Join NCModernist for a special double feature to kick off their 2026 movie series with a double feature comprised of Making a Mountain: Bjarke Ingels and Counterweight: The Gizmos of Tom Kundig.
Making a Mountain covers the unlikely making of CopenHill in Copenhagen, Denmark – how Bjarke Ingels built a ski slope everyone loves – on top of an incinerator no one really wanted. In 2011 Ingels won the architecture competition for a large waste-to-energy plant – and persuaded the client to put a ski slope on top. A camera followed thevisionary project that combines waste management and infrastructure with spectacular architecture and a recreational urban space. Seriuosly, how do you even combine a waste-to-energy plant with a ski slope? How far is a property developer willing to go? And how much can an architect actually push through when all is said and done? You’ll follow Ingels and the client from the popping of champagne corks through broken dreams about smoke rings to the first trip down the black slope. Watch the trailer here.
Counterweight: The Gizmos of Tom Kundig looks at Seattle’s Jim Olson, Tom Kundig, and the firm of Olson Kundig, who have been at the forefront of exciting Modernist houses, especially featuring kinetic design or gizmos. Behind these tactile inventions—from opening a wall with the turn of a wheel, to moving an entire building on train tracks—is the symbiotic partnership between Tom Kundig and the firm’s resident gizmologist, Phil Turner, who draws on a unique and varied background in fabrication and physical sciences to solve complex design challenges using simple machines, applying traditional engineering principles in modern, ingenious ways. Together, Tom and Phil have established an approach to kinetic architecture that keenly balances form and function, underscoring a culture of curiosity and collaboration that defines the firm’s practice. Revealing stories of innovation, experimentation, and creative evolution, Counterweight is a look back—and a look forward—into Olson Kundig’s kinetic portfolio, exploring the physical and visceral connections between buildings and the people who inhabit them. Watch the trailer here.
Q&A before the show with director Christian Sorensen.
