Documentary debuts at Venice as ode to Buffalo

The camera hovers above a line of wind turbines towering above the abandoned site of Bethlehem Steel along Lake Erie, just south of Buffalo. The turbine blades slice the air in slow-motion, their synchronized dance lending a sense of majesty to the scarred land below. Slowly, the sunrise-lit scene shifts its focus to the Buffalo skyline beyond.

This poetic visual assemblage of wind, water and steel set in the Buffalo landscape of yesterday and today is the opening scene of “See It Through Buffalo,” a documentary short produced by the School of Architecture and Planning as an exploration of the city’s urban context and the school’s complex relationship to it over the past five decades.

The film is on exhibit now in Venice, Italy, as part of the international Time Space Existence exhibition sponsored by the Global Art Affairs Foundation. It’s taking place in the context of the Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s premier forum for architecture and design. The six-month event opened to the public on May 24 and runs through November.

The School of Architecture and Planning is among an elite group of 32 international academic institutions invited to participate in the exhibition, which brings together practicing architects with artists and universities from around the world to provoke conversation on the most pressing challenges facing the discipline today.

The 15-minute film, co-produced with noted Buffalo filmmaker John Paget of Paget Films, uses complex techniques in time-lapse photography and sound recordings to document the city’s urban landscapes, both iconic and everyday.

The film travels across 15 sites of engagement and sources of inspiration to the school, from Louis Sullivan’s grand Guaranty Building and Frederick Law Olmsted’s tree-lined Lincoln Parkway, to the factory floors of Boston Valley Terra Cotta and Rigidized Metals, to refugee-owned shops on Buffalo’s West Side and the boarded-up Perry public housing project just beyond downtown.

Creative direction for the project was provided by Gregory Delaney, clinical assistant professor of architecture and director of the film and exhibit. Production and photography was directed by Paget. Korydon Smith, professor of architecture, served as assistant director of the film and assistant curator of the exhibit.

Delaney says the film captures the local-to-global relevance of the school’s work. As faculty and students engage issues as sweeping as refugee resettlement and climate-change resiliency in the city around them, they propel Buffalo’s resurgence and generate globally relevant innovation.

The school’s intensive engagement with Buffalo spans economic development initiatives, urban design, community organizing, partnerships with industry and full-scale construction. “Members of the [school] are participants in the life of the city, while simultaneously helping to shape the policies, plans, buildings and spaces that construct its identity,” Delaney explains.

In their curatorial statements in the exhibit’s companion catalog, Delaney and Smith call the film a “pensive-yet-hopeful, intrepid-yet-candid glimpse of our city.”

Dean Robert G. Shibley notes the film represents the deep and lasting impacts of the university’s relationship to its city, while underscoring the importance of local engagement to education in architecture, urban planning and development.

“‘See It Through Buffalo’ is a story about a city and a university as its muse, mutually engaged around questions of social equity, cultural preservation and creative production toward a more prosperous future for Buffalo and our world,” says Shibley, who was in Venice for the exhibition opening.

“Together we reach for the global impacts that rebuild our cultures, sustain our planet and substantiate the relevance of architecture and planning in the 21st century,” he adds.

Students from across the school have been involved in the project from the start. A team of five students played lead roles in the curation, production and installation of the exhibit. Installed in Venice’s Palazzo Bembo, a 15th-century structure that sits on the Grand Canal, the exhibit involved state-of-the-art acoustical treatments for the exhibition room, the design and fabrication of a wall display and hand-crafted wooden benches for guests, and the production of a companion catalog for the exhibit.

Several dozen students will participate in a study abroad program in August, and faculty-led workshops are slated to take place throughout the exhibit. Both programs are designed to extend the student experience to the full context of the Architecture Biennale and the historic city of Venice.

A crowdfunding campaign raised $20,000 from more than 100 donors from across the university and region to support student involvement in the project and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of mounting an international exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Three students traveled to Venice to support the exhibition installation and take part in opening events: rising senior Nicholas Wheeler, 2018 architecture graduate Kalyn Faller and Eric Burlingame, a master’s of science in architecture student.

“It was pretty cool to walk around the exhibit and to see works by Richard Meier or Daniel Libeskind,” Faller says. “These are big names we learned about in lecture and now we’re setting up an exhibit two doors down. It made us feel we are doing something important for our city and within our discipline.”

She says watching visitor reaction to the film was extremely rewarding. “The best experience was getting to watch people completely fall in love with the film. I saw people stay in our exhibition room for three, four, sometimes five loops of the 15-minute film. One visitor to the exhibit, who used to live in Buffalo, got choked up with some of the scenes.”

Master’s students Frank Kraemer and Morgan Mansfield, who served on the project’s design team, will travel to Venice in August as part of the study abroad program.

Support for “See It Through Buffalo” was made possible by donations from more than 100 individuals and organizations. Leadership support was also provided by UB; Robert Skerker, who served as executive producer of the film; Boston Valley Terra Cotta; Rigidized Metals Corp.; Peter Hourihan, BA ’73; CannonDesign; Robert Shibley and Lynda Schneekloth; the Sydney Gross Memorial Fund; Sheldon Berlow; and Tony and Suzanne Kissling.