After taking North America by storm, the celebrated Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF), initiated in New York and boasting a remarkable 16-year and counting run, crosses the Atlantic to come to Mumbai, a thriving centre for Indian cinema and heritage. The South Asian Premiere of the largest film festival dedicated to architecture and design will showcase 20+ international films over three days, along with a multifaceted public programme comprising a pavilion park, a comprehensive talks lineup and other special projects from January 10 – 12, 2025, at the iconic National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai.
The Promise – Architect BV Doshi, 2023, Jan Schmidt-Garre (left) | This is Not a House, 2023, Morgan Neville (right)
The Films: Architecture and Design Framed
Through different screenings spread over three public days and a special Red Carpet Premiere Night on January 9, the festival will allow viewers a unique frame of reference into the ethos of what drives architecture and allied creative endeavours. Part of a carefully curated and sourced lineup, the films, spanning varied regions on the map, will frame new ways of ways of seeing and being, providing valuable insights into the human aspects of design, lives of famous designers, principles that shape our built world, and the lived realities and aspirations of people in contemporary times.
Highlights include This is Not a House (2023), which details the construction of the unique Hill House in Montecito designed by Robin Donaldson of Donaldson+Partners, born out of the combined power of art, technology and a celebration of play, to be screened during the red carpet premiere; and a special restored and remastered 20th-anniversary screening of the Oscar-nominated film My Architect, a documentary about American architect Louis Kahn by his son Nathaniel Kahn. Screenings will also delve into other creative fields with Fashion Reimagined (2022) offering a peek into the possibilities for a sustainable transformation in fashion design; Modernism, Inc.: The Eliot Noyes Design Story (2023) that narrates the life and impact of the influential architect who propagated modernist thinking and established a corporate design aesthetic at IBM; and Biocentrics (2022) that explores how nature could be a model for transforming our world. With a special focus on South Asian perspectives, The Promise: Architect BV Doshi (2023) will showcase the legacy of the master Indian architect, alongside screenings of The Genius of Place: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Bawa (2023) which similarly offers insights into the work of the Sri Lankan architect, most well known for disseminating the tenets of Tropical Modernism. Adding to the canon of modernist architecture that has often celebrated the lone genius of the male architect, E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea (2024) subversively tells the story of the construction and eventual destruction of a villa in the south of France, designed by the Irish architect.
“The idea has always been to showcase the best films possible for any edition of ADFF. Building on that, certain themes emerged for the South Asian premiere. While spotlighting critical voices from the region, the films span topics from global climate change concerns to the role of women in architecture,” shares Kyle Bergman, Director, and Founder, ADFF.
Schindler Space Architect, 2024, Valentina Ganeva (left) | The Genius of the Place: The Life and Work of Geoffrey Bawa, 2023, Afdhel Aziz, Hayden Blaz and Paul Vu (right)
JSW Pavilion Park: Frames of Reference
The Open Air Plaza and the Experimental Garden at the NCPA form the centre for the vibrant Pavilion Park, supported by JSW, that will be the hub of public interaction during the three public days, adding a new layer to the multifaceted affair that is ADFF:STIR Mumbai. An exclusively curated array of immersive installations will add to how the public perceives and enacts this intersection of film and design beyond the screen. Conceived by influential designers and architects from India and beyond in collaboration with leading material and installation partners, the pavilions offer groundbreaking, innovative responses to a specific curatorial brief devised by the curators at STIR. The site-specific responses are further aimed at facilitating an inclusive space enabling a multiplicity of dialogues, not limited to one way of seeing.
The ‘Frames of Reference’ will be displayed for the duration of the festival, allowing visitors to relax between screenings and talks while becoming points of conversation themselves. A diverse range of designers are slated to bring their unique voices to the space, including Matharoo Associates and reD Architects supported by Artize; SPASM Design supported by Jaipur Rugs and FCML; UHA London supported by Saraf Foundation; SHROFFLEo?N in partnership with Jindal Stainless; Vibhor Sogani; Tania and Sandeep Khosla; Manish Gulati and Shruti Gupte in partnership with ICA Pidilite; Matthew and Ghosh Architects; LOCO Design; and Supraja Rao in collaboration with Shabnam Gupta, Apoorva Shroff, Quirk Studio and Swanzal Kak Kapoor, with the production support of Gurugram-based FTS By Sharmilee.
“The four tenets shaping the debut edition of ADFF:STIR Mumbai—films, ~log(ue), the pavilion park and special projects—make visible how the built environment choreographs and often governs our ways of knowing, being and doing. They have been handpicked to create cross-cultural dialogue and much-needed interdisciplinary contamination that is tangible and palpable. Through these, we hope to engage the wider public with architecture and design more deeply, and potentially contribute to the shifting paradigms of creative production in the region,” states Samta Nadeem, Festival Curator and Curatorial Director at STIR.
Fashion Reimagined, 2022, Becky Hunter (left) | Robin Hood Gardens, 2022, Thomas Beyer amd Adrian Dorschner (right)
A Dynamic Talks Programme: Framing ~log(ue) and log
The metadisciplinary discourse at the festival will be further amplified with STIR’s unique talks programme, ~log(ue). Under the moniker, STIR bridges people (log) and discourse (~logues) to stage creative encounters between top speakers from the worlds of art, architecture, design, fashion, films and more. Combining a dynamic and experimental approach in a new avatar for ADFF, STIR kindles visitors with four distinct methods of unfolding conversations, wherein the audience too supersedes peripheral participation by shaping the discussion through some of the interactive formats. Extended under the ~log(ue) umbrella, analogue encounters across the festival site through performances, crits, readings, workshops and more will foster a sense of community and belonging.
Speakers will include notable names such as filmmakers and influential theatre personalities including Hansal Mehta, Anand Gandhi, Dar Gai, Gauri Shinde, Megha Ramaswamy, Avijit Mukul Kishore and Bruce Guthrie; thought leaders Rohit Chawla, Swati Bhattacharya and Ranjit Hoskote; architects Sameep Padora of sP+a, Khushnu Hoof, Principal of Studio Sangath, Shimul Javeri Kadri, conservationist Abha Narain Lambah, Ayaz Basrai of Busride Studio, Akshat Bhatt from Architecture Discipline and artist/ architect Vishal Dar; curators from some of the foremost museums in the world including Martino Stierli from MoMA and Meneesha Kellay, Senior Curator, Victoria & Albert Museum, London; academics such as Kaiwan Mehta, Dean of Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, and Rohan Shivkumar, Dean of Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA); artists and visionaries including Dayanita Singh, Thukral & Tagra and Gaurav Ogale; entrepreneurs and philanthropists Sangita Jindal and Tarini Jindal Handa from JSW, along with Radha Goenka of RPG Foundation; curator; and Creative Director, Pavitra Rajaram.
Image Courtesy ADFF
Date 10.01.2025