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.
Rem Koolhaas built a unique villa on the heights of Saint-Cloud.
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.
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 …
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 …
Middle Aged castle rebuilt by Viollet Le Duc for the Emperor Napoleon III. A reconstruction that paradoxically opened the way for modern architecture.
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-archi…
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 architectu…
The philanthropist company boss Andre Godin built a workers' housing estate with a palatial air. Social housing is born.
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…
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…
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 spee…
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 Wrig…
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…
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 the…
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.
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.
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…
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 ventilate…
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…
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…
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 religio…
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…
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 Idea…
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 expressionisti…
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 t…
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 clich…
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 bu…
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 18t…
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.
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 Se…
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, ded…
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 …
Built in Kyoto in 1743, this traditional Japanese architectural masterpiece portrays a different understanding of architecture and building. It is a typical 'machiya' (Kyoto tradi…
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. …
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 regard…
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 revolut…
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 s…
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 t…
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.…
Although its posterity has now rendered its image commonplace, the Maisons Laffitte Chateau revolutionized French architecture. It is the masterpiece of the brilliant architect F…
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 t…
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 t…
No overview.
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 insp…
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 …
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 co…
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 pre…
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 …
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. …
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 G…
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 "Citade…
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 Gu…
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 curt…
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 han…
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…
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…
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 observe…
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. Th…
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 pract…
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, subjectivis…
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", …
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 renewab…
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 arch…
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…
Grand Designs Finland
Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan
Futuropolis: Mapping the City of Tomorrow
Dreaming The Impossible: Unbuilt Britain
If We Built It Today
Grand Designs
Bauhaus Spirit
Une Maison, Un Artiste
Building Sights
How Sweden was built
The Art of Architecture
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