Architectures

E1 Episode 1: The Villa Dall'Ava

• Now playing
• 26m
• Sep 19, 1996

Rem Koolhaas built a unique villa on the heights of Saint-Cloud.

E2 Episode 2: Nemausus 1

• 26m
• Sep 26, 1996

In Nîmes, Jean Nouvel conceived a block of tenement houses reminiscent of a cruise liner. An architectural utopia that pokes fun at the truisms of council housing.

E3 Episode 3: The Iron House

• 26m
• Oct 3, 1996

In late 19th century Brussels, the Art Nouveau movement was laying the foundations of a new concept in architecture, and Victor Horta was the movement's grand master. Of all his works, the Hotel van Eetvelde features the boldest display of his modernity.

E4 Episode 4: Charlety, a Stadium in the City

• 26m
• Oct 10, 1996

Bruno and Henri Gaudin have broken with the classic design of a closed stadium, and created a bridge between Paris and its suburb. The Charlety Stadium's airy outline stands out in an otherwise densely urban area.

E5 Episode 5: Pierrefonds, the Architect's Castle

• 26m
• Oct 17, 1996

Middle Aged castle rebuilt by Viollet Le Duc for the Emperor Napoleon III. A reconstruction that paradoxically opened the way for modern architecture.

E6 Episode 6: The Vienna Savings Bank

• 26m
• Jul 2, 1998

At the turn of the last century, Otto Wagner designed one of the first 20th century modern office buildings, representing a radical break with the previous tradition in bank-architecture.

E7 Episode 7: The Georges Pompidou Centre

• 26m
• Jul 23, 1998

A giant meccano-like structure designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, a museum-factory that has become one of the most notable landmarks of the historical Parisian architectural landscape.

E8 Episode 8: Family Lodging in Guise

• 26m
• Aug 13, 1998

The philanthropist company boss Andre Godin built a workers' housing estate with a palatial air. Social housing is born.

E9 Episode 9: A House in Bordeaux

• 26m
• Aug 27, 1998

Designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas for a couple whose husband became disabled following a road accident, the architect's plan for this ultra-modern house is shaped by the need to adapt to the husband's mode of travel.

E10 Episode 10: The Dessau Bauhaus

• 26m
• Mar 3, 2001

Walter Gropius' main achievement is the buildings of the Bauhaus, built in 1926. His pioneering architecture saw the birth of one of the most innovative schools of art of the 20th century.

E11 Episode 11: Satolas - TGV

• 26m
• Mar 10, 2001

An astonishing concrete and steel structure designed for an open field in the Lyon countryside. An astonishing feat undertaken by Calatrava, which sees trains race through at speeds of 190mph.

E12 Episode 12: The Johnson Building

• 26m
• Mar 17, 2001

These famous office buildings were designed and built between 1936 and 1939 for the wax manufacturer Johnson, by one one of the 20th century's greatest architects Frank Lloyd Wright.

E13 Episode 13: The Paris Fine Art School

• 26m
• Mar 24, 2001

In the heart of Paris, architect Duban's 'École des Beaux-Arts' provides its students with an architectural "temple" representing a 19th century style widely copied throughout the world.

E14 Episode 14: The Siza School

• 26m
• Apr 14, 2001

The Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza built Porto's Faculty of Architecture, a mediation on space and light in a futuristic "agora". Alvaro was once a student and still teaches there today.

E15 Episode 15: The Stone Thermal Baths

• 26m
• Apr 21, 2001

The Spa of Vals-les-Bains, designed by Peter Zumthor, redefines the very concept of public bathing, a mise en scène of water in all its aspects.

E16 Episode 16: The Galleria Umberto I

• 26m
• May 19, 2001

Built in Naples, this is one of the last and largest covered passageways to be constructed in Europe, providing the swan song for a grand invention of 19th century architecture.

E17 Episode 17: The Saint Pancras Station

• 26m
• Jun 2, 2001

In the 19th century in London, the Midland Company had Saint Pancras and a luxury hotel built. Engineer W.H. Barlow carried out a major feat, creating a 73 meter single-span hall, with no columns or pillars. As for architect Sir George Gilbert Scott, his Midland Grand Hotel was a neo-gothic manifesto.

E18 Episode 18: The Wind Box

• 26m
• Jun 9, 2001

The Fort de France Education Authority is the only example of a contemporary architectural building in Martinique. It is also the only official building to be naturally ventilated by the trade winds. Christian Hauvette has created a totally open building, in which the boundaries between exterior and interior are blurred.

E19 Episode 19: The Garnier Opera

• 28m
• Jun 16, 2001

The Garnier Opera by Charles Garnier This is Paris's most prestigious 19th century building, the pinnacle of the "Beaux Arts" style with its ornamented facade, transfigured by the excesses of a theatre-mad architect in the mid-1800s.

