Music: a selection of the UK capital’s most prominent Brutalist buildings are featured in the video for post-punk band Omi Palone’s track Architecture.
Footage of structures including Trellick Tower and Balfron Tower designed by Ernő Goldfinger, Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens, and Neave Brown’s Alexandra Road Estate is included in the high-contrast black-and-white film, interspersed with overall performance footage of the group.
Associated story: The Dezeen guide to Brutalist architecture
Other featured buildings include Camden Town Annexe and Southwyck Property – all examples of the Brutalist architectural style utilised predominantly for social housing and cultural improvement projects in the course of the mid-20th century. A quantity of the crucial buildings from this period recently featured in Dezeen’s series on Brutalism.
The video was directed by Omi Palone’s guitarist, Simon Marsham, and attributes cinematography and editing by Dezeen Studio contributor Emma Charles.
According to a statement from the band, the track “muses on the way in which some individuals struggle to cope with the political and social ideologies that exist inside the architecture of a metropolis”.
The notion of the video was “to try and portray something of the relationship amongst the aesthetic qualities of the buildings and actual ‘living spaces’,” Marsham told Dezeen.
“The internal shots of the band playing were filmed in the kitchen of a warehouse conversion a couple of the band members were living in at the time,” he explained.
“You have these external, really sympathetic and elegiac shots of the forms of the buildings themselves and also a real depiction of an actual living space of the band. So there is anything like a convergence in between theory and reality.”
All footage was captured over the course of one day with a tripod-mounted DSLR camera.
“Asides from obtaining periods when it wasn’t raining, it was quite simple. Simon had a list of locations he wanted to film, so beginning in the west, we worked our way across town. We just shot till it got dark,” Charles told Dezeen.
Huge drapes painted with acrylic feature as each abstract close-ups and a backdrop for the band during the efficiency sections of the video.
“We have been sort of going for an architectural really feel that echoed the video footage – silhouettes that represented buildings,” set designer Lucy Anstey explained.
Also featured in the video is blurred footage of a dreamachine – a revolving, cylinder with slits in its sides that omits light, causing optical effects when looked at by way of closed eyes.
“To me, the light impact it developed gave some thing of an otherwordly feel. Nonetheless, the structure of the dreamachine was a lot more fascinating,” said Marsham.
“It has an exact schematic that you’re supposed to adhere to, and, when assembled, it did resemble some of the tower blocks we’d filmed.”
Architecture is taken from Omi Palone’s self-titled debut album, released in April final year.
Project credits
Director: Simon Marsham
Director of Photography: Emma Charles
Efficiency footage: Owen Richards
Editor: Emma Charles
Set: Lucy Anstey
