We tend to marvel at architecture for its appearance, innovation, ideas, narratives, and the allure surrounding celebrated buildings and their architects.
In his new documentary, Five Living Buildings by Renzo Piano, Emmy-nominated filmmaker Jonathan Goodman Levitt approaches the work of the Italian architect from a very different perspective. Rather than focusing on an architectural language, materials, form, or composition, he explores how buildings by one of the most admired and influential architects of our time have come to shape the human experience, how they affect people emotionally and physically.
Traveling across continents, Goodman Levitt visits five of Piano’s buildings—in Greece, Uganda, New York, China, and Paris. Through his beautiful cinematography, he documents the interns, gardeners, doctors and patients, security guards, and visitors who inhabit these spaces, allowing them to describe how the buildings have affected their lives.
The film illuminates architecture’s power to inspire, transform, and play a meaningful role in our everyday life. It encourages viewers to look at buildings differently, reminding us that architecture possesses an intimate dimension, even when it is monumental in scale—and that, ultimately, architecture is made for people. Above all, Goodman Levitt demonstrates that in Renzo Piano’s work, people come first.