E20 Episode 20: The Jewish Museum Berlin

• 26m
• Jul 5, 2003

The Jewish Museum in Berlin, by Daniel Libeskind, tackles the emptiness left by the extermination of Europe's Jews during the Second World War. His response is an architecture of absence.

E21 Episode 21: The Convent of La Tourette

• 26m
• Jul 26, 2003

With the Convent of La Tourette, commissioned by the Dominicans of Lyons, Le Courbusier was charged with the task of creating this rural convent retreat. A reinvention of religious architecture, its rough concrete form houses one hundred sleeping rooms plus recreational spaces.

E22 Episode 22: The Auditorium Building in Chicago

• 26m
• Sep 6, 2003

At the end of the 19th century, Louis Henry Sullivan, the father of American architecture, built the world's largest opera house, a "democratic" auditorium which was revolutionary in its very conception.

E23 Episode 23: The Municipal Center of Säynätsalo

• 26m
• Sep 13, 2003

Built in 1952 by Alvaar Alto, this town hall building lies in the heart of a rugged landscape in Finland. It represents a humanist masterpiece, and pays modern homage to the Ideal City of the Italian Renaissance.

E24 Episode 24: The Casa Milá

• 26m
• Sep 20, 2003

A block of flats in Barcelona, the Casa Milà is an extraordinarily sculpted work created by the great Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. The Art Nouveau apartments are expressionistic, fantastic, organic forms with undulating facades and roof lines.

E25 Episode 25: The Glass House

• 26m
• Feb 26, 2005

In 1928, Pierre Chareau built the poetic and remarkable Maison de Verre, one of the unique buildings of the 20th century. Inserted into an existing building, the views dissolve through semi-transparent materials, juxtaposing metal and glass, almost taking it into the realms of Surrealism.

E26 Episode 26: The Abbey Church of Saint Foy at Conques

• 26m
• Mar 5, 2005

Built in 1050, the Abbey is one of the foremost pilgrim churches of the Christian world. Rational, svelte and light-filled Romanesque architecture that flies in the face of cliches.

E27 Episode 27: The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

• 26m
• Mar 19, 2005

Known for his strange and deconstructed forms, Frank Gehry designed this monumental, but chaotic and abstract-looking sculpture in 1967. Covered in titanium, the curves on the building have been designed to appear random in order to catch the light.

E28 Episode 28: The Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans

• 26m
• Apr 2, 2005

The visionary architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux, one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical design, built a monumental factory for the king of France at the end of the 18th century. It is pragmatic and utopian, an aesthetic revolution.

E29 Episode 29: Jean Prouvé's House

• 26m
• Apr 30, 2005

In 1953, while going through his worst life-crisis, French designer Jean Prouvé built "his" house. Designed in haste, it embodies his most innovative ideas.

E30 Episode 30: The Multimedia Library of Sendai

• 26m
• May 14, 2005

A glass cube, built in 2001 by Toyo Ito, this library provides an example of immaterial and evanescent architecture. The multimedia library is located on a tree-lined avenue in Sendai, Japan. Its transparent facade allows for the revelation of diverse activities that occur within the building.

E31 Episode 31: The Alhambra, Grenade

• 26m
• Mar 11, 2007

Worried that their dynasty would disappear, the Nasrid sultans built this Red Castle in a strategic location over the city of Granada, ensuring that it became a paradise lost, dedicated to art, poetry and beauty.

E32 Episode 32: Phaeno, Building as Landscape

• 26m
• Mar 18, 2007

The sculptural power of the science center in Wolfsberg, Germany, in which the plan is a landscape - the landscape of Zaha Hadid's experience. The building is the realization of an imaginative world that we know vividly through twenty years of abstract images. It permits us to experience space in ways that never seemed possible before.

E33 Episode 33: The House of Sugimoto

• 26m
• Apr 1, 2007

Built in Kyoto in 1743, this traditional Japanese architectural masterpiece portrays a different understanding of architecture and building. It is a typical 'machiya' (Kyoto traditional townhouse) and was one of the largest built during the Meiji period.

E34 Episode 34: The Reception and Congress Building in Rome

• 26m
• Apr 15, 2007

In the most ambitious of the Mussolini regime's buildings, the leader of Italy's modern movement Adalberto Libera attempted the impossible combination of fascism with modernity. It reflects Libera's great ability to design ambiguously in a space, metaphysical language that sits on a knife-edge between modernism and neo-classicism.

E35 Episode 35: The Yoyogo Olympic Gymnasiums

• 26m
• May 20, 2007

For the 1964 summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Kenzo Tange designed two concrete gymnasiums which evoke a sense of movement. Famous for their suspension roof design, they are regarded by many as being among the most beautiful buildings of the 20th century.

