Shelter: April highlights

This month on Shelter are two new titles on architecture set in India and France.

The Power of Utopia
84 mins Switzerland & India 2023
April 15
What would a utopian city of the 20th century look like, if designed by one of the most iconic & revered architects of the era? And would it all work? Discover the incredible planned city of Chandigarh in India; the largest and most ambitious project of the renowned Swiss and French architect Le Corbusier. Designed and constructed in the 1950s, Chandigarh is a controversial synthesis of the arts and a bold utopia of modernity; that strived to become a human city – not another industrial city. The Power of Utopia accompanies four cultural workers who live in the planned city and reflects on Le Corbusier’s legacy, utopian urban ideas and the cultural differences between East and West in an atmospherically dense narrative.

Observatory of Light
25 mins France 2016
April 29
View the stunning reveal of artist Daniel Buren’s Observatory of Light, an ever-evolving light and colour display, spread across the glass exterior of the Frank Gehry-designed Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. The twelve ‘sails’ that drape the exterior, formed of 3,600 pieces of glass, are covered by a staggering array of coloured filters. The thirteen selected colours appear and disappear – ever-changing with the time of day and the season. Through a play of colours, projections, reflections, transparencies and contrasts, both inside and outside, Buren shows the Louis Vuitton Foundation in a new light. Buren talks to us about his work and its challenges, and is accompanied by curator Suzanne Pagé and engineer Nicolas Paschal, who in turn discuss the work and the artist; as well as a number of visitors to the Foundation.