Six directors profile six iconic buildings, with each structure narrating its own segment in anthropomorphic first-person. If walls could talk.

Some segments work better than others. Wim Wenders shows us why the panoptic Berliner Philharmonie was such a groundbreaker, Robert Redford examines the Salk Institute, and Michael Madsen looks inside Norway’s revolutionary Halden Prison.

The Oslo Opera House and Paris’ Centre Pompidou also get walkthroughs, but Michael Glawogger’s segment on the National Library of Russia is almost indecipherable, narrated in a dense mix of quotes from the books it houses. (175 min)