Experimental housing communities 50 years ago in Belgium.

In the 1970s, community housing became a vision that responded to the housing crisis and austere modernist architecture. Three architects and a group of courageous residents were willing to turn the then-utopia of self-housing into reality in several Belgian cities. Houses constructed as modular units became a cheap, sustainable, and above all accessible option for all, while effectively creating the conditions for local communities to function.

The architect and film-maker Élodie Degavre revisits these projects 50 years after their completion, using archival material and contemporary interviews with their creators to outline how these housing ideals have stood the test of time and how they are relevant again today.

Life, assembled has been shown at a number of renowned festivals, including Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam, FIFA Montreal, Architecture and Design Film Festival New York and Chicago. It won the Audience Award at the Brussels Art Film Festival, the Best Screenwriting Award at Rijeka History Film Festival and has received the Architectural Heritage Intervention Award in the Dissemination category in Barcelona in 2023.

Élodie Degavre, based in Brussels, is a passionate architect, lecturer, researcher and film director. She has worked for various Brussels firms on public projects and teaches architectural design at UCLouvain. With a growing interest in “narrating” architecture, she regularly writes for A+ Architecture and is committed to making architecture more accessible to non-professionals.

Élodie Degavre will give a lecture “From Architecture to Cinema and Back Again” at the EKA Open Day on February 27, 2025 at 6 pm.

Aerial drone view of a building. Followed by a close-up of an architect speaking in front of her/his library. Are these images familiar to you? If you´re an architect, they are: you´ve all seen what´s known as an “architecture film”. But what exactly is an architecture film? A promotional film? An educational piece?

Voices are being raised today that invite us to (re)write the history of our discipline in a polyphonic and sensitive way, questioning the hegemonic narratives and representations that have dominated architecture until now. By placing her hybrid work in the heritage of ethnographic and documentary cinema, architect and film director Elodie Degavre invites us to consider “architecture film” as a tool for gaze shifting.

This is not a lecture on the history of cinema. It is a trip from architecture to cinema and back again, seeking for a creative and unique way of portraying the complex life of buildings.

The film will be screened in cooperation with the Estonian Association of Architects.

The director of the film Élodie Degavre is interviewed by architect Aet Ader.