E36 Episode 36: The Villa Barbaro

• 26m
• Jun 17, 2007

By inventing the villa, a new type of housing, in 1550, Palladio sought to combine aesthetics with utility. This rigorous and innovative approach was to have a lasting influence on Western architecture.

E37 Episode 37: The Royal Mosque at Isfahan

• 26m
• Feb 11, 2009

In 1598, King Abbas planned an immense urban project. His royal mosque captured his unprecedented wealth, an art of living, the king's power, and the talent of the architect Ali Akbar Esfahani.

E38 Episode 38: The Menier Chocolate Factory

• 26m
• Sep 13, 2009

The Menier factory at Noisiel, outside Paris, was the largest chocolate factory in the world between 1870 and 1914. Throughout its three successive states, it tells the story of a veritable laboratory of industrial architecture in the second half of the 19th century.

E39 Episode 39: The Pyramid of Pharoah Djoser at Saqqara

• 26m
• Sep 20, 2009

The Djoser pyramid, the work of legendary architect Imhotep, is the oldest in Egypt, and bears witness to the first steps of architecture as a scholarly pursuit. It was a revolution when built in 3000 BCE, born out of a desire to perpetuate tradition.

E40 Episode 40: The German Pavilion in Barcelona

• 26m
• Sep 27, 2009

How and why did this minimalist structure end up embodying 20th century modernity? Between rigor and free form, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's first masterpiece is a poetic work of spatial flow and intervals.

E41 Episode 41: The SAS Royal Hotel

• 26m
• Oct 11, 2009

The SAS Royal Hotel tower marked Denmark's entry into post-war modernity. It is a major work that combines functionalism, simplicity and elegance, and in which everything, from the ashtrays to the buildings volumes, were created and designed by Arne Jacobsen.

E42 Episode 42: Roissy 1

• 26m
• Oct 25, 2009

Opened in 1974, Roissy 1 was the first time architecture had entered the realm of airport construction. The building is the work of Paul Andreu, who was 29 years old at the time. It was his first building and the start of a long series of constructions, which would eventually make him one of the greatest 20th century airport architects.

E43 Episode 43: The Maisons Castle

• 26m
• Nov 15, 2009

Although its posterity has now rendered its image commonplace, the Maisons Laffitte Chateau revolutionized French architecture. It is the masterpiece of the brilliant architect Francois Mansart.

E44 Episode 44: The Luxembourg Philharmonic

• 26m
• Dec 6, 2009

The elliptical shaped Philharmonic, with its filter of white columns and colorful cliffs, houses the Grand Auditorium in the manner of a jewel in its display case. It is one of the most beautiful building from architect Christian de Portzamparc.

E45 Episode 45: VitraHaus

• 26m
• Oct 2, 2011

In 2006, the company Vitra asked the "Herzog & de Meuron" agency to create a building for it's "Home" collection. The showroom consists of a pile of 12 houses, slotted together to produce surprising spaces.

E46 Episode 46: The Igualada Cemetery

• 26m
• Oct 9, 2011

E47 Episode 47: The Citadel de Lille

• 26m
• Oct 16, 2011

Vauban's "Queen of the citadels" was the model for military construction all over France. Built between 1668 and 1671, its exacting and simple design has made it a source of inspiration for major contemporary architects.

E48 Episode 48: The Sainte-Geneviève Library

• 26m
• Oct 30, 2011

Breaking away from the 19th century neoclassical trend, Henri Labrouste erected a powerful public building in which stone featured along side a material that was used prominently and glorified for the first time - iron. A major milestone on the path to modern architecture.

E49 Episode 49: The Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy

• 26m
• Nov 13, 2011

In a country ruined by World War I, Auguste Perret took up the challenge of building a church. In concrete. It was a shunned material, used hitherto exclusively in industrial construction. This "Holy Chapel of Concrete" revolutionized architectural vocabulary.

E50 Episode 50: Ewha, the Seoul Hidden University

• 26m
• Dec 4, 2011

With this building, Dominique Perrault continues a concept that is dear to him, the absence of architecture. The urban dimension and the way the surrounding land is organized prevail over the construction. The landscape supplants the architecture.

E51 Episode 51: The Rolex Learning Center

• 26m
• May 5, 2013

Poised on the shore of Lake Geneva, a wave of cement and glass has inspired many metaphors, from a slice of Emmental cheese to a piece of molecular fabric. The building, a space dedicated to knowledge, resembles nothing else before it.

E52 Episode 52: The National Dance Center

• 26m
• May 19, 2013

The mutation of a concrete mastodon, the Pantin Administrative Center (1969) into the French National Dance Center (2004)... Or the successful meeting of Brutus and ballerinas. An architectural overhaul that necessarily owes its success to the monumental strength of the original building.

