Docar is a documentary film collective founded in 2023 as a platform for exploring political issues via their intersections with architecture. The collective was founded by Jasper Meurer, a German-British political scientist specialized in immigration issues and social movements, and Rocio Calzado, a Spanish architect and researcher specialized in housing policy and architecture maintenance.
Since 2024, Docar has been a local partner of HouseEurope! and a LINA Community Fellow. In collaboration with MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome and LIFT Sarajevo, Docar released The Great Together, a short film on the European housing crisis. The film was presented at the Central Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, at the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam, and within the EPFL Architecture Lecture Series. Other audiovisual works include De Porte à Porte, currently in production with the support of the Pavillon de l’Arsenal (Paris), focusing on the demolition and transformation of social housing in Paris. In 2026, Docar started a collaboration with the Fundació Mies van der Rohe.
Beyond filmmaking, Docar was commissioned in 2025 to curate the exhibition on Urban (De-)growth at the Belgrade International Architecture Week (BINA). The collective has collaborated with researchers from Harvard GSD, École des Ponts ParisTech, and Aarhus University, providing visual research support on questions of architecture maintenance and reparation. Their academic research has been published in platforms such as TRACES, e-flux, or the European Journal of Spatial Development and was recently selected in the Critical Essays category of the UIA World Architecture Congress 2026 in Barcelona.
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“The Great Together” is a free translation of the French term Grand Ensemble, a housing typology that spread across post war Europe. Our film follows four such housing estates in four European cities: Rome, Toulouse, Belgrade and Vienna, tracing the diverse histories they have lived since their construction.
2025
20:14 minutes
Produced by Museo Maxxi and LIFT Sarajevo. Written and directed by Rocio Calzado and Jasper Meurer. Edited by Maxime Faure. Music and sound design by Jacopo Biffi. Graphic design by Jeffrey Annert.
The UIA World Congress of Architects 2026 Barcelona brings together renowned architects, researchers, and influential figures from multiple fields.
Our research and film have been both selected in the categories of Critical Essay and Critical Image by
an international jury — Giovanna Borasi, Louise Lemoine, Maxime Delvaux, Urtzi Grau, Maria Giramé and Pau Sarquella
(for critical image) and
Keller Easterling, Lydia Kallipolity, Marina Otero, Philip Ursprung, Samia Henni, Raquel Rolnik, Pau Bajet and Tomeu Ramis (for critical essay).
This event invites students and city-making professionals to explore the ecological, social, and heritage-related stakes of renovation and to engage in making the construction industry more sustainable. The event will feature architects, activists, researchers, and practitioners, aiming to convince the audience of the benefits of renovation and begin gathering the one million signatures needed by 2025.
Introduction
Christine Leconte, architecte-urbaniste, Directrice de l'ENSA de Paris-Belleville
Patrick de Jean, architecte, Président CFVE et CPS ENSAPB
de l’ENSA de Paris-Belleville
Marion Waller, Directrice générale du Pavillon de l'Arsenal
Olaf Grawert, architecte, représentant HouseEurope!
Intervention
Philippe Madec, architecte-urbaniste, fondateur Atelier Philippe Madec
Anne Lacaton, architecte et co-fondatrice de Lacaton & Vassal
Philippe Simay, docteur en philosophie
Djamel Klouche et Caroline Poulin, architectes-urbanistes, co-fondateurs de l'AUC
Léa Cottreel, architecte du Patrimoine, co-fondatrice de RREEL
Hélène Schwoerer, Directrice générale adjointe de Paris Habitat
Rocío Calzado López, architecte-chercheuse et Jasper Meurer, chercheur et photographe, co-fondateurs de DOCAR
Maud Caubet, architecte, fondatrice Maud Caubet Architectes
Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, architecte-urbaniste
The Great Together is part of the official selection of The Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam for the 2025 edition. The screening will take place on Friday 10th October at 15h in the Lantarenvenster Zaal/Cinema 6. For more information and for booking your tickets click here!
As part of the London Festival of Architecture and the LINA platform, Docar screened The Great Together, a new film exploring how we inhabit space and what buildings become over time. Their work features in the “Documentation” session of the Facilitation & Documentation symposium, chaired by Marko Milovanovic.
This session brings together creatives who use film to interrogate the social and spatial dimensions of architecture. With over two million hours of video uploaded online daily, film has become a vital tool for architectural storytelling—docar uses it to give voice to lived experiences, spatial memories, and urban transformation.
Alongside them, Norman Mine (PolyVocalCity) presents ParasiteTV, a collaborative project imagining new urban narratives.
The exhibition Stop drawing proposes a tour of discovery of the multiple meanings of drawing in architecture, from a design tool to a means of communication, from a system of representation to an essential step in production.
In the context of this exhibition Docar participated with the film “The Great Together”. The film will be presented on April 17 2025 at Gallery 3 of the MAXXI Museum of Rome, and will stay on display until the 20th of September of 2025.
The production of the film is made possible thanks to the support of the MAXXI Architecture Film Lab, promoted and organized by MAXXI in collaboration with
LIFT Sarajevo.
Festival Close Up
Since 2021, the Close-Up Festival has become a recognized event in the Île-de-France cultural scene, focusing on City, Architecture, and Landscape in cinema.
This year, we were invited to lead a Masterclass on the making of our film “De Porte à Porte”, on Saturday, November 9 at the Maison de l'Architecture (Paris 10).
Photo credits: Elsa Stubbe
Image de ville
Every year image de Ville organises a festival focussing on films dealing with architecture, urban spaces, and ecology. The festival serves as a starting point and reference for fostering encounters and dialogue between filmmakers, artists, architects, urban planners, and professionals who reflect on cities. Docar was invited to participate in the 2024 edition. On Friday the 18th of october, Rocio and Jasper will lead a session to present the process of filming their first documentary “De Porte à Porte”. On Sunday 20th, they will participate in a round table with other filmmakers dealing with topics connected to architecture and urbanism. Photo credits: Elsa Stubbe
HouseEurope! advocates for EU-laws to make renovation more affordable, easy and social. Because the demolition of existing buildings is as outdated as food waste, fast fashion and single-use plastics.
Since 2024 docar. has joined HouseEurope! as a local partner engaged in developing fieldwork and audiovisual research on housing demolitions.
The European platform LINA is a network connecting relevant institutions with emerging practitioners and thinkers who work at the intersection of architecture and other fields related to spatial culture. LINA’s goal is to steer design and building processes towards regenerative practices and principles of de-growth in line with the values of the European Green Deal.
In 2024 Docar. was selected as a featured fellow.
Focus is an yearly event created in 2020 by a national network of researchers promoting new forms of storytelling in the humanities and social sciences. Docar was selected to present in 2024 edition organised at MUCEM in Marseille.
The FAIRE program is an accelerator and incubator for architectural and urban projects that annually supports and funds a dozen teams with innovative practices and experimental approaches. It enables them to analyze, prototype, and test full-scale solutions to the major challenges in architecture, landscape, design, and society. Docar. was selected as one fo the teams for the 2023 Faire edition.