Movies: Architecture

The Sagrada Familia, Antonio Gaudi's most ambitious creation, was begun in the 19th century and is still under construction today. With Gaudi's tragic death in 1926 and the destruction of original models during the Spanish Civil War, the building lan...

How can structures, which take up defined, rigid portions of space, make us feel transcendence? How can chapels turn into places of introspection? How can walls grant boundless freedom? Driven by intense childhood impressions, director Christoph Sch...

What’s it like to dedicate your life to work that won’t be completed in your lifetime? Fifteen years ago, filmmaker David Licata focused on four projects and the people behind them in an effort to answer this universal question....

Partners of an architecture firm mix their business with pleasure....

In 2024, the iconic Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Gerrit Rietveld designed and built the house in close collaboration with his secret lover and creative partner Truus Schröder. Rietveld himself did not build...

Tadao Ando, a self-taught architect, proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. His architecture mixes Piranesian drama with contemplative spaces in urban complexes, residences and chapels. This...

A story about the first Serbian Olympian who won bronze medal at the first Olympic games in 1896, also a world class architect....

For 25 centuries the Parthenon has been shot at, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes, looted for its sculptures, and disfigured by catastrophic renovations. To save it from collapse, the modern restoration team must uncover the secrets of how the anci...

The city of Ordos, in the middle of China, was build for a million people yet remains completely empty. Ordos is not so much a place but a symbol of babylonic hype. But nothing will change - as long as people believe....

5000 years ago the ancient Elamites established a glorious civilization that lasted about three millennia. They created marvelous works in architecture and craftsmanship. These works of art depict the lifestyle, thoughts, and beliefs of the Elamites....

Explorations in 21st Century American Architecture Series: Ray Kappe has long been a cult figure in the architectural scene in and around Los Angeles. In 1972, he founded the influential, avant garde Southern California Institute of Architecture (S...

A hybrid artistic bet and therefore binding in which the architectural space ceases to be a scene of contemplation and awakens enhanced by the flow of dance whose impulse in a swing between the volumetry of the space and the sensitive gaze of the cam...

Making Dust is an essay film, a portrait of the demolition of Ireland's second largest Catholic Church, the Church of the Annunciation in Finglas West, Dublin. Understanding this moment as a 'rupture', the film maps an essay by architectural histori...

One billion people on our planet—one in six—live in shantytowns, slums or squats. Slums: Cities of Tomorrow challenges conventional thinking to propose that slums are in fact the solution, not the problem, to urban overcrowding caused by the massive ...

A documentary film about Seoul City Hall Construction. The construction project has a hard going in every way. A city plan, excessive administrative notions, a design and all got mingled up. Can the project sail, yes?...

An intimate portrait of Christopher Alexander, a critic of modern architecture on a lifelong quest to build harmonious, livable places in today’s world. The film tells the story of two projects – a spectacular high school in Japan and an innovative ...

A film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in the Japanese tradition and its impact on the Nordic building-tradition. Winding its way through visions of the future, traditions, nature, concrete, gardens and high-tech, KOCHUU tells us how co...

Beneath towering Brutalist architecture, a man is driven to do what must be done....

A short film about traditional crafts and culture that can still be found in the Wallachian mountains today....

A film essay investigating the question of what “the West” means beyond the cardinal direction: a model of society inscribed itself in the Federal Republic of Germany’s postwar history and architecture. The narrator shifts among reflections on modern...