The Villa Dall'Ava

S01 E01 • Thursday, Sep 19, 1996 • Sep 19 • 26m

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

Nemausus 1

S01 E02 • Thursday, Sep 26, 1996 • Sep 26 • 26m

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.

The Iron House

S01 E03 • Thursday, Oct 3, 1996 • Oct 3 • 26m

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.

Charlety, a Stadium in the City

S01 E04 • Thursday, Oct 10, 1996 • Oct 10 • 26m

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.

Pierrefonds, the Architect's Castle

S01 E05 • Thursday, Oct 17, 1996 • Oct 17 • 26m

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

The Vienna Savings Bank

S01 E06 • Thursday, Jul 2, 1998 • Jul 2 • 26m

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.

The Georges Pompidou Centre

S01 E07 • Thursday, Jul 23, 1998 • Jul 23 • 26m

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.

Family Lodging in Guise

S01 E08 • Thursday, Aug 13, 1998 • Aug 13 • 26m

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

A House in Bordeaux

S01 E09 • Thursday, Aug 27, 1998 • Aug 27 • 26m

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.

The Dessau Bauhaus

S01 E10 • Saturday, Mar 3, 2001 • Mar 3 • 26m

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.

Satolas - TGV

S01 E11 • Saturday, Mar 10, 2001 • Mar 10 • 26m

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.

The Johnson Building

S01 E12 • Saturday, Mar 17, 2001 • Mar 17 • 26m

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.

The Paris Fine Art School

S01 E13 • Saturday, Mar 24, 2001 • Mar 24 • 26m

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.

The Siza School

S01 E14 • Saturday, Apr 14, 2001 • Apr 14 • 26m

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.

The Stone Thermal Baths

S01 E15 • Saturday, Apr 21, 2001 • Apr 21 • 26m

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.

The Galleria Umberto I

S01 E16 • Saturday, May 19, 2001 • May 19 • 26m

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.

The Saint Pancras Station

S01 E17 • Saturday, Jun 2, 2001 • Jun 2 • 26m

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.

The Wind Box

S01 E18 • Saturday, Jun 9, 2001 • Jun 9 • 26m

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.

The Garnier Opera

S01 E19 • Saturday, Jun 16, 2001 • Jun 16 • 28m

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.

The Jewish Museum Berlin

S01 E20 • Saturday, Jul 5, 2003 • Jul 5 • 26m

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.

The Convent of La Tourette

S01 E21 • Saturday, Jul 26, 2003 • Jul 26 • 26m

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.

The Auditorium Building in Chicago

S01 E22 • Saturday, Sep 6, 2003 • Sep 6 • 26m

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.

The Municipal Center of Säynätsalo

S01 E23 • Saturday, Sep 13, 2003 • Sep 13 • 26m

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.

The Casa Milá

S01 E24 • Saturday, Sep 20, 2003 • Sep 20 • 26m

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.

The Glass House

S01 E25 • Saturday, Feb 26, 2005 • Feb 26 • 26m

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.

The Abbey Church of Saint Foy at Conques

S01 E26 • Saturday, Mar 5, 2005 • Mar 5 • 26m

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.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

S01 E27 • Saturday, Mar 19, 2005 • Mar 19 • 26m

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.

The Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans

S01 E28 • Saturday, Apr 2, 2005 • Apr 2 • 26m

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.

Jean Prouvé's House

S01 E29 • Saturday, Apr 30, 2005 • Apr 30 • 26m

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.

The Multimedia Library of Sendai

S01 E30 • Saturday, May 14, 2005 • May 14 • 26m

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.

The Alhambra, Grenade

S01 E31 • Sunday, Mar 11, 2007 • Mar 11 • 26m

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.

Phaeno, Building as Landscape

S01 E32 • Sunday, Mar 18, 2007 • Mar 18 • 26m

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.

The House of Sugimoto

S01 E33 • Sunday, Apr 1, 2007 • Apr 1 • 26m

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.

The Reception and Congress Building in Rome

S01 E34 • Sunday, Apr 15, 2007 • Apr 15 • 26m

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.

The Yoyogo Olympic Gymnasiums

S01 E35 • Sunday, May 20, 2007 • May 20 • 26m

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.

The Villa Barbaro

S01 E36 • Sunday, Jun 17, 2007 • Jun 17 • 26m

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.

The Royal Mosque at Isfahan

S01 E37 • Wednesday, Feb 11, 2009 • Feb 11 • 26m

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.

The Menier Chocolate Factory

S01 E38 • Sunday, Sep 13, 2009 • Sep 13 • 26m

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.

The Pyramid of Pharoah Djoser at Saqqara

S01 E39 • Sunday, Sep 20, 2009 • Sep 20 • 26m

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.

The German Pavilion in Barcelona

S01 E40 • Sunday, Sep 27, 2009 • Sep 27 • 26m

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.

The SAS Royal Hotel

S01 E41 • Sunday, Oct 11, 2009 • Oct 11 • 26m

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.

Roissy 1

S01 E42 • Sunday, Oct 25, 2009 • Oct 25 • 26m

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.

The Maisons Castle

S01 E43 • Sunday, Nov 15, 2009 • Nov 15 • 26m

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.

The Luxembourg Philharmonic

S01 E44 • Sunday, Dec 6, 2009 • Dec 6 • 26m

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.

VitraHaus

S01 E45 • Sunday, Oct 2, 2011 • Oct 2 • 26m

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.

The Igualada Cemetery

S01 E46 • Sunday, Oct 9, 2011 • Oct 9 • 26m

The Citadel de Lille

S01 E47 • Sunday, Oct 16, 2011 • Oct 16 • 26m

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.

The Sainte-Geneviève Library

S01 E48 • Sunday, Oct 30, 2011 • Oct 30 • 26m

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.

The Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy

S01 E49 • Sunday, Nov 13, 2011 • Nov 13 • 26m

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.

Ewha, the Seoul Hidden University

S01 E50 • Sunday, Dec 4, 2011 • Dec 4 • 26m

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.