Movies: Architecture

Chambord, the most impressive castle in the Loire Valley, in France, a truly Renaissance treasure, has always been an enigma to generations of historians. Why did King Francis I (1494-1547), who commissioned it, embark on this epic project in the hea...

Andres Kurg is an art historian who likes Danish modernist architecture and therefore wants to settle there. He argues with Danish officials to grant him a residence permit for aesthetic reasons....

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....

Beavers shot The Hedge Theatre in Rome in the 1980s. It is an intimate film inspired by the Baroque architecture and stone carvings of Francesco Borromini and St. Martin and the Beggar, a painting by the Sienese painter Il Sassetta. Beavers’ montage ...

In 1935, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a country house for the Kaufmann family over a small stream in Western Pennsylvania. He named it Fallingwater. It, perhaps more than any other building, exemplifies Wright's concept of 'Organic Architecture,' whic...

Thousands of years before the Inca, a megalithic civilization was founded at Lake Titicaca which spread 500 miles to Cuzco, following a global flood that destroyed the Earth in 9000 BC. Its architects — Viracocha and his seven Shining Ones — disappea...

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use....

Architecture in Beirut was the second greatest victim of the civil war, with pages of ancient and modern history erased by the end of the conflict. This documentary interviews citizens calling for a reconstruction plan that would preserve Beirut’s sp...

A look at the World Trade Center towers from an engineering perspective. Explanations about why the Twin Towers were constructed the way they were, and how those design choices contributed to their inevitable collapse on 11 September 2001....

A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient....

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“Gaudí, l’arquitecte de Déu” is a story of faith, of overcoming, about five lay that decided to create an assossiation to demonstrate that Gaudí deserves one of most valuable titles of the Church: beatification. The Pro-Beatification Association of A...

A collaboration between Jem Cohen with writer Luc Sante made in Tangier, Morocco, a city where neither of us had ever been. En route from the airport to the city center, we found ourselves amazed by the landscape outside of the car windows; a massive...

A biography documentary of the Argentine modernist architect Amancio Williams....

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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...

Visiting examples of Herzog and de Meurons ground-breaking style, this film reflects their capacity to astonish and explore the way in which they transform what might otherwise be ordinary through new treatments and techniques....

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A historical documentary documenting the rise, function, and abandonment of a 17 story building that once housed The Rochester Psychiatric Center. This film tells the story of the building through historical footage, interviews of former staff and p...

Architect Todd Saunders’s buildings on Fogo Island, Newfoundland embrace the excitement of being on the edge of nature and contemporary design while fulfilling the goal of doing ‘new things with old ways’. Saunders and commissioner, Zita Cobb, provid...