After its massive success and accolades in North America, the largest film festival dedicated to celebrating architecture and design, ADFF, is making its debut in South Asia in partnership with STIR. With an extraordinary run of over 16 years and counting after originating in New York, the film festival's South Asia debut will be anchored on the shared storytelling potential of the mediums of design and cinema. ADFF:STIR Mumbai will be presented alongside Kyle Bergman, Director and Founder, ADFF, in the company of Martino Stierli, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art New York. Staged to be a novel cross-disciplinary peek into the creative fields in an inclusive format, the festival is all set to take over the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai from January 10-12, 2025, creating tangible intersections and fostering engagement with the wider creative community and enthusiasts alike.

The upcoming festival is made possible through the sheer conviction of collective imagination: of practitioners, professionals, students, and aficionados; bringing together the best of design, innovation, dialogue and radical positions of thinking about our built environment and society. Following months of planning alongside Bergman and a successful curtain raiser event for ADFF in Mumbai earlier this year, the design event seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the changing paradigms of creative production in the region. Apropos, the line-up of films being presented, pavilions, talks and other special projects at ADFF:STIR Mumbai are what make the programme truly unique.

Both architecture and film shape our consciousness and social collective, fuelling cultural discourse. Conduits such as the ADFF:STIR festival merely help nurture interconnections between the two. – Amit Gupta, Founder and Editor-In-Chief, STIR

Over 20 international films dedicated to architecture and design are scheduled to be screened during the festival, some marking their debut in South Asia through the event. A vibrant pavilion park will be presented through the support of JSW, hosting architectural pavilions by globally renowned architects and designers. Each of the designs responds to a curatorial brief through site-specific installations that will become tools to contextualise the site for diverse audiences. Additionally, a meticulously curated public programme facilitates wider perspectives and intimate encounters through book readings, crits, performances, workshops and a talks schedule in a novel format, presented under the moniker ~log(ue).

“At STIR, the goal has always been to underscore the interdependent nature of the creative fields across visual culture, performance arts, design and architecture. Architecture is influenced by and influences other disciplines, and among them, film is a prime example. Offering a setting for telling stories and by itself being a storytelling medium, architecture is intrinsically connected to the cinematic realm,” mentions Amit Gupta, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, STIR, at the outset of the festival. "Both architecture and film shape our conscious and social collective and in turn fuel cultural discourse. Conduits such as the ADFF:STIR festival merely bring this fundamental relationship to the fore, nurturing the interconnections between the two, offering fodder for the intellect as well as our imagination”, he concludes.

Architecture and design framed

Immersing audiences into the many worlds created and inhabited by architecture and design through different screenings spread over three days, each film will allow viewers a unique frame of reference into the ethos of what drives architecture and allied creative endeavours. Part of a carefully curated and sourced lineup, the films—spanning varied regions on the map—frame new ways of seeing and being, providing valuable insights into the human aspects of design, lives of famous designers, principles that shape our built world and the lived realities and aspirations of people in contemporary times.

Highlights include This is Not a House (2023), which details the construction of one of the most unique homes in the world—the Hill House in Montecito—designed by Robin Donaldson of Donaldson+Partners, born out of the combined power of art, technology, and a celebration of play, to be screened at an exclusive red carpet premiere; and a restored and remastered 20th-anniversary screening of the Oscar-nominated film My Architect, a documentary feature about American architect Louis Kahn by his son Nathaniel Kahn. Screenings will also delve into other creative fields with Fashion Reimagined (2022) offering a peek into the possibilities for a sustainable transformation in fashion design; Modernism, Inc.: The Eliot Noyes Design Story (2023) narrating the life and impact of the influential architect who propagated modernist thinking and established a corporate design aesthetic at IBM; and Biocentrics (2022) exploring how nature could be a model for transforming our world, among other films comprising the roster.

“The idea has always been to showcase the best films possible for any edition of ADFF. Building on that, certain themes emerged for the South Asian premiere. While spotlighting critical voices from the region, the films span topics from global climate change concerns to the role of prominent women in architecture,” shares Bergman. Shining a light on South Asia, The Promise: Architect BV Doshi (2023) will showcase the legacy of the master Indian architect, alongside The Genius of the Place: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Bawa (2023) that similarly offers insights into the work of the Sri Lankan architect, most well known for disseminating the tenets of Tropical Modernism.

Frames of Reference

Supported by JSW, the Pavilion Park will be located in the Open Air Plaza and the Experimental Garden at NCPA, and is envisioned as the hub of public interaction during the three public days of the festival, adding a new layer to the multifaceted affair that is ADFF:STIR Mumbai. An exclusively curated array of immersive installations that respond to a curatorial brief, Frames of Reference will offer a tangible form of engagement with the idea of framing in architecture and design, and the cinematic frame itself. Aimed to be an inclusive space enabling multiplicities of dialogues, the curatorial brief was devised by the curators at STIR. The installations are conceived by influential designers and architects from India and beyond in collaboration with leading material and installation partners, offering spaces meant for everyone and not limited to singular ways of seeing.

