Our Pace Setters is a new film series about architecture - how it inspires and how it endures from generation to generation. From the filmmakers unique perspective growing up in a home by Florida architect Alfred Browning Parker, the three part series looks back with affection as it introduces a larger audience to Parker's aesthetics and innovations, and looks forward with enthusiasm, following the creation from design through construction of the filmmakers new home/office by LA architect Vaughan Trammell. Combining traditional documentary techniques of interviews, archival footage and photographs with collage, pixilation and animation, Our Pace Setters will educate and entertain on the subjects of architecture, building, home and family.
Click on the image above for a one page treatment of Our Pace Setters.
Family Tree animation
The documentary-in-progress, "Our Pace Setters", tells the story of architecture developing from generation to generation. This animated family tree illustrates and connects the history and philosophy of architect Frank Lloyd Wright through the next generation of designers John Lautner and Alfred Browning Parker, and clients Art & Jane du Rivage, to the present work of architect Vaughan Trammell and filmmaker and client Holly du Rivage.
1) Parker as owner, designer, & builder ("3-in-1"), 1953 Coconut Grove, FL. "I like nothing better than to build with my own hands", Parker told the Miami Herald.
2) Parker in front of his 1970 "Miamarina", Miami's downtown marina with restaurant, lounge & snack bar. "… renowned as one of Miami's most "socialite" architects, but still spends a quarter of his time working on actual construction", wrote the Miami Herald.
3) Relaxing at "Woodsong" (1972 Parker family home, photo of Parker approx. 1985). In 2006 "Woodsong" was choosen as one of Wallpaper magazine's 10 best houses in the world.
4) Parker discussing his "America's Bridge". A 2001 design to replace the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in NYC. A drawing of the red bridge is on the wall behind Parker.
From Parker's 1965 book: You & Architecture: A Practical Guide to the Best in Building, his five principles of building:
• Build strongly. • Build as directly as possible with no complications. • Use the materials at hand and keep these as few as you can. • Let your building love its site and glorify its climate. • Design for use, make it beautiful.
Alfred Browning Parker passed away Friday, March 11th near his home in Gainesville, Florida. He was 94.
Alfred Browning Parker is an "ideas" man. These ideas are manifested literally in concrete, and stone, and wood, and copper in the architecture for which he is best known. Alfred Browning Parker is a Renaissance man: a published author; a professor; an accomplished painter; an environmentalist and energy scientist and entrepreneur. He is a man of his time with ideas to inform and inspire through the ages.
"Good Morning" video. Click above to meet the architect.
Alfred Browning Parker is representative of the spirit and genius of America. His humanistic approach to architecture defines American modernism. His buildings illustrate its breadth and depth. The film, "For Use and Beauty; the Architecture of Alfred Browning Parker", explores the broad range of Parker's creative endeavors from architecture and design, to literature and academia, to environmentalism and alternative energy research. This documentary portrait presents Parker's practical and elegant solutions for restoring balance to the natural world and adding beauty to the built environment.
Read more. Click the plaque or portrait of Parker to read a one page treatment of "For Use & Beauty" or scroll to the bottom of this page.
"The Architecture of Humanism" video.
This short clip shows examples of Parker's designs, and the architect himself at both drafting table and construction site. "I like nothing better than to build with my hands", Parker told the Miami Herald in 1964. Forty-five years later, his enthusiasm has not diminished. At age 93, Parker has recently broken ground on a new home for his family. The Gainesville, Florida residence is his tenth "3-in-1" effort - as owner, designer, and builder.
"America's Bridge" video.
Like many architects following September 11th, 2001, Alfred Browning Parker took up the task at hand. "America's Bridge" is his (unsolicited and ultimately rejected) proposal to re-design the World Trade Center site. The video is an imagined, composited sequence. Parker's plans and drawings, video and photographs of lower Manhattan, and original animation by du Rivage, illustrate what might be with enlightened civic leadership.
In the short clip above Parker's son, Los Angeles architect Quentin Parker, reads from his father's 1965 book: "You & Architecture: A Practical Guide to the Best in Building".
Click above to read the "For Use & Beauty" treatment.
