Season 1
(1996)
Cast
Episodes
The Villa Dall'Ava 0.0
September 19, 1996
Rem Koolhaas built a unique villa on the heights of Saint-Cloud.
Nemausus 1 0.0
September 26, 1996
In Nîmes, Jean Nouvel conceived a block of tenement houses reminiscent of a cruise liner. An architectural utopia that …
The Iron House 0.0
October 3, 1996
In late 19th century Brussels, the Art Nouveau movement was laying the foundations of a new concept in architecture, an…
Charlety, a Stadium in the City 0.0
October 10, 1996
Bruno and Henri Gaudin have broken with the classic design of a closed stadium, and created a bridge between Paris and …
Pierrefonds, the Architect's Castle 0.0
October 17, 1996
Middle Aged castle rebuilt by Viollet Le Duc for the Emperor Napoleon III. A reconstruction that paradoxically opened …
The Vienna Savings Bank 0.0
July 2, 1998
At the turn of the last century, Otto Wagner designed one of the first 20th century modern office buildings, representi…
The Georges Pompidou Centre 0.0
July 23, 1998
A giant meccano-like structure designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, a museum-factory that has become one of the …
Family Lodging in Guise 0.0
August 13, 1998
The philanthropist company boss Andre Godin built a workers' housing estate with a palatial air. Social housing is bor…
A House in Bordeaux 0.0
August 27, 1998
Designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas for a couple whose husband became disabled following a road accident, the archit…
The Dessau Bauhaus 0.0
March 3, 2001
Walter Gropius' main achievement is the buildings of the Bauhaus, built in 1926. His pioneering architecture saw the bi…
Satolas - TGV 0.0
March 10, 2001
An astonishing concrete and steel structure designed for an open field in the Lyon countryside. An astonishing feat und…
The Johnson Building 0.0
March 17, 2001
These famous office buildings were designed and built between 1936 and 1939 for the wax manufacturer Johnson, by one on…
The Paris Fine Art School 0.0
March 24, 2001
In the heart of Paris, architect Duban's 'École des Beaux-Arts' provides its students with an architectural "temple" re…
The Siza School 0.0
April 14, 2001
The Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza built Porto's Faculty of Architecture, a mediation on space and light in a futuris…
The Stone Thermal Baths 0.0
April 21, 2001
The Spa of Vals-les-Bains, designed by Peter Zumthor, redefines the very concept of public bathing, a mise en scène of …
The Galleria Umberto I 0.0
May 19, 2001
Built in Naples, this is one of the last and largest covered passageways to be constructed in Europe, providing the swa…
The Saint Pancras Station 0.0
June 2, 2001
In the 19th century in London, the Midland Company had Saint Pancras and a luxury hotel built. Engineer W.H. Barlow ca…
The Wind Box 0.0
June 9, 2001
The Fort de France Education Authority is the only example of a contemporary architectural building in Martinique. It …
The Garnier Opera 0.0
June 16, 2001
The Garnier Opera by Charles Garnier This is Paris's most prestigious 19th century building, the pinnacle of the "Beaux…
The Jewish Museum Berlin 0.0
July 5, 2003
The Jewish Museum in Berlin, by Daniel Libeskind, tackles the emptiness left by the extermination of Europe's Jews duri…
The Convent of La Tourette 0.0
July 26, 2003
With the Convent of La Tourette, commissioned by the Dominicans of Lyons, Le Courbusier was charged with the task of cr…
The Auditorium Building in Chicago 0.0
September 6, 2003
At the end of the 19th century, Louis Henry Sullivan, the father of American architecture, built the world's largest op…
The Municipal Center of Säynätsalo 0.0
September 13, 2003
Built in 1952 by Alvaar Alto, this town hall building lies in the heart of a rugged landscape in Finland. It represent…
The Casa Milá 0.0
September 20, 2003
A block of flats in Barcelona, the Casa Milà is an extraordinarily sculpted work created by the great Spanish architect…
The Glass House 0.0
February 26, 2005
In 1928, Pierre Chareau built the poetic and remarkable Maison de Verre, one of the unique buildings of the 20th centur…
The Abbey Church of Saint Foy at Conques 0.0
March 5, 2005
Built in 1050, the Abbey is one of the foremost pilgrim churches of the Christian world. Rational, svelte and light-fi…
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao 0.0
March 19, 2005
Known for his strange and deconstructed forms, Frank Gehry designed this monumental, but chaotic and abstract-looking s…
The Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans 0.0
April 2, 2005
The visionary architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux, one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical design, built a mon…
Jean Prouvé's House 0.0
April 30, 2005
In 1953, while going through his worst life-crisis, French designer Jean Prouvé built "his" house. Designed in haste, …
The Multimedia Library of Sendai 0.0
May 14, 2005
A glass cube, built in 2001 by Toyo Ito, this library provides an example of immaterial and evanescent architecture. Th…
The Alhambra, Grenade 0.0
March 11, 2007
Worried that their dynasty would disappear, the Nasrid sultans built this Red Castle in a strategic location over the c…
Phaeno, Building as Landscape 0.0
March 18, 2007
The sculptural power of the science center in Wolfsberg, Germany, in which the plan is a landscape - the landscape of Z…
The House of Sugimoto 0.0
April 1, 2007
Built in Kyoto in 1743, this traditional Japanese architectural masterpiece portrays a different understanding of archi…
