Lynda McIntyre, Karen Frost, and Andrew Chardain at the screening of Taking Venice (2024), an Architecture + Design film directed by Amei Wallach.
How do you define “good” design?
What does beauty look like through your eyes?
Where do design and beauty make an impact in your life?
Have you ever given consideration to questions like these? It’s the kind of reflection Andrew Chardain, Lynda McIntyre, and Karen Frost ask of their audiences through the Architecture + Design Film Series, a project born from the need for a community space to explore the importance and impact of design and beauty in our lives.
Andrew, film series co-founder and Senior Architect and Managing Director at Birdseye, has always had a keen awareness of how his experience of design influenced his ideas of beauty. Growing up in a rural Vermont town in a late-18th-century home, he developed a passion for design at an early age. “When you steep yourself in craft, you will inherently absorb that culture and sense of beauty without questioning it. I think you start to develop an appreciation for craft, history, and design when you’re submerged in it.” The environments we find ourselves in—and the people and cultures that inhabit them—will always shape us one way or another.
Vermont’s geography has always shaped the way its creative and professional communities connect. With towns tucked into valleys and villages scattered across miles of mountain roads, it can be difficult to gather people together around shared interests. Even within professional associations, the logistics of organizing events in such a rural state can be challenging. Yet, it’s precisely this remoteness—and the independence it fosters—that gives rise to a uniquely pioneering spirit. From a few individuals determined to connect, a creative community can be formed.
That determination was sparked at the 2012 Roland Batten Memorial Lecture Series, an annual event founded by Lynda McIntyre to honor her late husband and architect Roland Batten and his lasting contributions to local Vermont architecture. It was there that Andrew and Lynda met. As they sat next to one another and started chatting over dinner, they realized the lack of local opportunities to engage in meaningful conversation about design. They decided a film series was the perfect medium to bring people together and fill that void. Lynda engaged Karen Frost in the idea shortly thereafter, and the production of the first season was set in motion.
Taking Venice poster.
Posters from past seasons of the Architecture + Design Film Series.
Social reception before the film screening.
“It was clear that people were hungry for a community discussion about design and architecture. The three of us had lunch together, decided to give it a shot, and that was the seed that started it.”
The A+D Film Series hosts eight free films a year, showing one per month from September through April. Each evening kicks off with a locally catered social reception, followed by an introduction to the film, often featuring a guest with a connection to the film topic.The ongoing relationships with hosts, Burlington City Arts and 118 Elliot, and financial management through AIA Vermont, are essential to keeping the series going.
Offering these events free to the public is one of A+D’s founding principles, which continues to be made possible thanks to sponsorships and support from local businesses and individuals. While the founding trio remains the face of the series, Andrew attributes its success to the generous contributions of so many dedicated colleagues, volunteers, and patrons.
For the series’s first five seasons, the films were shown exclusively at Burlington City Arts. In planning for the sixth season, an opportunity arose to expand the reach of the A+D program to southern Vermont when Brattleboro-based architect Jim Williams teamed up with Lissa Weinmann at 118 Elliot to bring the films to their local community.
The film series has no agenda. It’s not produced to shape audience opinions, but rather invite viewers to reflect on the importance and impact of design and beauty in their own lives. The founders hope that the series’s creative offerings will broaden awareness, foster connections, spark new ideas, and ultimately build momentum towards positive action.
Now in its thirteenth season with its one-hundredth film set to show this December, the series has proved to have a profound effect on its audiences over the years.
“People are taking their thoughts about the films home to the dinner table and having conversations with their families. They’re taking road trips to see these architectural works in person. We hear about these kinds of things coming to fruition and realize that our mission is alive and well.”
As a design practitioner, Andrew’s philosophy is guided by the idea that we’re all shaped by our experiences, and it’s important to stay inspired by the people, the cultures, and the environments around us—that the relationship between craft and community is cyclical, and the two should always be in conversation.
“It's easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day production, the business side of things, but I feel strongly that we have a responsibility to engage with the community and ask good questions about what good design and beauty mean to them.”
If you’re a Vermont local, you can experience the films of season thirteen throughout the state at Contois Auditorium with BCA in Burlington and 118 Elliot in Brattleboro. And if you’re not local, you can stream most of the films online. No matter where you watch, we hope you join the conversation.
Birdseye is a proud sponsor of the Architecture + Design Film Series.
Interview by Mikulak DesignWords by Mallory StaubPhotography by Elias Gillen
Social reception before each screening with free, locally catered food.
Lynda McIntyre introduces the evening’s film, Taking Venice.
