Season 1 (1996)

The Villa Dall'Ava
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September 19, 1996 • 26m

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

Nemausus 1
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September 26, 1996 • 26m

In Nîmes, Jean Nouvel conceived a block of tenement houses reminiscent of a cruise liner. An architectural utopia that pokes fun a...Read more

The Iron House
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October 3, 1996 • 26m

In late 19th century Brussels, the Art Nouveau movement was laying the foundations of a new concept in architecture, and Victor Ho...Read more

Charlety, a Stadium in the City
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October 10, 1996 • 26m

Bruno and Henri Gaudin have broken with the classic design of a closed stadium, and created a bridge between Paris and its suburb....Read more

Pierrefonds, the Architect's Castle
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October 17, 1996 • 26m

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

The Vienna Savings Bank
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July 2, 1998 • 26m

At the turn of the last century, Otto Wagner designed one of the first 20th century modern office buildings, representing a radica...Read more

The Georges Pompidou Centre
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July 23, 1998 • 26m

A giant meccano-like structure designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, a museum-factory that has become one of the most notabl...Read more

Family Lodging in Guise
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August 13, 1998 • 26m

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

A House in Bordeaux
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August 27, 1998 • 26m

Designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas for a couple whose husband became disabled following a road accident, the architect's plan ...Read more

The Dessau Bauhaus
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March 3, 2001 • 26m

Walter Gropius' main achievement is the buildings of the Bauhaus, built in 1926. His pioneering architecture saw the birth of one ...Read more

Satolas - TGV
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March 10, 2001 • 26m

An astonishing concrete and steel structure designed for an open field in the Lyon countryside. An astonishing feat undertaken by ...Read more

The Johnson Building
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March 17, 2001 • 26m

These famous office buildings were designed and built between 1936 and 1939 for the wax manufacturer Johnson, by one one of the 20...Read more

The Paris Fine Art School
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March 24, 2001 • 26m

In the heart of Paris, architect Duban's 'École des Beaux-Arts' provides its students with an architectural "temple" representing ...Read more

The Siza School
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April 14, 2001 • 26m

The Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza built Porto's Faculty of Architecture, a mediation on space and light in a futuristic "agora"...Read more

The Stone Thermal Baths
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April 21, 2001 • 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
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May 19, 2001 • 26m

Built in Naples, this is one of the last and largest covered passageways to be constructed in Europe, providing the swan song for ...Read more

The Saint Pancras Station
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June 2, 2001 • 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...Read more

The Wind Box
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June 9, 2001 • 26m

The Fort de France Education Authority is the only example of a contemporary architectural building in Martinique. It is also the...Read more

The Garnier Opera
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June 16, 2001 • 28m

The Garnier Opera by Charles Garnier This is Paris's most prestigious 19th century building, the pinnacle of the "Beaux Arts" styl...Read more

The Jewish Museum Berlin
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July 5, 2003 • 26m

The Jewish Museum in Berlin, by Daniel Libeskind, tackles the emptiness left by the extermination of Europe's Jews during the Seco...Read more

The Convent of La Tourette
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July 26, 2003 • 26m

With the Convent of La Tourette, commissioned by the Dominicans of Lyons, Le Courbusier was charged with the task of creating this...Read more

The Auditorium Building in Chicago
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September 6, 2003 • 26m

At the end of the 19th century, Louis Henry Sullivan, the father of American architecture, built the world's largest opera house, ...Read more

The Municipal Center of Säynätsalo
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September 13, 2003 • 26m

Built in 1952 by Alvaar Alto, this town hall building lies in the heart of a rugged landscape in Finland. It represents a humanis...Read more

The Casa Milá
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September 20, 2003 • 26m

A block of flats in Barcelona, the Casa Milà is an extraordinarily sculpted work created by the great Spanish architect Antoni Gau...Read more

The Glass House
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February 26, 2005 • 26m

