A building can be entered, walked through, inhabited. A film can show it, but cannot let us enter it. It is precisely this difference that makes Wim Wenders’ ‘From Inside Out – Die Architektur von Peter Zumthor’ (From Inside Out – The Architecture of Peter Zumthor) interesting: opening in cinemas on 26 November 2026, the portrait promises not a substitute for a visit, but a translation of architecture into movement, image and time.
Wenders and the Swiss architect have been working on this long-term project since making a short film together in 2012. It focuses on Zumthor’s work and two projects then taking shape: the extension to the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel and the new building for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. According to film festivals and the distributor, the film was made over more than fourteen years and shot in 3D. The technique can emphasise depth and guide the eye through spaces. But a spatial effect in a cinema remains an orchestrated perspective: the camera chooses the route, distance and framing; the audience follows an edit.
Space is more than its image
Architecture is not made of walls, ceilings and façades alone. Light changes throughout the day, materials are touched and age, paths cross or remain empty. Scale, too, is understood through the body: a passage can feel narrow, a hall expansive, a threshold high or barely noticeable. Film can make such qualities visible, for instance by bringing movement and duration into the frame. But it cannot convey our own footsteps, temperature, sound, smell or the freedom to stop and go somewhere else.
This is not a weakness that could simply be remedied with an even more mobile camera. It is a limit of the medium – and also its subject. Where a plan organises layout and scale, the camera can make visual relationships, shifting perspectives and sequences of spaces perceptible. Where it cuts, it decides what remains outside the frame. Even 3D cannot turn a guided view into movement of our own.
Three buildings in the park
The Fondation Beyeler offers a concrete test case. The existing museum by Renzo Piano is being complemented by three buildings by Atelier Peter Zumthor: the Wyss Museum, the Ammann Pavillon and the Erlen Torhaus. The extension is not a single large block. It distributes different functions across several buildings and incorporates the park into the ensemble. The Wyss Museum adds around 1,500 square metres of exhibition space across three floors.
The approach to materials is particularly easy to describe in tangible terms: rammed concrete containing Jura limestone is planned for, or has already been used on, the museum’s façade; its layered, open-pored surface reveals the process of its making. Large windows deliberately bring selected views of the park into the galleries. These are qualities that can be filmed: the surface in raking light, a framed tree, the transition from indoors to outside. What the image cannot determine is how these views actually feel as one walks through the building – or how different visitors use the spaces.
Access is also a question of design
The question of use does not begin in the exhibition space. The ensemble is opening in stages; the Fondation Beyeler announced limited visitor numbers and special opening days for the first phase, with regular operations scheduled to begin in January 2027. A film can mention such conditions, but cannot assess accessibility through images alone. That requires specific information on routes, thresholds, wayfinding and provision, for example – as well as the experience of the people who visit the site.
The value of an architectural film, then, does not lie in bringing the building into the cinema in its entirety. It can sharpen our attention: to the way a wall is built, how a window frames a landscape or how a sequence of spaces guides the eye. The camera makes selection visible – and for that very reason should not be confused with the place itself. Zumthor’s buildings remain not merely images, but public spaces whose quality must also be measured by who can reach them and how they can be used.
Original reviewed by the editors · 3 November 2026
