Skin of Glass

Not only people are witnesses. A building can also be a witness: a carrier of stories, of History. This has been the destiny of «Skin of Glass», a modernist tower of Sao Paulo, an expression of the optimism of a booming Brazil at the beginning of the Sixties, whose adventures and misadventures of the last decades speak of the political and social changes of the country.

We have a privileged access to it thanks to Denise Zmekhol’s slow reappropriation of its story and its meaning, coming back to Brazil from the States in order to get closer to her country of origin, and to her father who is no less than the architect of «Skin of Glass», Roger Zmekhol. Her own voiceover alternates between English and Portuguese, thus conveying an intriguing mixture of distance and closeness to Sao Paulo. The personal and the historical layers intertwine perfectly in a meditative storytelling that is skilfully punctuated by several surprises (editing: Josh Peterson).

Archive footage is involved in moderation, and not without a playful approach, as it becomes an indirect instrument to enter and discover the building, whose access today is denied. The transparency of the original building reveals itself to actually be a dense opacity, one that the director is able to transform into complexity, finding a delicate balance between claiming and understanding the core of the political issue of housing. Between social experiments of occupation and speculative interests, Zmekhol observes without judging, but also shows empathy and a strong desire for participation – which leads the film to intervene in the history of the building, at the moment of its disappearing.

The loss – of the father, of the building, of a certain political dream – creates a void that is meant to be fulfilled with imagination and hope.

Denise Zmekhol | USA-BRA 2023 | 89’ | Architektur Film Tage @ Architekturwoche Basel 2024
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