Kwai Shing West Estate

Globe Trekker: Chinatown

In this special edition of Globe Trekker Chinatown, Lavinia Tan, Justine Shapiro and Megan McCormick travel worldwide to explore the magic and mystery of Chinatowns across the globe. Lavinia Tan begins the journey in Malaysia and Singapore where overseas traders led the earliest migrations of Chinese people. The journey continues from there to the United States, where Justine Shapiro visits San Francisco. Megan McCormick explores New York s Lower East Side, home to the largest Chinatown in the Western Hemisphere. After a short trip to London s Soho district, Lavinia Tan ends this journey with a visit to Hong Kong exploring the world famous film industry and the 21st century migration of Chinese back to their homeland.

Coast Modern

A core group of architects embraced the West Coast from Vancouver to LA with its particular geography and values and left behind a legacy of inspired dwellings. Today, architects celebrate the influence established by their predecessors.

The Oyler House: Richard Neutra's Desert Retreat

In 1959, a government employee named Richard Oyler, living in the tiny desert town of Lone Pine, California, asked world-famous modern architect Richard Neutra to design his modest family home. To Oyler's surprise, Neutra agreed. Thus began an unlikely friendship that led to the design and construction of an iconic mid-century modern masterpiece.

Follow Me

Documentary about two boys and a girl who travel to surfing spots around the world.

Big Time

Big Time gets up close with Danish architectural prodigy Bjarke Ingels over a period of six years while he is struggling to complete his largest projects yet, the Manhattan skyscraper W57 and Two World Trade Center.

Made in Hong Kong

Allows glimpses on a Hong Kong shortly before the 1997 handover to China. But rather than focusing on the expected hysteria Luc Schaedler’s documentary debut works towards complexity by allowing six diverse residents to talk about their relationship to the colonial city. Their life stories beautifully mix with the images of the author. Made in Hong Kong is a very personal portrait of a city in transition and we learn about Hong Kong’s ambiguities and its political and social problems, as well as the uncertainties regarding the time after 1997.

Four Shorts on Architecture

A visual essay on contemporary Kiwi architecture.

Brasilia, Contradictions of a New City

In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)

Prayers to the Gods of Guerrilla Filmmaking

A crew of filmmakers shoot undercover on the streets of Hong Kong with hidden microphones and no permits. The city becomes a giant set as mounting tension and ego clashes push tempers to breaking point.

Valldaura: A Quarantine Cabin

A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient.

Bauhaus 100

In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.

West Estate

West Estate spotlights the severe housing problems in Hong Kong, taking the spirit of resistance outside of the protest. The damaged walls in the cage-like tenements reflect the many forms of social injustice as well as Hongkongers’ widespread sense of rootlessness. Connecting three stories from different households like puzzle pieces, the film depicts people’s despair over issues of family, sexuality, love, and freedom.

Beyrouth, Le Dialogue Des Ruines

Architecture in Beirut was the second greatest victim of the civil war, with pages of ancient and modern history erased by the end of the conflict. This documentary interviews citizens calling for a reconstruction plan that would preserve Beirut’s spirit of culture and openness.

Richard Meier in Rome Building a Church in the City of Churches

Known for his bold, abstract and stark white buildings, American architect Richard Meier now takes on the challenge of building the Jubilee Church in Rome. Holding the location in high regard, Meier praises the vibrant visual layout of the city and tells us, "Rome is a city of architecture; it's a city of walls and columns and spaces and places and defined places and wherever you look there's architecture" (Richard Meier). Staying true to his signature design style, Meier has created a structure resembling grand soaring sails which appear steady and peaceful as they stand in striking opposition to the city's landscape. Three curved walls separate three distinct spaces: the main sanctuary, the weekday chapel and the baptistry, each with its own entrance. As a contrast he shows us his favorite churches in Rome by his famous colleagues from earlier times.

Googie

Googie architecture was one of the most visually exuberant and culturally formative design movements of the mid-20th century, yet it remains widely misunderstood. Defined by bold angles, sweeping rooflines, neon signage, and a sense of space-age optimism, Googie transformed everyday buildings into roadside spectacle. Coffee shops, bowling alleys, car washes, banks, and churches were designed not just for function, but to captivate motorists cruising by. Rooted in Los Angeles, the movement drew inspiration from visionary architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and John Lautner, while firms like Armet & Davis brought futuristic flair to the commercial landscape. Though many original structures have been lost, preservationists now champion Googie as a serious architectural expression—one that captured the aspirations of postwar America and reshaped the visual identity of the modern city.

Pseudo Secular

They are frozen in place, stagnating without any direction. Around them, things change rapidly.

Fading City

A docu-art film about Kyiv and the contemporary problems of the capital. The film raises the issue of the dilapidated state of Kyiv's old buildings and the search for effective mechanisms to preserve the city's architectural heritage.

Gaudi, Catalunya

In 1959 Hiroshi Teshigahara shot the following 16 mm footage of he and his father’s first trip to Barcelona and the outlying Catalonian countryside, including a visit to the home of Salvador Dali in Port Lligat. The footage was recorded without sound.

La Malédiction de la Grande Arche

Moriyama-San

One week in the extraordinary-ordinary life of Mr. Moriyama, a Japanese art, architecture and music enlighted amateur who lives in one of the most famous contemporary Japanese architecture, the Moriyama house, built in Tokyo in 2005 by Pritzker-prize winner Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA). Introduced in the intimacy of this experimental microcosm which redefines completely the common sense of domestic life, Ila Bêka recounts in a very spontaneous and personal way the unique personality of the owner: a urban hermit living in a small archipelago of peace and contemplation in the heart of Tokyo. From noise music to experimental movies, the film let us enter into the ramification of the Mr. Moriyama's free spirit. Moriyama-San, the first film about noise music, acrobatic reading, silent movies, fireworks and Japanese architecture!