The interactive ‘Frames of Reference’ will allow visitors to relax in between screenings and talks, while becoming points of conversation themselves. These include works by Matharoo Associates and reD Architects supported by Artize; SPASM Design supported by Jaipur Rugs and FCML; UHA London supported by Saraf Foundation; SHROFFLEóN in partnership with Jindal Stainless; Tania and Sandeep Khosla; Manish Gulati and Shruti Gupte in partnership with ICA Pidilite; Matthew and Ghosh; LOCO Design; Vibhor Sogani and Supraja Rao in collaboration with Shabnam Gupta, Apoorva Shroff, Quirk Studio and Swanzal Kak Kapoor, with the production support of Gurugram-based FTS By Sharmilee.

“The 4 tenets shaping the debut edition of ADFF:STIR Mumbai—films, ~log(ue), the pavilion park and special projects—make visible how the built environment choreographs and often governs our ways of knowing, being and doing. They have been handpicked to create a cross-cultural dialogue and much-needed interdisciplinary contamination that is tangible, palpable. Through these, we hope to engage the wider public with architecture and design more deeply, and potentially contribute to the shifting paradigms of creative production in the region”, states Samta Nadeem, Festival Curator and Curatorial Director at STIR.

Framing ~log(ue)s and log/लोग

The metadisciplinary discourse at the festival will be further amplified with a fresh take on the traditional panel format through ~log(ue). Bridging people (log/ लोग) and discourse (~logues), the programme stages creative encounters between top speakers from the worlds of art, architecture, design, fashion, films and the wider public in an experimental, dynamic format. The schedule kindles visitors with four distinct methods of unfolding conversations, wherein the audience too supercedes peripheral participation by shaping the discussion through some of the interactive formats.

The sessions will include ~monolog(ue)s that intersect in performative dialogical ways; ~dialog(ue)s that bring together two different positions through livewire conversations; and ~multilog(ue)s that host discussions and debates between panellists often responding to audience prompts. Giving the visitors a break from the screen and facilitating intimate encounters that foster a keen sense of belonging, ~analog(ue) sessions will unravel in the open spaces of the Pavilion Park, engaging visitors with workshops, performances, readings and special sessions.

Speakers will include notable names such as Akshat Bhatt from Architecture Discipline and artist/architect Vishal Dar; curators from some of the foremost museums in the world including Martino Stierli from MoMA and Meneesha Kellay, Senior Curator, Contemporary, Victoria & Albert Museum, London; academics such as Kaiwan Mehta, Dean of Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, and Rohan Shivkumar, Dean of Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA); filmmakers and influential theatre personalities such as Hansal Mehta, Anand Gandhi, Gauri Shinde, Dar Gai, Avijit Mukul Kishore, Bruce Guthrie and Megha Ramaswamy; artists and thought leaders including Dayanita Singh and Gaurav Ogale; entrepreneurs and philanthropists Sangita Jindal and Tarini Jindal Handa, Directors of JSW, along with Radha Goenka of RPG Foundation; curator, critic and poet Ranjit Hoskote; and Creative Director, Pavitra Rajaram.

Special projects

Expanding the curatorial dimension, STIR brings various special projects into the equation. Originally commissioned by RIBA in London and supported in Mumbai by the British Council, The Architect Has Left The Building is a vital part of the programme. The project, a film installation by Jim Stephenson, Simon James and Sofia Smith, questions how architecture is used and its spaces occupied after the architect leaves and the publicity shots are done. Apart from the exhibition, Stephenson along with James will invite local photographers and filmmakers in the city to build on the narrative of his original exhibition, creating their own scenes that will be included in a remixed version of the original project. Also in the fold is a special collaboration between New York-based architect Suchi Reddy and Asian Paints, Chromacosm, celebrating the launch of the world's largest paint colour library by the multinational giant. The project will see a constellation of over 2000 colours come together and simultaneously fade to black through a 'forest of reeds', elevating the two-dimensionality of screen pixels and paints into an immersive, three dimensional experience.

Platforming a diverse array of stories from around the world, not only about how architecture and design are produced, but also how they are instrumental in the way we conduct our lives, ADFF:STIR Mumbai promises to be a sensorial extravaganza and will open up avenues to expand the creative community and economy in the region and beyond.

For more information, visit the ADFF:STIR Mumbai website for key highlights of the festival, including the 20+ films, 10 cinematic pavilions, special projects the ~log(ue) programme, media and press coverage and more. Stay tuned and keep an eye out for ADFF:STIR Mumbai 2026.