Celebrate the relationship between architecture and our festival themes through these groundbreaking films that spotlight the built environment, the architectural profession and cutting edge design.

Every Wednesday in September at 5:30 pm
Free; registration required.

San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco

This year’s film series has been graciously curated by Chris Gee, Lee Schneider and Richard Neill.

The film series is generously sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library, National Endowment for the Arts, and InterfaceFLOR.

Design for Good:
Shelter (2011) and Citizen Architect (2010) (1 LU)
September 7, 5:30 pm
Free; Registration required.
San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco
 

Shelter © seanandyvette.com

The evening will begin with an informal conversation between the filmmakers Lee Schneider and Richard Neil of Shelter and John Peterson, Founder and Executive Director of Public Architecture.

Shelter
This work-in-progress edit of Shelter focuses on reconstruction in Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake. It’s an inspiring look at how a world community of architects and designers join relief workers to create design solutions in the context of community building. They are creating structures as much as they are helping to make communities whole again.

Director: Lee Schneider
Producer and Cinematographer: Richard Neill
Composer: Joel Goodman
Editors: Tal Skloot and Lee Schneider

Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio
Home to some of the most impoverished communities in the US, Hale County, Alabama also hosts Auburn University’s Rural Studio, one of the most prolific and inspirational design-build outreach programs ever established. Revealing the philosophy and heart behind the program, the documentary is guided by never-before-seen interviews with the late architect Samuel Mockbee. Citizen Architect supplements Mockbee’s words and the students’ experiences with perspective from other architects and designers. Their dialogue infuses the film with a larger discussion of architecture’s role in issues of poverty, class, race, education, social change and citizenship.

Director and Producer: Sam Wainwright Douglas
Executive Producer: Jeff Fraley
Producers: Jack “Jay” Sanders and Sarah Ann Mockbee
Cinematography: Dutch Rall

Place/Nonplace: Malls R Us (2010) (1 LU)
September 14, 5:30 pm
Free; Registration required.
San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco
 

Malls R Us discusses the psychological appeal of malls to consumers. Combining nostalgia, dazzling architecture, pop culture, economics and politics, it also chronicles how architects design their environments to combine consumerism with nature and spectacle, how suburban shopping centers impart social values and how malls are transforming the traditional notions of community, social space and human interaction.

Director: Helene Klodawsky
Producer: Ina Fichman
Producer: Luc Martin-Gousset
Original Music: Air
Cinematography: François Dagenais
Editor: Howard Goldberg

The evening will also include architectural shorts Dumpster Pools (2009) and An Architect’s Vision (2010).

Revolutionary Wake: Unfinished Spaces (2011)
September 21, 5:30 pm
Free; Registration required.
San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco
 

“Cuba will count as having the most beautiful academy of arts in the world.” –Fidel Castro (1961)

In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create Cuba’s National Art Schools on the grounds of a former golf course in Havana, Cuba. Construction of their radical designs began immediately and the school’s first classes soon followed. Dancers, musicians and artists from all over the country reveled in the beauty of the schools, but as the dream of the Revolution quickly became a reality, construction was abruptly halted and the architects and their designs were deemed irrelevant in the prevailing political climate. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain unfinished and decaying. Castro has invited the exiled architects back to finish their unrealized dream. Unfinished Spaces features intimate footage of Fidel Castro, showing his devotion to creating a worldwide showcase for art, and it also documents the struggle and passion of three revolutionary artists.

Director and Producer: Alysa Nahmias
Director and Producer: Benjamin Murray
Editors: Kristen Nutile and Alex Minnick

The evening will also include architectural short Urban Village (2011) and a Q&A session with the filmmakers Chris Gee and Benjamin Murray.

*SPECIAL BAY AREA SCREENING*
Urbanized
September 21, 8:00 pm (SOLD OUT) & 10:00 pm
Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
1881 Post Street, San Francisco, CA 94115

Tickets on sale now.
$25 – General public.
$20 – Urbanized Kickstarter Backers, students, AIGA, IDSA, AIA.

The final documentary in director Gary Hustwit's design film trilogy, Urbanized features some of the world's foremost architects, planners, policymakers, and thinkers, including Sir Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, Jan Gehl, Oscar Niemeyer, Amanda Burden, Enrique Peñalosa, Alejandro Aravena, Eduardo Paes, Rahul Mehrotra, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Ricky Burdett, James Corner, Michael Sorkin, Bruce Katz, Candy Chang, Edgar Pieterse, and many more, including extraordinary citizens who have affected change in their cities. 

Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? And how does the design of our cities affect our lives? By exploring a diverse range of urban design projects in dozens of cities around the world, from massive infrastructure initiatives to temporary interventions, Urbanized frames a global discussion on the future of cities.

Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect (2008) and
Architecture Is… Best of Shorts Awards
September 28, 5:30 pm
Free; Registration required.
San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco
 

Rarely has an architect caused as much sensation outside of the architecture community as Rem Koolhaas. His outstanding creations—such as the Dutch Embassy in Berlin, the Seattle Library and the Casa da Musica concert hall in Porto— are working examples of the Dutchman’s visionary theories about architecture and urban society. But Koolhaas’ work is as much about ideas as it is about constructing buildings; he is equally celebrated as a writer and social commentator. For Koolhaas, what is essential is not to create individual masterpieces, but to provoke and excite through the wide range of his activities. Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect is an engaging portrait of a visionary man that takes us to the heart of his ideas. Directors Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch have made a visually inventive, thought-provoking portrait of the architect, prompting Rem Koolhaas to state,
“It’s the only film about me I like.”

Director: Markus Heidingsfelder
Director: Min Tesch

The evening will also include architectural short Castrum (2009) and the screening of our Architecture Is... Best Shorts Awards.

Architecture Is…
The Center for Architecture and Design is proud to host a YouTube video and shorts contest asking you to describe what architecture means. The contest is open to all ages, designers, filmmakers and anyone who cares about the built environment. Prizes include iPad’s and video cameras. Winning shorts will be announced and screened on September 28, 5:30 pm at the San Francisco Main Library.

Entrants must be 13 years or older.
For contest rules and details go to: www.cadsf.org

The Architecture Is... competition is generously sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, The American Architectural Foundation, CNA Insurance Companies, and Victor O. Schinnerer & Company.

Need more information? Contact us here.