Architecture & Film Symposium is a biennial event that engages the liminal condition between the built environment and the filmic space. It investigates the architectural quality of films and the cinematic structure of spatial experience. Apart from architecture informing scenography and cities serving as backdrops to moving images, film discourses have actively shaped and critiqued the built environment. And while architecture and design may not necessarily be central themes in a film, their latent influences inform cinematic processes of thinking and making.
The symposium adopts cinematic representations of the built environment as a cultural lens for interdisciplinary theoretical debate. It exploits the filmic capacity to produce virtual spatial experiences as design experimentation.
Every two years, scholars from architecture, interior design, urban design, landscape architecture, film studies, animation, production design, cultural studies, set design, etc. come together to discuss the year’s theme and the following broader provocations:
- How do films construct historical and cultural narratives of space?
- How does architecture enable, facilitate, empower, and challenge the cinematic narrative?
- How do films represent, filter, manipulate, and alter our perception of the built environment’s past, present, and future?
- How do films provoke design innovation and vice versa?
- How do cinematic narratives featuring artists, architects, and designers inform/misinform public understanding of the creative disciplines?
In 2023 the Architecture & Film Symposium explored intense interiors. The 2023 symposium was hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University and is chaired by Lorella Di Cintio, PhD and Vahid Vahdat, PhD.