In 1928, Pierre Chareau built the poetic and remarkable Maison de Verre, one of the unique buildings of the 20th century. Inserte...Read more

The Abbey Church of Saint Foy at Conques
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March 5, 2005 • 26m

Built in 1050, the Abbey is one of the foremost pilgrim churches of the Christian world. Rational, svelte and light-filled Romane...Read more

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
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March 19, 2005 • 26m

Known for his strange and deconstructed forms, Frank Gehry designed this monumental, but chaotic and abstract-looking sculpture in...Read more

The Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans
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April 2, 2005 • 26m

The visionary architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux, one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical design, built a monumental fac...Read more

Jean Prouvé's House
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April 30, 2005 • 26m

In 1953, while going through his worst life-crisis, French designer Jean Prouvé built "his" house. Designed in haste, it embodies...Read more

The Multimedia Library of Sendai
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May 14, 2005 • 26m

A glass cube, built in 2001 by Toyo Ito, this library provides an example of immaterial and evanescent architecture. The multimedi...Read more

The Alhambra, Grenade
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March 11, 2007 • 26m

Worried that their dynasty would disappear, the Nasrid sultans built this Red Castle in a strategic location over the city of Gran...Read more

Phaeno, Building as Landscape
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March 18, 2007 • 26m

The sculptural power of the science center in Wolfsberg, Germany, in which the plan is a landscape - the landscape of Zaha Hadid's...Read more

The House of Sugimoto
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April 1, 2007 • 26m

Built in Kyoto in 1743, this traditional Japanese architectural masterpiece portrays a different understanding of architecture and...Read more

The Reception and Congress Building in Rome
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April 15, 2007 • 26m

In the most ambitious of the Mussolini regime's buildings, the leader of Italy's modern movement Adalberto Libera attempted the im...Read more

The Yoyogo Olympic Gymnasiums
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May 20, 2007 • 26m

For the 1964 summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Kenzo Tange designed two concrete gymnasiums which evoke a sense of movement. Famous ...Read more

The Villa Barbaro
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June 17, 2007 • 26m

By inventing the villa, a new type of housing, in 1550, Palladio sought to combine aesthetics with utility. This rigorous and inn...Read more

The Royal Mosque at Isfahan
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February 11, 2009 • 26m

In 1598, King Abbas planned an immense urban project. His royal mosque captured his unprecedented wealth, an art of living, the k...Read more

The Menier Chocolate Factory
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September 13, 2009 • 26m

The Menier factory at Noisiel, outside Paris, was the largest chocolate factory in the world between 1870 and 1914. Throughout it...Read more

The Pyramid of Pharoah Djoser at Saqqara
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September 20, 2009 • 26m

The Djoser pyramid, the work of legendary architect Imhotep, is the oldest in Egypt, and bears witness to the first steps of archi...Read more

The German Pavilion in Barcelona
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September 27, 2009 • 26m

How and why did this minimalist structure end up embodying 20th century modernity? Between rigor and free form, Ludwig Mies van d...Read more

The SAS Royal Hotel
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October 11, 2009 • 26m

The SAS Royal Hotel tower marked Denmark's entry into post-war modernity. It is a major work that combines functionalism, simplic...Read more

Roissy 1
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October 25, 2009 • 26m

Opened in 1974, Roissy 1 was the first time architecture had entered the realm of airport construction. The building is the work ...Read more

The Maisons Castle
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November 15, 2009 • 26m

Although its posterity has now rendered its image commonplace, the Maisons Laffitte Chateau revolutionized French architecture. I...Read more

The Luxembourg Philharmonic
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December 6, 2009 • 26m

The elliptical shaped Philharmonic, with its filter of white columns and colorful cliffs, houses the Grand Auditorium in the manne...Read more

VitraHaus
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October 2, 2011 • 26m

In 2006, the company Vitra asked the "Herzog & de Meuron" agency to create a building for it's "Home" collection. The showroom co...Read more

