When it comes to the Winnipeg Architecture + Design Festival, the words of Napoleon Bonaparte feel apropos: “If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.” 

These are words that Susan Algie, the executive director of the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation who oversees the festival, took to heart fifteen years ago. “I myself wanted an opportunity to see the films that cover this whole range of conversation, but that we don’t have access to,” she remembers. 

Those conversations that Algie was not hearing involved artistic explorations of everyday design; how to make communities better through architecture, urban planning, graphics and more. She set out looking for films on these subjects to screen, originally relying on films from the United States and United Kingdom in addition to Canadian shorts and features. 

Fast forward to 2026, and the festival is now a fortress for films from all over the world, including four Canadian premieres and two world premieres in its fifteenth year. 

“It’s so important,” says Winnipeg director Danielle Sturk of the festival. “It has a specific, very focused programming which makes it fantastic because you know what you’re getting when you’re going there, even though there’s such a variety of expressions.” 

Local project shares history of social housing 

Sturk’s film Meeting a Moment – The Art of Social Architecture will be one of the films receiving its world premiere during the festival. The film speaks with a variety of voices about the history of affordable housing in Winnipeg, from the Willow Park Housing Co-operative, the first permanent family housing co-op in Canada, to the imagining of Wehwehneh Bahgahkinahgohn space in downtown Winnipeg that was once the Hudson’s Bay Company. 

“We’ve got so many firsts and so many pioneers in Winnipeg and this is one of them,” says Sturk. “They were meeting a moment back then, and the film is about meeting that moment today.” 

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In addition to the history of affordable housing solutions in Winnipeg, the film also features conversations between experts and citizens about the cultural and social plans that go hand in hand with the physical design ideas for affordable housing. “The shift culturally to sort of accept… density isn’t for those who didn’t make it. It’s how you live in community,” Sturk says. 


 

Building conversations about existence 

The screening of Meeting a Moment takes place on the first of four days of films taking place in venues across the city. Algie is keen to point out that there are many films relating to women in architecture and design, something that has become more prominent since the festival’s inauguration. This includes The Lady Architect, a film about the life of Margaret Buchanan, the first woman to graduate in architecture from the University of Alberta in 1937, and The Space Architect, a short film about NASA designer Constance Adams who designed prototypes for future habitats on the moon and on Mars. 


 

“The films vary on different topics, but I think they all build to this idea of trying to make people demand more,” says Algie. “We want to demand a better city. We want to demand buildings that are environmentally designed that don’t use more footprint than they need. And I think all of these things lead to the same discussion as Meeting a Moment.” 

The 15th Winnipeg Architecture + Design Film Festival opens at noon on April 15 at the Dave Barber Cinematheque, with Meeting a Moment being screened at 7 p.m. that night at the Gas Station Arts Centre with a Q & A session to follow. The festival runs until April 19. Tickets and more information can be found at the festival’s website.