Learning from Buffalo

Filming architecture is a challenge in itself. Rima Yamazaki approaches Buffalo’s architecture in concentric circles, managing to render not only the majesty of the whole, but also the elaborate detail of masterpieces such as Louis Sullivan’s Guaranty Building. Peaceful soundscapes and patient observation beckon us to delight in these three-dimensional beauties, transcribed here within the frame of the screen. Yet, the fourth dimension, time, soon appears in the heart of the images, as we voyage from the late 19th century to the 1970s, a decade that saw the construction of social housing rather than grain silos. Blending sensuality and factuality, Learning from Buffalo draws on research that situates the architectural works in the context in which they were first built. Quotations and statistics invite us to perceive them as symptoms of a city’s history. Also drawing on interviews with the residents of two different neighbourhoods and on photos commented by an archivist, the film turns into a reflection on the fragility of modern empires. Designed to support and bear witness to their grandeur, monuments are soon forsaken once their hour of glory has passed, like the sublime Larkin Administration Building by Frank Lloyd Wright, destroyed less than fifty years after it was built, or the rail station where nature is reclaiming its rights. Although human beings are rare in these images, they are implicitly present: behind an abandoned building, lie a thousand thwarted destinies.