SPACE May 2026 (No. 702)
Still from No Leftovers No Left Out (2023, film, 2’34’’)
A photograph taken by the director, of a scene similar to a still from No Leftovers No Left Out
Standardised ways of building inevitably produce offcuts. No Leftovers No Left Out turns its attention to materials discarded for being too irregular or obsolete. Centring on a serene and playful public space designed by Ensamble Studio using leftover quarry stones and recycled CD cases, the film invites viewers to reconsider the value of this space through a sensual experience.
This is not the documentary-style ‘architecture film’ that we are used to seeing; it’s a film about the work of Daisy Ziyan Zhang, an architect who studied at the University of Sydney and MIT, and a filmmaker who has won an award at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and a finalist spot at the Venice Architecture Film Festival. She turns her lens on anonymous buildings, and even when she films the work of celebrated architects, she never includes the architect’s voice. Instead, her camera lingers beside people who sweep floors, tend to plants, and grow old alongside the buildings they inhabit—and beside the spaces themselves. Why did she choose film as her medium? Why does she focus on architecture without architects, and on the unvarnished life of buildings? We sat down with her to hear about the beauty of what gets pushed out of the frame.
Interview Daisy Ziyan Zhang × Kim Bokyoung
Kim Bokyoung (Kim): What drew you to film/video as a medium for architectural expression?
Daisy Ziyan Zhang (Zhang): What draws me to this medium is its capacity for intimacy, something that resists full articulation. I see myself as an observer; filmmaking is my act of translation. I approach it the same way I approach design: beginning with the mundane and making tiny interventions, just enough to shift how we might see or feel. It is those slight provocations that open up imaginative alternatives for what we tend to overlook.
Working in non-fiction has nourished how I understand connection, the way we relate to one another and to the built environment. It creates a safe space of understanding and shared vulnerability. It isn’t always comfortable; sometimes it’s even confrontational. But there is something deeply inspiring in those coarse, unguarded moments that polished choreography can never touch. Film allows me to stay in those fleeting moments a little longer. Maybe that’s why I’ve come to think of film as both a liquid and a frozen architecture.
When I was practicing as an architect, I was always secretly amused by the ‘standards...
