The Architecture & Design Film Festival celebrates the creative spirit that drives architecture and design. Through a curated selection of films, events, and panel discussions, ADFF creates an opportunity to educate, entertain, and engage all types of people who are excited about architecture and design. It has grown into the world’s largest film festival devoted to the subject with an annual festival in New York and satellite events around the world.
Architecture and Design Film Festival started in 2009 and takes place in New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA; Chicago, IL; U.S.
Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines, the documentary feature film on the Canadian architect, from Vancouver-based directors Ryan Mah and Danny Berish, will world premiere as the opening night film of ADFF:Toronto on October 23rd, 2024 and will also open ADFF:Vancouver on November 6th, 2024.
The 13th edition of Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) will present a slate of 19 films both online and in-person throughout the 2021/22 season, with Festivals and screenings in New York, Toronto, Vancouver, DC, Cairo, and online.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) has updated its 2021/22 season to follow a hybrid format, presenting full festivals, private film previews, pop-up screenings, and its virtual program, ADFF:ONLINE. The Festival has decided not to host public screenings in September and Early October for ADFF:NY and ADFF:LA ; however ADFF:Toronto (November 3-7), ADFF:Vancouver (November 10-13), and ADFF:DC are currently still on as planned for in person events.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Alysa Nahmias, The New Bauhaus centers around the creative and controversial genius László Moholy-Nagy who immigrated to the U.S., after being forced into exile by the Nazis, and helped establish The New Bauhaus school in Chicago.
The Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) will return to New York this fall for its 11th season. ADFF:NY is the festival’s anchor event that takes place annually during Archtober – New York City’s Architecture & Design month.
BIG TIME[/caption]
The Architecture & Design Film Festival returns to Los Angeles this Spring, from March 14 to 18, 2018, at the historic Los Angeles Theatre Center, providing the film capital of the world a unique lens to explore architecture and design. ADFF: LA will bring a selection of 30+ compelling short length and feature films. The screenings will explore the life and work of revered architects and designers such as desert modernist Albert Frey, contemporary starchitect Bjarke Ingels, and fashion designer Dries van Noten. Films will also cover timely topics such as the power of design to instill positive change and the building of a model city to solve urban problems.
Kicking off with the Short Films Walk (SFW: LA) on March 10, design aficionados are invited to explore the Helms Bakery District, where six showrooms including Arcana Books, Harbour Outdoor, H.D. Buttercup, Scandinavian Designs, Room & Board and Vitra will open their doors and screen over 24 short film documentaries throughout the day from 10am-7pm. The event will conclude with a public screening of Building Hope: The Maggie’s Centres, a beautifully shot film by award-winning director Sarah Howitt that tells the story of Maggie’s, their approach to cancer care, and the role that great design plays in the cancer support they offer. The film will be followed by a talk with Frances Anderton, host of KCRW’s DnA.
ADFF: LA opens on Thursday, March 14 with BIG TIME, a documentary by Kaspar Astrup Schröder that follows Bjarke Ingels during the course of seven years while he struggles to finish his biggest project yet, letting viewers into his creative process and compromises along the way. The following evening, Liam Young of SCI-Arc’s M.A. in Fiction and Entertainment program will curate a selection of experimental films.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK0mGdMKMW4
Other film highlights include:
Albert Frey: Part 1 – The Architectural Envoy, directed by Jake Gorst, is about the unpretentious Swiss-born mid-20th century architect. The first of a two-part film series produced by Design Onscreen, this film explores Albert’s early life and work in Europe to his New York architectural accomplishments in the 1930s, including the famed Aluminaire House, the Canvas Weekend House, features of the New York Museum of Modern Art, as well as his Kocher-Samson Building in Palm Springs.
The Experimental City explores the story of Athelstan Spilhaus, a visionary scientist and futurist comic-strip writer in the 1960s. Frustrated by the growing problem of urban pollution, he assembled a team of experts to develop a bold experiment: the Minnesota Experimental City (MXC). MXC would be the city of the future, a domed metropolis for 250,000 pioneering residents, built from scratch using cutting-edge technology to prevent urban sprawl and pollution. Things didn’t quite go as planned, as explored in Chad Friedrichs’ fascinating look back at the would-be city of tomorrow.
DRIES, a film about the notoriously private fashion designer Dries Van Noten, who allows a filmmaker to accompany him in his creative process and rich home life for the first time. The film offers an insight into the life, mind and creative heart of a master fashion designer who, for more than 25 years, has remained independent in a landscape of fashion consolidation and globalization.