The Igualada Cemetery
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October 9, 2011 • 26m

Episode 46 of Season 1 premiered on October 9, 2011

The Citadel de Lille
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October 16, 2011 • 26m

Vauban's "Queen of the citadels" was the model for military construction all over France. Built between 1668 and 1671, its exacti...Read more

The Sainte-Geneviève Library
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October 30, 2011 • 26m

Breaking away from the 19th century neoclassical trend, Henri Labrouste erected a powerful public building in which stone featured...Read more

The Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy
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November 13, 2011 • 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 mat...Read more

Ewha, the Seoul Hidden University
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December 4, 2011 • 26m

With this building, Dominique Perrault continues a concept that is dear to him, the absence of architecture. The urban dimension ...Read more

The Rolex Learning Center
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May 5, 2013 • 26m

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 p...Read more

The National Dance Center
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May 19, 2013 • 26m

The mutation of a concrete mastodon, the Pantin Administrative Center (1969) into the French National Dance Center (2004)... Or t...Read more

The Cologne Cathedral
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May 26, 2013 • 26m

Started in 1247, the Cologne Cathedral was completed in 1880 after a 300 year break in the work carried out on it. The Cathedral,...Read more

The Citadel of Leisure, the Pompeia Social Service Center
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June 23, 2013 • 26m

In the Palmeiras district of São Paulo, early 20th century former factory workshops are aligned with strange blocks of cement tha...Read more

The Hotels de Soubise and de Rohan
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July 7, 2013 • 26m

From 1705 to 1752, the house of the Princes of Soubise was the setting for wild ambition and dreams of grandeur, with the dual pur...Read more

The French Communist Party Headquarters
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August 30, 2015 • 26m

A mysterious white dome and an undulating glass facade, the headquarters of the French Communist Party, built between 1965 and 198...Read more

The Unal House
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September 6, 2015 • 26m

Designed by Claude Hausermann-Costy, and built by Joel Unal between 1972 and 2008, it's a bubble house without a single right angl...Read more

The Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam
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September 13, 2015 • 26m

A cross between Taylorism and Bauhaus, the Van Nelle factory at Rotterdam was built between 1926 and 1931. Designed by the archit...Read more

The Glass Galleon
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September 20, 2015 • 26m

On the fringes of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, a grand galleon with 12 glass sails, billowing in an imaginary wind, towers above...Read more

Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Mughal Mausoleum
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October 4, 2015 • 26m

The mausoleum of Itimad-ud-Daulah, built of white marble encrusted with semi-precious stones, in Agra the capital of the Mughal Em...Read more

The Home for All at Rikuzentakata
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October 11, 2015 • 26m

After Japan's 2011 tsunami, a group of architects led by Toyo Ito launched the "Home for All" project, providing community centers...Read more

The Wa Shan Guesthouse
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October 18, 2015 • 26m

The Wa Shan, literally "Tile Mountain", is an astonishing guesthouse, built by Chinese architect Wang Shu, who pursues the aim of ...Read more

The Glasgow School of Art
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October 25, 2015 • 26m

Built at the dawn of the 20th century by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Glasgow School of Art is a masterpiece that combines the c...Read more

The Sante, a Prison in Paris
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October 8, 2017 • 26m

La Sante prison (1861-1867) is a unique and impressive work of architecture. At the cutting edge of reflections on imprisonment, ...Read more

The Bamboo School of Bali
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October 15, 2017 • 26m

An astonishing structure in which three cones flow together into one roof that protects a school building made of bamboo. An ambi...Read more

Médiacité - a Designer Mall
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October 22, 2017 • 26m

Seen from the sky, a long stained-glass window structures the commercial center. At Médiacité, the experimental, provocative Isra...Read more

The Phillips Exeter Academy Library
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October 29, 2017 • 26m

A masterpiece of geometry and of architectural precision, the library is one of Lous Kahn's last works. Louis Kahn reinvented lib...Read more