Architecture is the field of creativity where art literally intersects with where and how people live. This reality series followed a group of idealistic Tulane students building a modernist house in a poor New Orleans neighborhood devastated by Katrina. The laying out of the creative process from conception and design to driving nails was interesting enough. What made the show special, and sometimes devastating, was how it also chronicled the residents of the neighborhood some of whom would love to buy the house but could not qualify for even "affordable" loan terms, others of whom saw it as an unwanted avant-garde experiment imposed on a poor black neighborhood. More than any cable competition or makeover show this year, Architecture School was a blueprint of how theory collides with practice.
(Sundance)