Other festival highlights include Breakpoint, a short mockumentary that follows the founder of LASVIT, a company that revived the Czech glass making craft; Made in Ilima, a film about MASS Design’s conservation-focused primary school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; REM, a film by Tomas Koolhaas; and for St. Patrick’s Day, a screening of Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect.
Additionally, ADFF will transform the Los Angeles Theatre Center lobby into an immersive lounge area for attendees to enjoy between screenings. The lounge will include VR films including one by Gary Hustwit and Sam Green that explores the work of architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller; an exhibition called “The Original Comes from Vitra” that focuses on authenticity in the design and manufacturing process; short films displayed on the Sony Ultra-Short Throw 4K HDR Home Theater Projector; furniture supplied by Vitra and Poliform; and a pop-up book store.
Made in Ilima[/caption]
The 9th Architecture & Design Film Festival returns to Cinépolis Chelsea in New York City from November 1 to November 5, and will screen a total of 34 feature-length and short films, including films that explore the life and work of revered architects such as Glenn Murcutt, Kevin Roche and Rem Koolhaas and timely topics such as the power of design to instill positive change.
Among the world premieres, attendees will get the first look at Made in Ilima, a film about a primary school and community center built in the Congo by 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award winner, MASS Design. Viewers can also expect to see the U.S. premiere of Aires Mateus: Matter in Reverse, a film about the uniquely developed architectural language embodied in the work of the Portuguese architecture firm.
In addition to the curated selection of films, ADFF will present a series of intimate discussions with prominent architects, designers, industry leaders and filmmakers as well as entertainment in the theater’s newly revamped lounge.
Glenn Murcutt: Spirit of Place (Architect, Glenn Murcutt, at the Islamic Mosque he has designed in Newport, Melbourne, 2016)[/caption]
The Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) embarks on its ninth edition in NYC from November 1 to 5, 2017, at the Cinépolis Chelsea. With an impressive stable of 30+ feature-length and short films curated by Festival Director Kyle Bergman, ADFF:NY will kick off with Glenn Murcutt: Spirit of Place, a documentary that explores the life and work of Australia’s most internationally recognized architect as he undertook a rare public commission – a new mosque for an Islamic community in Melbourne.
The line-up also includes the festival’s first ever narrative film, Columbus, where a small midwestern town with more than 60 modernist gems serves as a main character amidst actors John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson. In addition to films with a breadth of topics including modernism, healthcare design and Italian Radical Design, ADFF will host interactive programming including panel discussions and filmmaker Q&As.
According to ADFF Founder and Director Kyle Bergman, “ADFF has grown to be the go-to film festival that celebrates architecture and design. The films we select excite, entertain and pique the curiosity of both a&d professionals and anyone who is interested in design.”
Film highlights of this year’s ADFF:NY include:
Glenn Murcutt: Spirit of Place (Opening Night Film & US Premiere)
Glenn Murcutt: Spirit of Place is a documentary that explores the life and work of Australia’s most internationally recognized architect. Murcutt, 2002 Pritzker Prize Winner, allowed filmmaker Catherine Hunter to follow him for nearly a decade as he undertook a rare public commission – a new mosque for an Islamic community in Melbourne. The strikingly contemporary building without minarets or domes, is designed to be physically and psychologically inclusive. The film documents the growing acceptance of the design while interweaving the stories behind his most famous houses, interviews with those involved, as well as an intimate portrait of Murcutt’s life and a personal tragedy that almost brought his career to a premature end.
https://vimeo.com/192909456
Columbus
In Kogonada’s debut feature film, a renowned architecture scholar falls suddenly ill during a speaking tour and his son Jin (John Cho) finds himself stranded in Columbus, Indiana – a small Midwestern city celebrated for its many significant modernist buildings by world-renowned architects like Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, and Richard Meier. Jin strikes up a friendship with Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), a young architecture enthusiast who works at the local library. As their intimacy develops, Jin and Casey explore both the town and their own conflicted emotions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RShisCcdOUI
Building Hope: The Maggie’s Centres (US Premiere)
Building Hope: The Maggie’s Centres is a beautifully shot film by award-winning director Sarah Howitt. The documentary tells the story of Maggie’s, their approach to cancer care, and the role that great design plays in the cancer support they offer. In 1993, Maggie Keswick Jencks was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was told she had three months to live with no place to cry but a toilet cubicle. At that moment she realized there had to be a better way, and spent the last year of her life working on an idea for a cancer care center which was realized just over a year after she died. Since then, the most prominent names in architecture have designed astonishing landmark buildings. The film features interviews with world-renowned architects Frank Gehry, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUpUb_uGft8
The Neue Nationalgalerie (NY Premiere)
The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is an epoch-defining structure by architect Mies van der Rohe opened in 1968, shortly after his death. Nearly 50 years later, director Ina Weisse sets out to examine the period during which this unique edifice was constructed. In numerous interviews including those with her father and architect Rolf Weisse (who used to work in the offices of van der Rohe in Chicago), Mies van der Rohe’s grandchild Dirk Lohan, architect David Chipperfield (who has been commissioned to renovate the building), and others, Ina Weisse explores the question of how the Neue Nationalgalerie came into existence, and what sort of worldview is brought to expression by van der Rohe’s building.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MghWFszARHU
SuperDesign (World Premiere)
SuperDesign is a new documentary by Francesca Molteni (Director of Amare Gio Ponti & Where Architects Live) about Italian Radical Design, which took place in the 1960’s and 1970’s as a response to the tumultuous political climate in Italy. The movement sparked when progressive groups congregated together to express their political ideologies. Through the words and stories of people who were part of the movement, the film retraces the history and heritage of that time period, presenting interviews with pioneering designers including Gaetano Pesce, Ugo La Pietra and Alessandro Mendini, and rare sever-before-seen archival footage.