The Reception and Congress Building in Rome 0.0
April 15, 2007
In the most ambitious of the Mussolini regime's buildings, the leader of Italy's modern movement Adalberto Libera attem…
The Yoyogo Olympic Gymnasiums 0.0
May 20, 2007
For the 1964 summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Kenzo Tange designed two concrete gymnasiums which evoke a sense of movemen…
The Villa Barbaro 0.0
June 17, 2007
By inventing the villa, a new type of housing, in 1550, Palladio sought to combine aesthetics with utility. This rigor…
The Royal Mosque at Isfahan 0.0
February 11, 2009
In 1598, King Abbas planned an immense urban project. His royal mosque captured his unprecedented wealth, an art of li…
The Menier Chocolate Factory 0.0
September 13, 2009
The Menier factory at Noisiel, outside Paris, was the largest chocolate factory in the world between 1870 and 1914. Th…
The Pyramid of Pharoah Djoser at Saqqara 0.0
September 20, 2009
The Djoser pyramid, the work of legendary architect Imhotep, is the oldest in Egypt, and bears witness to the first ste…
The German Pavilion in Barcelona 0.0
September 27, 2009
How and why did this minimalist structure end up embodying 20th century modernity? Between rigor and free form, Ludwig…
The SAS Royal Hotel 0.0
October 11, 2009
The SAS Royal Hotel tower marked Denmark's entry into post-war modernity. It is a major work that combines functionali…
Roissy 1 0.0
October 25, 2009
Opened in 1974, Roissy 1 was the first time architecture had entered the realm of airport construction. The building i…
The Maisons Castle 0.0
November 15, 2009
Although its posterity has now rendered its image commonplace, the Maisons Laffitte Chateau revolutionized French archi…
The Luxembourg Philharmonic 0.0
December 6, 2009
The elliptical shaped Philharmonic, with its filter of white columns and colorful cliffs, houses the Grand Auditorium i…
VitraHaus 0.0
October 2, 2011
In 2006, the company Vitra asked the "Herzog & de Meuron" agency to create a building for it's "Home" collection. The …
The Igualada Cemetery 0.0
October 9, 2011
The Citadel de Lille 0.0
October 16, 2011
Vauban's "Queen of the citadels" was the model for military construction all over France. Built between 1668 and 1671,…
The Sainte-Geneviève Library 0.0
October 30, 2011
Breaking away from the 19th century neoclassical trend, Henri Labrouste erected a powerful public building in which sto…
The Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy 0.0
November 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 …
Ewha, the Seoul Hidden University 0.0
December 4, 2011
With this building, Dominique Perrault continues a concept that is dear to him, the absence of architecture. The urban…
The Rolex Learning Center 0.0
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 ch…
The National Dance Center 0.0
May 19, 2013
The mutation of a concrete mastodon, the Pantin Administrative Center (1969) into the French National Dance Center (200…
The Cologne Cathedral 0.0
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…
The Citadel of Leisure, the Pompeia Social Service Center 0.0
June 23, 2013
In the Palmeiras district of São Paulo, early 20th century former factory workshops are aligned with strange blocks of…
The Hotels de Soubise and de Rohan 0.0
July 7, 2013
From 1705 to 1752, the house of the Princes of Soubise was the setting for wild ambition and dreams of grandeur, with t…
The French Communist Party Headquarters 0.0
August 30, 2015
A mysterious white dome and an undulating glass facade, the headquarters of the French Communist Party, built between 1…
The Unal House 0.0
September 6, 2015
Designed by Claude Hausermann-Costy, and built by Joel Unal between 1972 and 2008, it's a bubble house without a single…
The Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam 0.0
September 13, 2015
A cross between Taylorism and Bauhaus, the Van Nelle factory at Rotterdam was built between 1926 and 1931. Designed by…
The Glass Galleon 0.0
September 20, 2015
On the fringes of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, a grand galleon with 12 glass sails, billowing in an imaginary wind, t…
Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Mughal Mausoleum 0.0
October 4, 2015
The mausoleum of Itimad-ud-Daulah, built of white marble encrusted with semi-precious stones, in Agra the capital of th…
The Home for All at Rikuzentakata 0.0
October 11, 2015
After Japan's 2011 tsunami, a group of architects led by Toyo Ito launched the "Home for All" project, providing commun…
The Wa Shan Guesthouse 0.0
October 18, 2015
The Wa Shan, literally "Tile Mountain", is an astonishing guesthouse, built by Chinese architect Wang Shu, who pursues …
The Glasgow School of Art 0.0
October 25, 2015
Built at the dawn of the 20th century by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Glasgow School of Art is a masterpiece that com…
The Sante, a Prison in Paris 0.0
October 8, 2017
La Sante prison (1861-1867) is a unique and impressive work of architecture. At the cutting edge of reflections on imp…
The Bamboo School of Bali 0.0
October 15, 2017
An astonishing structure in which three cones flow together into one roof that protects a school building made of bambo…
Médiacité - a Designer Mall 0.0
October 22, 2017
Seen from the sky, a long stained-glass window structures the commercial center. At Médiacité, the experimental, provo…
The Phillips Exeter Academy Library 0.0
October 29, 2017
A masterpiece of geometry and of architectural precision, the library is one of Lous Kahn's last works. Louis Kahn rei…