Architecton at Eclipse Cinema — Evenings with DADo and Robin Boyd’s Material Questions

Architecton arrives at Eclipse Cinema (32 Wellington St, Collingwood VIC 3066) as part of Evenings with DADo, a program that stages films and conversations in Robin Boyd’s living room and beyond. On Tuesday 28 July at 6:30pm, the screening of Architecton (dir. Victor Kossakovsky, 2024) pairs cinematic sequences of ancient stone and contemporary ruin with a local conversation led by Millie Cattlin and Joseph Norster of These Are The Projects We Do Together. The film threads images from the temple ruins of Baalbek to recent earthquake shattered urban fabric, using material and extraction as the throughline. For architecture lovers, the evening doubles as a field lesson: you’ll watch monumental masonry and then be invited to consider local material stories — from Boyd’s modernist Walsh Street house (290 Walsh Street, South Yarra, built 1957) to an 86,000 square metre arkose sandstone quarry in the Otway Ranges where The Quarry project explores post‑extractive rehabilitation. The contrast—filmic stone and Melbourne’s tight urban streets—creates a sharp, memorable pairing. Eclipse Cinema’s compact auditorium magnifies texture; the projector brings Kossakovsky’s rugged stone into intense relief. After the screening, the speakers reflect on material, landscape, extraction and collective making, connecting global ruins to Victorian quarries and community‑led remediation projects like Balam Balam Place. The program’s curators — Thandi Lane, Andrew MacKinnon, Tom Hibbert and Jasper Caverly — have shaped a DADo lineup that privileges conversation and care. Practicalities matter: the event runs roughly 2.5 hours; attendees must be 16 years or older and external food and drink aren’t permitted. If you need mobility support, Robin Boyd Organisation asks visitors to email [email protected]. Tickets and member discounts are available through Robin Boyd Foundation channels and the event page; bring a jacket for Melbourne’s evening chill and leave time to stroll Collingwood’s streets afterwards. Why book it? This is more than a film night; it’s a local checkpoint linking design history, hands‑on community projects and the material realities of building. The screening locates architectural ethics in landscape and labour, and then anchors those abstractions to nearby sites and histories: Boyd’s Walsh Street home and the Gadubanud lands in the Otways. For travelers curious about design thinking in practice, or for anyone who wants film with rigorous regional context, Evenings with DADo at Eclipse is a compact, smart way to spend an evening in Melbourne’s creative northeast. Expect a layered night: 98 minutes of film that alternates epic exterior shots with intimate close‑ups, followed by a discussion that frames architecture as social practice. After the event, consider a short walk to nearby cafes on Smith Street to keep the conversation going; Collingwood’s collection of galleries and bars makes it easy to compare ideas sparked by the film, book a seat.