Additionally, a few weeks leading up to the anchor festival, the ADFF Short Films Walk will take place on October 11 during Archtober. A favorite every year, the fourth annual Short Films Walk brings crowds of ADFF fans to SoHo’s Design District, where attendees move from showroom to showroom, sipping drinks and viewing curated short films by ADFF.
The Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF) will host its most extensive programming yet in 2017, with events around the country and the globe, culminating with the ninth edition of its main festival in NYC from November 1 to 5 at Cinépolis Chelsea.
With a diverse range of feature-length and short films expertly curated by festival Director Kyle Bergman, ADFF 2017 puts architecture and design films on the big screen and brings together industry professionals and fans alike.
Festival Director Kyle Bergman says, “We are thrilled to be expanding ADFF’s programming to new destinations across the US and the world. The success of last year’s festival reminds us that great film has the power to bring people together to form new ideas, gain new perspective, and share common experiences. We are looking forward to another great year of architecture and design on the big screen.”
2017 Locations and Dates for the Architecture & Design Film Festival:
ADFF: Seoul
January 10 – February 20
Presented by the Hyundai Card Design Library, ADFF will host five weeks of film screenings drawn from ADFF’s archive of past films. Each of the five weeks will feature films centered on one of the following themes: Pritzker Prize Winners, Residential Architecture, My Father Was an Architect, Women in Architecture, and Building Community. ADFF: Seoul provides the opportunity for ADFF to tap into the range of incredible films it has shown in the past and share them in the beautifully design Hyundai Card Design Library. http://library.hyundaicard.com
ADFF Screening at A/D/O Opening Event
January 27- 29
ADFF Screening at A/D/O Design Festival
January 27- 29, 2017
ADFF has partnered with The Design Academy at A/D/O as part of its inaugural program, a three-day festival entitled “Utopia vs. Dystopia: Designing our Imagined Futures.” Feature length films highlighting the inaugural program’s theme will be screened on Sunday, January 29 and short films will be shown throughout the weekend. For more information and tickets, visit https://a-d-o.com.
ADFF Tulsa
April 20 – 23
ADFF has partnered with the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture as it heads to the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma for the first time. A selection of films will play at the Circle Cinema, an historic 1928 theater and art gallery. Tulsa’s rich architectural history dates back to the 1920s and includes a wealth of mid-century structures and several buildings by Bruce Goff. The final lineup of films will be announced in February.
ADFF New Orleans
August 24 – 27
The second annual ADFF New Orleans, presented with the Louisiana Architecture Foundation, will again take place at the Broad Theatre in Tremé, a historic section of the city. The festival’s return highlights a deep interest in the intersection of architecture and film in historic New Orleans. The full lineup of films will be announced in July.
ADFF New York – Short Films Walk
October 11
A favorite every year, the fourth annual Short Films Walk brings crowds of ADFF fans to SoHo’s Design District, where attendees move from showroom to showroom, sipping drinks and previewing films from the upcoming ADFF New York. This past year’s Short Films Walk brought over 2,000 attendees to watch 30 films spread across 14 showrooms. Participating showrooms will be announced in 2017.
ADFF New York
November 1 – 5
The ninth edition of ADFF’s central festival kicks off on November 1st at the centrally located Cinépolis Chelsea for a four-day weekend of short and feature films. Festival director Kyle Bergman has already secured several interesting films and this year’s festival is sure to bring an increasingly fascinating depth of topics, stories, filmmakers, and architects to the forefront. Film submission closes July 17, 2017.