The Value in Following a Single Building for Years

TORONTO—Universe Within is the final installment in the years-long, many-media HIGHRISE interactive documentary series, produced by the National Film Board of Canada. The immersive site is a globe-spanning expansion on the themes that the filmmaker Katerina Cizek developed in Out My Window (2010), One Millionth Tower (2011), and A Short History of the Highrise (2013). So it’s appropriate that the very first story she produced for Universe Within, which makes its U.S. premiere on CityLab, takes place at the same anonymous-looking tower featured in One Millionth Tower.

“This is one of the most vertical cities in the world. There’s New York, and then there’s Toronto,” says Gerry Flahive, a former senior producer for the National Film Board and the producer of HIGHRISE. “But the towers are scattered all over the city. People don’t see them.”