The Architecture & Design Film Festival celebrates the unique creative spirit that drives the field of architecture and design. With a curated selection of films, events, and panel discussions, ADFF shares fundamentally human stories that entertain and engage all audiences.

ADFF:NY 2026 will open on October 12 with a special Opening Night at The Museum of Modern Art. All other festival screenings and events, from October 13–17, will take place at Village East by Angelika.

Here are five films with Modern architecture themes to check out this year:

bauhaus forever.
Filmed over five years, bauhaus forever. uses the ongoing renovation and expansion of Berlin’s Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung as a lens for revisiting the history and enduring influence of the Bauhaus. Moving between archive and the museum construction site, the film considers how a radical movement that lasted just 14 years continues to evolve more than a century later.

COPAN
Set inside Oscar Niemeyer’s monumental COPAN building in São Paulo, this documentary looks at the landmark from the perspective of the thousands of people who call it home. Against the backdrop of elections both inside the building and across Brazil, the film explores architecture, community, democracy, and the complexities of life within one of Niemeyer’s most ambitious residential projects.

Googie
Googie celebrates the visually exuberant, space-age architecture that transformed the roadside landscape of postwar America, particularly in Los Angeles. From dramatic rooflines and neon signs to coffee shops, bowling alleys, and car washes, the film traces the style’s rise, decline, and growing preservation movement while making the case for Googie as an important chapter in American modernism.

The Tower That Built a City
Marking the CN Tower’s 50th anniversary, The Tower That Built a City tells the story of the engineering feat that reshaped Toronto’s skyline and became an enduring symbol of the city. Archival footage and interviews trace the creation of CN Tower alongside Toronto’s transformation from an overlooked “second city” into an international cultural center.

Five Living Buildings (by Renzo Piano)
Rather than focusing solely on Renzo Piano’s architecture, Five Living Buildings looks at what happens after a building is finished—through the people who work in, maintain, visit, and inhabit five RPBW projects across four continents. The film travels from the Whitney Museum in New York and a children’s hospital in Uganda to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which approaches its 50th anniversary in 2027, revealing architecture as something continually shaped by everyday life.

Read descriptions of all 13 films and purchase tickets.

October 13–17
Screenings at Village East by Angelica
11 West 53rd Street, New York