Architectures

Season 11996

An ongoing series of films devoted to the most remarkable achievements in modern architecture, from the works that heralded the birth of the modern style at the end of the 19th century to the latest designs from today's top architects. By examining each building in detail, the series brings to light the role each has played in the history and evolution of architecture.

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67 Episodes

E01 The Villa Dall'Ava

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

September 19, 1996

E02 Nemausus 1

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.

September 26, 1996

E03 The Iron House

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.

October 3, 1996

E04 Charlety, a Stadium in the City

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.

October 10, 1996

E05 Pierrefonds, the Architect's Castle

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

October 17, 1996

E06 The Vienna Savings Bank

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.

July 2, 1998

E07 The Georges Pompidou Centre

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.

July 23, 1998

E08 Family Lodging in Guise

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

August 13, 1998

E09 A House in Bordeaux

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.

August 27, 1998

E10 The Dessau Bauhaus

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.

March 3, 2001

E11 Satolas - TGV

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.

March 10, 2001

E12 The Johnson Building

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.

March 17, 2001

E13 The Paris Fine Art School

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.

March 24, 2001

E14 The Siza School

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.

April 14, 2001

E15 The Stone Thermal Baths

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.

April 21, 2001

E16 The Galleria Umberto I

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.

May 19, 2001

E17 The Saint Pancras Station

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.

June 2, 2001

E18 The Wind Box

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.

June 9, 2001

E19 The Garnier Opera

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.

June 16, 2001

E20 The Jewish Museum Berlin

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.

July 5, 2003

E21 The Convent of La Tourette

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.

July 26, 2003

E22 The Auditorium Building in Chicago

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.

September 6, 2003

E23 The Municipal Center of Säynätsalo

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.

September 13, 2003

E24 The Casa Milá

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.

September 20, 2003

E25 The Glass House

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.

February 26, 2005

E26 The Abbey Church of Saint Foy at Conques

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.

March 5, 2005

E27 The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

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.

March 19, 2005

E28 The Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans

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.

April 2, 2005

E29 Jean Prouvé's House

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.

April 30, 2005

E30 The Multimedia Library of Sendai

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.

May 14, 2005

E31 The Alhambra, Grenade

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.

March 11, 2007

E32 Phaeno, Building as Landscape

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.

March 18, 2007

E33 The House of Sugimoto

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.

April 1, 2007

E34 The Reception and Congress Building in Rome

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.

April 15, 2007

E35 The Yoyogo Olympic Gymnasiums

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.

May 20, 2007

E36 The Villa Barbaro

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.

June 17, 2007

E37 The Royal Mosque at Isfahan

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.

February 11, 2009

E38 The Menier Chocolate Factory

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.

September 13, 2009

E39 The Pyramid of Pharoah Djoser at Saqqara

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.

September 20, 2009

E40 The German Pavilion in Barcelona

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.

September 27, 2009

E41 The SAS Royal Hotel

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.

October 11, 2009

E42 Roissy 1

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.

October 25, 2009

E43 The Maisons Castle

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.

November 15, 2009

E44 The Luxembourg Philharmonic

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.

December 6, 2009

E45 VitraHaus

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.

October 2, 2011

E46 The Igualada Cemetery

October 9, 2011

E47 The Citadel de Lille

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.

October 16, 2011

E48 The Sainte-Geneviève Library

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.

October 30, 2011

E49 The Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy

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.

November 13, 2011

E50 Ewha, the Seoul Hidden University

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.

December 4, 2011

E51 The Rolex Learning Center

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.

May 5, 2013

E52 The National Dance Center

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.

May 19, 2013

E53 The Cologne Cathedral

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.

May 26, 2013

E54 The Citadel of Leisure, the Pompeia Social Service Center

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"?

June 23, 2013

E55 The Hotels de Soubise and de Rohan

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.

July 7, 2013

E56 The French Communist Party Headquarters

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.

August 30, 2015

E57 The Unal House

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".

September 6, 2015

E58 The Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam

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.

September 13, 2015

E59 The Glass Galleon

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.

September 20, 2015

E60 Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Mughal Mausoleum

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.

October 4, 2015

E61 The Home for All at Rikuzentakata

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.

October 11, 2015

E62 The Wa Shan Guesthouse

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.

October 18, 2015

E63 The Glasgow School of Art

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.

October 25, 2015

E64 The Sante, a Prison in Paris

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.

October 8, 2017

E65 The Bamboo School of Bali

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.

October 15, 2017

E66 Médiacité - a Designer Mall

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.

October 22, 2017

E67 The Phillips Exeter Academy Library

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.

October 29, 2017