turkey to the war in Ukraine to industrial strip mining in Austria, “Architecton” examines the futility and stubborn resilience of human creation and destruction in the implacable face of the natural world.
“Why do we make ugly, boring buildings when we know how to make beautiful ones?” Kossakovsky bluntly asks de Lucchi in the film’s epilogue. It’s a question that the architect seems to struggle with and ultimately fails to answer; not for lack of words, but for a lack of an ability to reconcile humanity’s impulse to build and the testament of antiquity with the myopia endemic to our present era. If nothing else, “Architecton” challenges viewers to examine the structures that shape so much of our lives and behavior in a new light and imagine the possibilities of a future where architecture endures not just the test of time relative to human existence, but in communion with nature and life in perpetuity.