E53 Episode 53: The Cologne Cathedral

• 26m
• May 26, 2013

Started in 1247, the Cologne Cathedral was completed in 1880 after a 300 year break in the work carried out on it. The Cathedral, which embodies the unity of Germany, is both a Gothic archetype and one of the most magnificent buildings completed during the 19th century.

E54 Episode 54: The Citadel of Leisure, the Pompeia Social Service Center

• 26m
• Jun 23, 2013

In the Palmeiras district of São Paulo, early 20th century former factory workshops are aligned with strange blocks of cement that stand tall, facing the city. Could the "Citadel of Leisure" be a major work of "Architecture Povera"?

E55 Episode 55: The Hotels de Soubise and de Rohan

• 26m
• Jul 7, 2013

From 1705 to 1752, the house of the Princes of Soubise was the setting for wild ambition and dreams of grandeur, with the dual purpose of transforming and renaming the Hotel de Guise for the Prince's heir, and of building a second mansion for his fifth son, the Prince Bishop of Strasbourg.

E56 Episode 56: The French Communist Party Headquarters

• 26m
• Aug 30, 2015

A mysterious white dome and an undulating glass facade, the headquarters of the French Communist Party, built between 1965 and 1980, by Oscar Niemeyer. A fine example of the curtain wall designed by Jean Prouve, an extraordinary Central Committee room under the dome, and some of the finest Parisian architecture of the period.

E57 Episode 57: The Unal House

• 26m
• Sep 6, 2015

Designed by Claude Hausermann-Costy, and built by Joel Unal between 1972 and 2008, it's a bubble house without a single right angle. The technique used was the application by hand of a layer concrete, without forms, on top of a metal frame. The house is part of a movement known as "sculpted architecture".

E58 Episode 58: The Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam

• 26m
• Sep 13, 2015

A cross between Taylorism and Bauhaus, the Van Nelle factory at Rotterdam was built between 1926 and 1931. Designed by the architects Jan Brickman and Leendert Van der Vlugt, the factory is the most important and the most accomplished example of industrial architecture in the modern movement.

E59 Episode 59: The Glass Galleon

• 26m
• Sep 20, 2015

On the fringes of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, a grand galleon with 12 glass sails, billowing in an imaginary wind, towers above the treetops. It is a new building, designed by Frank Gehry, dedicated to contemporary art that offers visitors an architectural tour.

E60 Episode 60: Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Mughal Mausoleum

• 26m
• Oct 4, 2015

The mausoleum of Itimad-ud-Daulah, built of white marble encrusted with semi-precious stones, in Agra the capital of the Mughal Empire. Islamic funeral rites are strictly observed in a structure that combines representations of paradise.

E61 Episode 61: The Home for All at Rikuzentakata

• 26m
• Oct 11, 2015

After Japan's 2011 tsunami, a group of architects led by Toyo Ito launched the "Home for All" project, providing community centers for the inhabitants of the devastated towns. Three architects, Su Fujimoto, Kumiko Inui and Akihisa Hirata, each built one of these homes in Rikuzentakata.

E62 Episode 62: The Wa Shan Guesthouse

• 26m
• Oct 18, 2015

The Wa Shan, literally "Tile Mountain", is an astonishing guesthouse, built by Chinese architect Wang Shu, who pursues the aim of sustainable architecture. His experimental practice and his works, which blend modern and traditional building methods, earned him the Pritzker Prize in 2012.

E63 Episode 63: The Glasgow School of Art

• 26m
• Oct 25, 2015

Built at the dawn of the 20th century by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Glasgow School of Art is a masterpiece that combines the constructive rationality, art-nouveau, subjectivism, obsessive attention to detail and a decorative fantasy. Its influence is without parallel in early 20th century architecture.

E64 Episode 64: The Sante, a Prison in Paris

• 26m
• Oct 8, 2017

La Sante prison (1861-1867) is a unique and impressive work of architecture. At the cutting edge of reflections on imprisonment, it was at the time the ultimate "modern prison", the stone embodiment of 19th century penitentiary obsessions.

E65 Episode 65: The Bamboo School of Bali

• 26m
• Oct 15, 2017

An astonishing structure in which three cones flow together into one roof that protects a school building made of bamboo. An ambitious program built only with an entirely renewable material.

E66 Episode 66: Médiacité - a Designer Mall

• 26m
• Oct 22, 2017

Seen from the sky, a long stained-glass window structures the commercial center. At Médiacité, the experimental, provocative Israeli designer Ron Arad has set out to conquer architecture, putting his ideas into practice on a bigger scale and reinvigorating the often criticized genre of retail architecture.

E67 Episode 67: The Phillips Exeter Academy Library

• 26m
• Oct 29, 2017

A masterpiece of geometry and of architectural precision, the library is one of Lous Kahn's last works. Louis Kahn reinvented library layouts by placing readers close to daylight on the periphery of the building, and by creating a vast central atrium.