1. Folkhemmets Estetik (Folkhemmets Estetik)
Documentary about the architecture of the Swedish housing boom in the 1960s and how it's viewed today.
2. Skyscraper
Nominated for an Academy Award, this live-action short film playfully chronicles the construction of the Tishman Building at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
3. Soviet Bus Stops
“There’s a bus stop I want to photograph.” This may sound like a parody of an esoteric festival film, but Canadian Christopher Herwig’s photography project is entirely in earnest, and likely you will be won over by his passion for this unusual subject within the first five minutes. Soviet architecture of the 1960s and 70s was by and large utilitarian, regimented, and mass-produced. Yet the bus stops Herwig discovers on his journeys criss-crossing the vast former Soviet Bloc are something else entirely: whimsical, eccentric, flamboyantly artistic, audacious, colourful. They speak of individualism and locality, concepts anathema to the Communist doctrine. Herwig wants to know how this came to pass and tracks down some of the original unsung designers, but above all he wants to capture these exceptional roadside way stations on film before they disappear.
4. Twilight City
A fictional letter from a daughter, Olivia, to her mother in Dominica is the narrative thread connecting interviews from black and Asian cultural critics, historians and journalists. The choice of occupation for the daughter, a researcher, perhaps strains the narrative conceit too far. Nevertheless, for an avowedly political documentary the result is absorbing.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
5. Mamani in El Alto (Mamani in El Alto)
His buildings are garish, colorful and completely overloaded. Columns and glittering chandeliers everywhere, and way too much of everything. The Bolivian civil engineer and architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre builds houses in El Alto for a nouveau riche upper class of the Aymara, the largest indigenous ethnic group in Bolivia.
6. Brisa Solar (Brisa Solar)
Mozambique 1974 - the European name of the capital Lourenço Marques was deleted and replaced by Maputo. Between the delicacy and the apocalyptic, Brisa Solar reveals the little secrets of an African city that was born from a modernist dream, which led a revolution and which today sees its cultural heritage and threatened by Chinese capitalism.
7. Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Modern Masterpiece
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Modern Masterpiece, Unity Temple is an homage to America’s most renowned architect. The film pulls back the curtain on Wright’s first public commission in the early 1900’s to the painstaking efforts to restore the 100 year old building back to its original beauty. The dedicated team of historians, craftspeople, members of the Unitarian congregation and Unity Temple Restoration Foundation reveal the history of one of Wright’s most innovative buildings that merged his love of architecture with his own spiritual values. The film intersperses the architect’s philosophies with quotes narrated by Brad Pitt.
8. O Arquitecto e a Cidade Velha (O Arquitecto e a Cidade Velha)
A documentary about Álvaro Siza Vieira in Cape Verde and his project to restore the old town of Ribeira Grande, the first city to be built by the Portuguese in Cape Verde on the island of Santiago in 1462.
9. Architecture And Power
A history of Bucharest, as seen in the light of the totalitarian architecture, having as leading idea the reality that the Power always exposes its purposes through architecture. After five decades of communism, the reality on thee Dark Ages is still waiting to be revealed, and architecture is one of the most obvious embodiments of the ideology to whom it was builtÉ It is not a movie about faults or about guilty peoples, but about official edifices of thee communist Romania and their story.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
10. Ben Building: Mussolini, Monuments and Modernism
Having previously investigated the architecture of Hitler and Stalin's regimes, Jonathan Meades turns his attention to another notorious 20th-century European dictator, Mussolini. His travels take him to Rome, Milan, Genoa, the new town of Sabaudia and the vast military memorials of Redipuglia and Monte Grappa. When it comes to the buildings of the fascist era, Meades discovers a dictator who couldn't dictate, with Mussolini caught between the contending forces of modernism and a revivalism that harked back to ancient Rome. The result was a variety of styles that still influence architecture today. Along the way, Meades ponders on the nature of fascism, the influence of the Futurists, and Mussolini's love of a fancy uniform.
It has an average vote of 6.5 on TMDB.
11. Kutná Hora (Kutná Hora)
(Kutná Hora)
12. If You Build It
A year in the life of one of America's most innovative classrooms where students design & build to transform their hometown community. The film follows Emily Pilloton and Matt Miller as they teach the fundamentals of design, architecture and construction to a class of high school juniors in rural North Carolina.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
13. Přemyslovci ve Znojmě (Přemyslovci ve Znojmě)
(Přemyslovci ve Znojmě)
14. The Real Thing (Archi-faux)
A smaller scale Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysées can be found just outside Shanghai; a copy of St. Peter’s in Rome can be found in Yamoussoukro, in the Ivory Coast: a journey over three continents to see the architecture of imitation, the uncanny world of the fake.
It has an average vote of 7.6 on TMDB.
15. Secrets of the Parthenon
For 25 centuries the Parthenon has been shot at, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes, looted for its sculptures, and disfigured by catastrophic renovations. To save it from collapse, the modern restoration team must uncover the secrets of how the ancient Greeks built this icon of western civilization in less than nine years without anything resembling an architectural plan.
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
16. Teatro Amazonas: The Art of Sound and Nature (Teatro Amazonas – Musik im Regenwald)
The history of the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, an opera house located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, whose construction, between 1884 and 1896, depended on the labor exploitation of the local indigenous populations, provides an insight into the cultural, social and political situation in Brazil.
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
17. The Builders of the Alhambra (Los constructores de la Alhambra)
Kingdom of Granada, al-Andalus, 14th century. After recognizing that his land, always under siege, is hopelessly doomed to be conquered, Sultan Yusuf I undertakes the construction of a magnificent fortress with the purpose of turning it into the landmark of his civilization and his history, a glorious monument that will survive the oblivion of the coming centuries: the Alhambra.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
18. Chair Times (Chair Times)
"Chair Times" charts a course through an ocean of chairs. In the focus are 125 objects from the Collection of the Vitra Design Museum. Arranged according to their year of production, they illustrate development from 1807 to the very latest designs straight off the 3D printer, forming a timeline to modern seating design. The film features many people whose vocations involve design and who are experts in the field, such as designers Hella Jongerius, Antonio Citterio and Ronan Bouroullec, architects and collectors Arthur Rüegg and Ruggero Tropeano, architect David Chipperfield, Director Emeritus of MAK Vienna/Los Angeles Peter Noever, Mateo Kries, Director of the Vitra Design Museum, Vitra Design Museum curators Amelie Klein, Jochen Eisenbrand and collection curator Serge Mauduit. And your guide through the history of chairs is Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra.
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
19. Tapavica (Tapavica)
A story about the first Serbian Olympian who won bronze medal at the first Olympic games in 1896, also a world class architect.
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
20. The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright
Documentary on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture.