Directed by Rebecca Carpenter • Documentary • 2026 • 42 minutes
In this intimate 42-minute documentary, visionary space architect Constance Adams gives her final interview, reflecting on a career devoted to helping humans thrive in extreme environments. From designing skyscrapers for Kenzo Tange to developing habitat concepts for NASA missions to Mars, her work was guided by a single question: What do humans truly need to flourish when everything familiar is stripped away? The result is a series of groundbreaking architectural innovations that continue to inform how humans will live in space - and on Earth.
Facing terminal cancer, Adams transforms lessons from space exploration into a blueprint for confronting climate change on Earth, offering a profound meditation on creativity, resilience, and what it means to live well. Drawing on Adams's archives, housed at Yale University, the film animates her notebooks, sketches, and ideas, weaving them together with her final interview to bring her visionary thinking vividly to life. The result is both a portrait of an extraordinary designer and a deeply human reflection on how we might adapt, endure, and imagine new futures.
Up Next in Architecture & Design (collection)
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Infinity According to Florian
Directed by Oleksiy Radynski • Documentary • With Florian Yuriev • 2022 • 74 minutes
The extraordinary mind of Florian Yuriev, a visionary Ukrainian architect and artist, visualizes an astonishingly holistic view of the world. His abstract paintings brim with geometric colorful shapes and patter...
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Emergent City
Directed by Jay Arthur Sterrenberg, Kelly Anderson • Documentary • 2024 • 101 minutes
Residents of Sunset Park, Brooklyn face rising rents, a legacy of environmental racism and the loss of the industrial jobs that once sustained their community. When a global developer purchases a massive indust...
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Alumination
Directed by Eric Bricker • Documentary • With Patrick Dempsey, Kate Pierson • 2021 • 86 minutes
For nearly a century, the image of the Airstream travel trailer, with sunlight gleaming off the aluminum of its sleek silver-bullet body, has evoked the romance of escape and the mystique of a world w...
