Here’s another video I’ve worked on recently — a short study about a local architectural landmark, the Miradouro hotel and restaurant, which is the highest spot in Porto (we don’t have many impressive or tall buildings around here). I did the camera work and the post-production for my architect friend Alexandra Areia, and I’m happy to report the video is one of the finalists at the creative video contest we submitted it to.
That which we have now, having never been
An interesting post on urban renewal, real estate speculation, nostalgia and gentrification. This seems a pretty universal phenomenon: right now downtown Porto has a mix of successful (?) and not-successful renewal, in the form of new drinking establishments all over the place and costly overhyped low-quality apartments like those the article describes. The former are all too dependent on fashions and are risky business, while the latter can’t have a good future value — being located in buildings surrounded by abandoned fire hazards, in streets where the drunken hordes roam on weekends.
Abandoned Soviet monuments that look like they’re from the Future. From a civilization that knows nothing but reinforced concrete, that is.

The Archigram Archival Project: architectural stridentism utopia at its highest.
Alex Roman’s The Third & The Seventh. This video shows what really matters in CG: even though the long shots may not be the very best architectural renderings I’ve seen (the textures look rather flat sometimes), the lighting, the camera moves and the small details (specks of dust, etc) make for one really engaging piece.
All done by a single person using a desktop computer — this is what William Gibson meant when he coined the expression “Garage Kubrick”.





















