Directed by Jesper Wachtmeister • Documentary • 2007 • 52 minutes

Great Expectations provides an astonishing journey through innovative, futuristic, utopian and sometimes bizarre architecture projects-including concrete illusions of grandeur and Lego-like modular apartments to an Instant City Ai...

Directed by Susan Vogel • Documentary • 2007 • 58 minutes

Through the story of a mason in Djenne, Komusa Tenapo, and his family, this documentary examines an African tradition of mud architecture in Mali. The environmental genius of these ancient construction techniques thick walls with tiny win...

Directed by Simón Uribe Martínez • Documentary • 2020 • 75 minutes

Deep in the misty jungle of southern Colombia, between treacherously steep mountain slopes, stands an unfinished concrete bridge as an absurd symbol of human folly. Once intended as a link in the new “bypass” that was supposed to...

Directed by Stefan Haupt • Documentary • 2014 • 94 minutes

One of the most iconic structures ever conceived, Barcelona's La Sagrada Familia is an astonishing architectural project first imagined by Antoni Gaudi in the late 19th century. Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation celebrates Gaudi's vision ...

Directed by Tim Slade • Documentary • 2016 • 85 minutes

The bombing of Sarajevo's National Library and the burning of its ancient books. The looting of the Iraqi National Museum and destruction of its priceless historical objects. The beheading of Kahled al-Asaad, long-time lead archaeologist fo...

Directed by Caroline Bacle • Documentary • 2012 • 72 minutes

Nearly every major city was built near the convergence of many rivers. As cities grew with the Industrial Revolution, these rivers became conduits for disease and pollution. The 19th-century solution was to bury them underground and me...

Directed by Alain Resnais • Documentary • 1956 • 21 minutes

This recently restored early short by French New Wave director Alain Resnais (perhaps best known for Hiroshima Mon Amour), pays homage to the National Library of France. For centuries, the library has served as a repository for all the ...

Directed by Jacob Jørgensen & Henrik Lundø • Documentary • 2010 • 77 minutes

From the huge golden sun of The Weather Project at the Tate Modern until last year's New York Waterfalls, Olafur Eliasson has managed to rattle audiences and art critics alike.

Filmmakers Henrik Lundø and Jacob Jørgens...

Directed by Maurizius Staerkle Drux • Documentary • With Gottfried Bohm, Elisabeth Bohm, Stephan Bohm, Peter Bohm, Paul Bohm • 2016 • 88 minutes

Pritzker Prize laureate Gottfried Böhm is widely regarded as Germany’s preeminent architect. The son of a master builder of churches, he’s also the pat...

Directed by Agnès Varda • Documentary • With Danièle Delorme • 1956 • 21 minutes

This early Agnès Varda short looks at the castles of the Loire Valley — and the unusual histories and personalities behind them. Punctuated by first-person accounts, excerpts from well-known poems, and stylish re-cr...

Directed by Merete Mueller & Christopher Smith • Documentary • 2013 • 62 minutes

After a decade of travel, Christopher Smith approaches his 30th birthday and decides it's time to plant some roots. He impulsively buys a 5-acre plot of land in hopes of fulfilling a lifelong dream of building a hom...

Directed by Thomas Bena • Documentary • 2017 • 88 minutes

Gentrification comes in many forms. On the tiny island of Martha's Vineyard, where presidents and celebrities vacation, trophy homes threaten to destroy the island's unique character.

Twelve years in the making, ONE BIG HOME follows one ...

Directed by Beate Lendt • Documentary • 2011 • 85 minutes

DREAMING OF A TREE HOUSE is a film about the pioneering community-building project of the world-famous architect Frei Otto in Berlin, called the Okohaus-an experimental, ecological, customized housing project in the city center.

Includi...

Directed by Andreas M. Dalsgaard • Documentary • With Jan Gehl • 2012 • 77 minutes

50% of the world's population lives in urban areas, by 2050 it will be 80%. Cities have become the primary human habitat. According to revolutionary Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl, if we are to make c...

Directed by Jesper Wachtmeister • Documentary • 2003 • 53 minutes

Kochuu is included on the same DVD as Great Expectations KOCHUU is a visually stunning film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in the Japanese tradition, and its impact on the Nordic building tradition. Winding its way ...

Directed by Oeke Hoogendijk • Documentary • With Taco Dibbits, Wim Pijbes • 2014 • 131 minutes

In 2003, the ambitious renovation of one of the world's greatest museums began. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, home to glorious masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer and others, was supposed to reopen its ...

Directed by Joseph Hillel • Documentary • With Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Denise Scott Brown, Arthur Erickson • 2018 • 81 minutes

Joseph Hillel's new documentary explores how four trailblazing architects have helped transform our cities.

Phyllis Lambert...

Directed by Hauke Wendler • Documentary • 2022 • 90 minutes

Universally recognized yet frequently discarded, the monobloc plastic chair has been the world’s best-selling piece of furniture since its invention in the 1970s, with over a billion units in circulation worldwide.

Hauke Wendler’s feat...

Directed by Jason Cohn & Bill Jersey • Documentary • 2011 • 84 minutes

Design history was born in a cavernous warehouse on a gritty street in Venice Beach, California, where Charles and Ray Eames set up their Renaissance-style studio in the optimistic flush of American victory during World War I...

Directed by Paul M. Rickard • Documentary • 2006 • 93 minutes

ABORIGINAL ARCHITECTURE, LIVING ARCHITECTURE offers a fascinating in-depth look into the diversity of North American Native architecture. Featuring expert commentary and stunning imagery, this program provides a virtual tour of seven ...

Directed by Alice Arnold • Documentary • 2012 • 58 minutes

New screen-based sign systems are putting TV-style advertising into the public domain in cities around the globe. These electronic signs are re-shaping urban environments and re-defining areas of public space by intensifying the commerci...

Directed by Alysa Nahmias, Benjamin Murray • Documentary • 2012 • 86 minutes

Cuba's ambitious National Art Schools project, designed by three young artists, Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti, and Roberto Gottardi, in the wake of Castro's Revolution, is neglected, nearly forgotten, then ultimately ...

Directed by Norberto López Amada & Carlos Carcas • Documentary • With Norman Foster, Buckminster Fuller, Cai Guo-Qiang, Anish Kapoor, Richard Rogers, Richard Serra • 2010 • 80 minutes

Born in Manchester, England, on the wrong side of the tracks, Norman Foster rose from a humble working class bac...

Directed by Michael Dorsey • Documentary • With Kelly Lynch • 2012 • 46 minutes

In 1959, a government employee named Richard Oyler, living in the tiny desert town of Lone Pine, California, asked world-famous modern architect Richard Neutra to design his modest family home. To Oyler's surprise, N...