The much anticipated four-day programme for the Architecture & Design Film Festival in New York this year features 17 films—some being screened globally or in the US for the first time—each a microcosmic story of architecture and design and their larger impact on society. Founded in 2009, ADFF has always celebrated the hopeful spirit that drives design practice, aiming to educate, entertain and engage design enthusiasts with a curated selection of films, events and panel discussions. Notably, the selected projects in the film festival’s 16th season touch on topics particularly relevant to architectural discourse today, which range from re-examining artistic legacy and spotlighting women’s narratives to sustainability and the lasting power of design to meaningfully create change for good.

The event, dedicated to the cinematic worlds created and stories held by some of the finest architects and designers over the years, unfolds over September 25 - 28, 2024 in NYC, before travelling to different cities across North America. This edition will also mark the design event’s debut in Mumbai, India in 2025, in collaboration with STIR. The marquee title this year is Stardust: The Story of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown (2024), directed by their son Jim Venturi, which will premiere for the first time on the festival’s opening night. Following the life of Robert Venturi and more importantly, his often overlooked partner, Denise Scott Brown, over a decade of their life together, the film’s storyline offers an intimate look at the trailblazing partnership that sought to revolutionise the profession, growing fatigued with the hackneyed rationalism of modernist architecture. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Jim Venturi and architectural historians Martin Filler and Gabrielle Esperdy.

Opening out the practice and dissemination of the field through their multivalent programme, the design festival adds a new layer to how cultural discourse around the built environment can be fostered while highlighting pertinent issues in today’s crisis-defined world. As ADFF founder and director Kyle Bergman shares, reflecting on the line-up for this season, "This upcoming season is particularly special, as it features strong female protagonists and filmmakers, alongside thought-provoking films that tackle pressing issues such as housing, gentrification, urbanism and environmental concerns. It’s a powerful reminder of the intersection between film, architecture and the stories that shape our world.”

Building on a legacy

In the programme of movies that dwell on the many different stories shaped by, with and through architecture, STIR along with Italian furniture brand Molteni presents Stefano Croci and Silvia Siberini’s The Pavilion on the Water (2023) being shown in the US for the first time. The film offers insight into Italian architect Carlo Scarpa’s passion for Japanese culture, using the words of philosopher Ryosuke Ōhashi as a bridge that ties Scarpa's work with the traditional aesthetic of Japan.

Green Over Gray: Emilio Ambasz (2024) by Francesca Molteni and Mattia Colombo, reminds us of the origins of design thinking that prioritises the interconnection between nature and the built with the story of Argentinian architect Emilio Ambasz, one of the pioneers of the green architecture movement. With exclusive interviews with architects such as Tadao Ando and Kengo Kuma, the film, being shown for the first time in the States, illustrates the relevance of Ambasz’s vision to redefine the relationship between humans and their environment. A post-screening event for the film includes a Q&A session with filmmaker Francesca Molteni and architect Steven Holl, a close friend of Ambasz.

Re-making/examining modernism

The architecture films in the line-up this year further bring to light the stories that take place behind the scenes of notable buildings and designers, offering new ways to understand them. Albeit told through the lens of a lone figure, they hope to highlight some perspectives that may have been lost to the canon, such as with Valentina B. Ganeva’s Schindler Space Architect (2024). In the documentary, Ganeva explores Austrian architect R.M. Schindler’s life and built legacy. Premiering for the first time at the festival, it examines Schindler’s conception of space architecture and his complex relationships with Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra; the latter of whom is attributed with developing the Californian house typology, something Schindler was instrumental in as well. The movie adds a more nuanced reading of the history of American modernism. Jake Gorst’s New England Modernism: Revolutionary Architecture in the 20th Century (2024) further dwells on this multifarious history by focusing on New England, where much of the philosophy and language of American modernism was formalised by the likes of Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes and many others.

Crucially, of the 17 films set to be showcased at the festival, two bring to light the work of women architects whose narratives have either been overlooked or misrepresented. Perhaps one of the most widely known stories of such misattribution of credit is of Irish architect Eileen Gray and the design of E.1027. The intrigue of the story, with Le Corbusier discovering, becoming obsessed with and ultimately vandalising Gray’s design will be brought to life on screen with the US premiere of E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea (2024), directed by Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub. The description of the film states it perfectly, “She built a house for herself. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a masterpiece.”

Co-creating and habitating

Moving away from architecture told from the perspective of architects, two films by Kelly Anderson with a diverse set of collaborators present a view from below, depicting stories of how building codes and laws and the looming threat of gentrification affect local communities, particularly those which are economically marginalised. In Rabble Rousers: Frances Goldin and the Fight for Cooper Square (2022), Anderson along with Kathryn Barnier and Ryan Joseph tell the story of a working mother Frances Goldin, who lived in Cooper Square and her neighbours’ fight against New York City’s 1959 “slum clearance plan”. The Cooper Square Committee would go on to launch a campaign that created the first Community Land Trust in the city, fostering permanent low-income housing in the heart of the rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side. On the other hand, Emergent City (2024), directed by Anderson alongside Jay Arthur Sterrenberg follows a 10-year narrative of a working-class neighbourhood in Brooklyn trying to navigate rising rents and sea levels in the area.

Two films in the roster, playing in the US for the first time, bring to screen stories of living together in housing cooperatives. Netherlands-based Sam van Zoest’s Living Together: The Story of De Warren (2023) depicts a group of young people intending to self-build a housing cooperative based on sustainable, social and affordable principles. Canadian filmmaker Daniel Schwartz’s Where We Grow Older (2023) adds a vital layer to our perception of community and welfare housing by questioning how it serves a growing ageing population which is inadvertently reshaping architectural and social constructs. Through an investigation of two models of housing in Barcelona and Baltimore — a public housing that is a part of municipal infrastructure, and a design for self-contained community housing managed by private entities — it vitally asks how we should design for the elderly and for those who care for them.

Other films included in the roster that further touch on the topics highlighted by Bergman, including shaping how we think of design, include two that focus on American architect Robin Donaldson: This Is Not A House (2023) by Morgan Nevill, premiering for the first time in the festival, and The House: 6 Points of Departure (2024) by Gregg Goggin; Biocentrics (2022) by Ataliba Benaim and Fernanda Heinz Figueiredo, which considers how we can reinvent the world in line with natural systems through the work of biologist Janine Benyus; Gina Angelone’s Sitting Still (2024) which chronicles the work of Laurie Olin, an American landscape architect known to have designed some of the most beloved green public spaces in the country; Yael Melamede’s ADA – My Mother the Architect (2024) which explores the life of Israel-born Ada Karmi-Melamede, known to have designed the country’s important public and civic institutions; DEPOT – Reflecting Boijmans (2023) by Sonia Herman Dolz which details the process of renovation for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningene in The Netherlands; and eL Seed’s documentary Perception (2019) depicting the story of Cairo’s Manshiyat Naser neighbourhood and the Zaraeeb community, the city’s trash collectors who are inappropriately viewed by the rest of the city as a decrepit population. Each event also includes a post-screening Q&A with the filmmaker and the designers, clients, friends or other stakeholders involved.

ADFF New York 2024 returns for its 16th edition from September 25 - 28, 2024.