Alí Bei, designed by Pau Vidal and Vivas Arquitectos, is one of 20 seniors? apartment buildings funded by the city of Barcelona. Still from Where We Grow Older, 2023. © CCA
Montreal?s Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) strives to ?make people think? about architecture as a public concern. One way they do this is by commissioning, screening?and even producing?films. 
The CCA?s cinematic strength shines in Where We Grow Older, the culminating segment of a trio of housing documentaries directed by Daniel Schwartz, whose prior housing hits include The Disappearance of Robin Hood and Torre David. Conceived by CCA Director Giovanni Borasi, this new film trilogy explores housing innovations in cities around the world. Beyond sharing great projects, these films help viewers to see and to empathize with people who need an architecture of care and those working to provide it. The first film, What it Takes to Make a Home (2019), shares what led to Star Apartments, an iconic supportive housing project for the chronically homeless designed by Michael Maltzan in Los Angeles (where the homeless population exceeds 75,000), and an even more inclusive mixed-use co-housing project in Vienna called VinziRast-mittendrin, by Gaupenraub+/- architects, which brings university students, workshops, and a restaurant into the homeless housing mix. In both cases, quality architecture centers, and protects vulnerable people, defending their right to the city, and to good design.
The second film, ...