Season 1
67 episodes · Sep 19, 1996
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S1E1The Villa Dall'Ava
Sep 19, 199626mRem Koolhaas built a unique villa on the heights of Saint-Cloud.
S1E2Nemausus 1
Sep 26, 199626mIn 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.
S1E3The Iron House
Oct 3, 199626mIn 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.
S1E4Charlety, a Stadium in the City
Oct 10, 199626mBruno 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.
S1E5Pierrefonds, the Architect's Castle
Oct 17, 199626mMiddle Aged castle rebuilt by Viollet Le Duc for the Emperor Napoleon III. A reconstruction that paradoxically opened the way for modern architecture.
S1E6The Vienna Savings Bank
Jul 2, 199826mAt 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.
S1E7The Georges Pompidou Centre
Jul 23, 199826mA 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.
S1E8Family Lodging in Guise
Aug 13, 199826mThe philanthropist company boss Andre Godin built a workers' housing estate with a palatial air. Social housing is born.
S1E9A House in Bordeaux
Aug 27, 199826mDesigned 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.
S1E10The Dessau Bauhaus
Mar 3, 200126mWalter 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.
S1E11Satolas - TGV
Mar 10, 200126mAn 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.
S1E12The Johnson Building
Mar 17, 200126mThese 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.
S1E13The Paris Fine Art School
Mar 24, 200126mIn 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.
S1E14The Siza School
Apr 14, 200126mThe 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.
S1E15The Stone Thermal Baths
Apr 21, 200126mThe 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.
S1E16The Galleria Umberto I
May 19, 200126mBuilt 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.
S1E17The Saint Pancras Station
Jun 2, 200126mIn 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.
S1E18The Wind Box
Jun 9, 200126mThe 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.
S1E19The Garnier Opera
Jun 16, 200128mThe 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.
S1E20The Jewish Museum Berlin
Jul 5, 200326mThe 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.
S1E21The Convent of La Tourette
Jul 26, 200326mWith 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.
S1E22The Auditorium Building in Chicago
Sep 6, 200326mAt 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.
S1E23The Municipal Center of Säynätsalo
Sep 13, 200326mBuilt 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.
S1E24The Casa Milá
Sep 20, 200326mA 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.
S1E25The Glass House
Feb 26, 200526mIn 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.
S1E26The Abbey Church of Saint Foy at Conques
Mar 5, 200526mBuilt 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.
S1E27The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
Mar 19, 200526mKnown 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.
S1E28The Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans
Apr 2, 200526mThe 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.
S1E29Jean Prouvé's House
Apr 30, 200526mIn 1953, while going through his worst life-crisis, French designer Jean Prouvé built "his" house. Designed in haste, it embodies his most innovative ideas.
S1E30The Multimedia Library of Sendai
May 14, 200526mA 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.
S1E31The Alhambra, Grenade
Mar 11, 200726mWorried 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.
S1E32Phaeno, Building as Landscape
Mar 18, 200726mThe 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.
S1E33The House of Sugimoto
Apr 1, 200726mBuilt 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.
S1E34The Reception and Congress Building in Rome
Apr 15, 200726mIn 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.
S1E35The Yoyogo Olympic Gymnasiums
May 20, 200726mFor 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.
S1E36The Villa Barbaro
Jun 17, 200726mBy 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.
S1E37The Royal Mosque at Isfahan
Feb 11, 200926mIn 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.
S1E38The Menier Chocolate Factory
Sep 13, 200926mThe 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.
S1E39The Pyramid of Pharoah Djoser at Saqqara
Sep 20, 200926mThe 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.
S1E40The German Pavilion in Barcelona
Sep 27, 200926mHow 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.
S1E41The SAS Royal Hotel
Oct 11, 200926mThe 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.
S1E42Roissy 1
Oct 25, 200926mOpened 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.
S1E43The Maisons Castle
Nov 15, 200926mAlthough 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.
S1E44The Luxembourg Philharmonic
Dec 6, 200926mThe 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.
S1E45VitraHaus
Oct 2, 201126mIn 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.
S1E47The Citadel de Lille
Oct 16, 201126mVauban'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.
S1E48The Sainte-Geneviève Library
Oct 30, 201126mBreaking 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.
S1E49The Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy
Nov 13, 201126mIn 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.
S1E50Ewha, the Seoul Hidden University
Dec 4, 201126mWith 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.
S1E51The Rolex Learning Center
May 5, 201326mPoised 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.
S1E52The National Dance Center
May 19, 201326mThe 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.
S1E53The Cologne Cathedral
May 26, 201326mStarted 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.
S1E54The Citadel of Leisure, the Pompeia Social Service Center
Jun 23, 201326mIn 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"?
S1E55The Hotels de Soubise and de Rohan
Jul 7, 201326mFrom 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.
S1E56The French Communist Party Headquarters
Aug 30, 201526mA 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.
S1E57The Unal House
Sep 6, 201526mDesigned 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".
S1E58The Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam
Sep 13, 201526mA 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.
S1E59The Glass Galleon
Sep 20, 201526mOn 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.
S1E60Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Mughal Mausoleum
Oct 4, 201526mThe 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.
S1E61The Home for All at Rikuzentakata
Oct 11, 201526mAfter 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.
S1E62The Wa Shan Guesthouse
Oct 18, 201526mThe 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.
S1E63The Glasgow School of Art
Oct 25, 201526mBuilt 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.
S1E64The Sante, a Prison in Paris
Oct 8, 201726mLa 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.
S1E65The Bamboo School of Bali
Oct 15, 201726mAn 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.
S1E66Médiacité - a Designer Mall
Oct 22, 201726mSeen 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.
S1E67The Phillips Exeter Academy Library
Oct 29, 201726mA 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.