1st AnnualSlouching Towards Alphaville Award

Buildings that lean! What will they think of next?

The winner of the award gets a day in Eurolille. The runner-up wins a month in Eurolille. For the award itself, click HERE.

Sidebar: Slouching Towards Bethlehem is the title of a 1968 collection of essays by Joan Didion. The title refers to the last line of The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Alphaville is the title of a 1965 movie by Jean Luc Godard, as well as the name of the setting for his horrific view of the future. Filmed in the contemporary Modernism of the Parisian banlieues, which are used to evoke the sterile, technological life of the future, Alphaville is almost indistinguishable from some of the Olympic Village views. Criterion has recently released a remastered DVD.

Criterion has also released a remastered DVD of Mon Oncle, another French film famous for its critique of Modern architecture. But on rewatching Mon Oncle, one finds it is a critique of Modernist architecture and urbanism. In the film, as in traditional urbanism, the city is more important than the building.

For more on Mon Oncle and Jacques Tati, take a look at Tativille.