Under Tomorrow’s Sky 2021
Distributed by Grasshopper Film, 12 East 32nd St., 4th Floor, New York, NY 10016
Produced by Juul Kappelhof
Directed by Jan Louter
Streaming, 72 mins
High School - General Adult
Architecture; Sustainable living; Urban and regional planning
Date Entered: 01/10/2022
Reviewed by Irina Stanishevskaya, University of Alabama at Birmingham LibrariesThe documentary presents the work and projects of Winy Maas, Architect & Urbanist Professor at the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. In 1993, Winy Maas together with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries founded the internationally renowned MVRDV studio in Rotterdam. The studio has several branches in Berlin, Paris, New York, and Shanghai and unites approximately two hundred eighty architects, urbanists, and designers, who enthusiastically share the same architectural concept: optimism. “Urban planning and architecture are about optimism: constructing the future. You have to be optimist in this profession,” states Winy Maas. The MVRDV studio uses that concept as a leading motive for their diverse projects.
“If the world’s population grows by 5 billion people over the next decades and most of them will be living in cities, then we’ll have to go up and develop innovative high-rises,” articulates Winy. The future cities will require transformation of urban planning and architecture including revolutionary design of the buildings. With that idea in mind, Winy Maas and his team confront traditional urban design and offer groundbreaking architectural solutions for current and future cities. The documentary highlights selected MVRDV projects such as Taipei Twin Towers in Taiwan, the ImPrint in Seoul, Korea, Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Vanke 3D City in Shenzhen, China, and the Valley in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Each project represents breath-taking design, visualization of the artistic inspirations, and practical transformation and improvements of existing cities.
The filmmakers also introduce the educational and research activities of Winy Maas as a Director of The Why Factory institute, Delft University of Technology. Winy and his students analyze, visualize, and create different architectural scenarios based on the potential needs of future cities.
The documentary is appropriate for school, public, and academic library collections. It can be used for educational programs in a classroom setting that study the topics related to architecture, sustainable cities, planning and urban design, and many others. Also, it is suitable for general audiences. The narration of the film is in English with English subtitles.
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