Making the Modern (2003)

Fort Worth, Texas: a little known museum Mecca in the heart of the American West, home to three of the most important collections in the United States. Here in 1997, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth set out to build a new home, which was to become the second largest modern art museum in the US, behind New York's MOMA. They selected as their architect the visionary new modernist, Tadao Ando. Practically unknown in America, Ando has won every major international architecture prize and is a celebrity in his home country of Japan. But would his Eastern-influenced designs translate to this most Western of towns? Would his difficult and painstaking construction techniques confound the American construction team? This compelling High Definition documentary follows the design and construction of this masterpiece, Ando's largest and most ambitious work outside of Japan, while divining the secrets of his unique style through a study of his previous work. Shot on location in Japan, Germany, Washington DC and of course, Fort Worth, the film captures the beauty of Ando's architecture in its many settings and follows the design team as they test the building's specialized lighting structures. Edited without a narrator, the film relies on action and the voices of its characters - among them renowned architects Richard Meier and Frank Gehry, and sculptor Richard Serra - to tell the story of this remarkable building.