NaN/100 votesLoading...#1 - The Georges Pompidou Centre
Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 7/23/1998
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.
Director: Richard Copans
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#2 - Family Lodging in Guise
Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 8/13/1998
The philanthropist company boss Andre Godin built a workers' housing estate with a palatial air. Social housing is born.
Director: Catherine Adda
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#3 - A House in Bordeaux
Season 1 Episode 9 - Aired 8/27/1998
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.
Director: Richard Copans
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#4 - The Dessau Bauhaus
Season 1 Episode 10 - Aired 3/3/2001
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.
Director: Frédéric Compain
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#5 - Satolas - TGV
Season 1 Episode 11 - Aired 3/10/2001
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.
Director: Catherine Adda
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#6 - The Johnson Building
Season 1 Episode 12 - Aired 3/17/2001
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.
Director: Frédéric Compain
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#7 - The Paris Fine Art School
Season 1 Episode 13 - Aired 3/24/2001
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.
Director: Catherine Adda
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#8 - The Siza School
Season 1 Episode 14 - Aired 4/14/2001
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.
Director: Stan Neumann, Richard Copans
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#9 - The Stone Thermal Baths
Season 1 Episode 15 - Aired 4/21/2001
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.
Director: Richard Copans
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#10 - The Galleria Umberto I
Season 1 Episode 16 - Aired 5/19/2001
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.
Director: Stan Neumann
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#11 - The Saint Pancras Station
Season 1 Episode 17 - Aired 6/2/2001
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.
Director: Richard Copans
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#12 - The Wind Box
Season 1 Episode 18 - Aired 6/9/2001
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.
Director: Stan Neumann
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#13 - The Garnier Opera
Season 1 Episode 19 - Aired 6/16/2001
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.
Director: Stan Neumann
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#14 - The Jewish Museum Berlin
Season 1 Episode 20 - Aired 7/5/2003
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.
Director: Stan Neumann, Richard Copans
Writer: Stan Neumann
NaN/100 votesLoading...#15 - The Convent of La Tourette
Season 1 Episode 21 - Aired 7/26/2003
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.
Director: Richard Copans
Writer: Richard Copans
NaN/100 votesLoading...#16 - The Auditorium Building in Chicago
Season 1 Episode 22 - Aired 9/6/2003
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.
Director: Stan Neumann
Writer: Stan Neumann
NaN/100 votesLoading...#17 - The Municipal Center of Säynätsalo
Season 1 Episode 23 - Aired 9/13/2003
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.
Director: Richard Copans
Writer: Richard Copans
NaN/100 votesLoading...#18 - The Casa Milá
Season 1 Episode 24 - Aired 9/20/2003
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.
Director: Frédéric Compain
Writer: Frédéric Compain
NaN/100 votesLoading...#19 - The Glass House
Season 1 Episode 25 - Aired 2/26/2005
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.
Director: Stan Neumann, Richard Copans
Writer: Stan Neumann
NaN/100 votesLoading...#20 - The Abbey Church of Saint Foy at Conques
Season 1 Episode 26 - Aired 3/5/2005
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.
Director: Stan Neumann
Writer: Stan Neumann
NaN/100 votesLoading...#21 - The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
Season 1 Episode 27 - Aired 3/19/2005
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.
Director: Julien Donada
Writer: Julien Donada
NaN/100 votesLoading...#22 - The Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans
Season 1 Episode 28 - Aired 4/2/2005
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.
Director: Stan Neumann, Richard Copans
Writer: Stan Neumann
NaN/100 votesLoading...#23 - Jean Prouvé's House
Season 1 Episode 29 - Aired 4/30/2005
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.
Director: Stan Neumann
Writer: Stan Neumann
NaN/100 votesLoading...#24 - The Multimedia Library of Sendai
Season 1 Episode 30 - Aired 5/14/2005
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.
Director: Richard Copans
Writer: Richard Copans
NaN/100 votesLoading...#25 - The Alhambra, Grenade
Season 1 Episode 31 - Aired 3/11/2007
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.
Director: Frédéric Compain
Writer: Frédéric Compain
The Worst Episodes of Architectures
Every episode of Architectures ranked from worst to best. Explore the Worst Episodes of Architectures!
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...
Genre:Documentary
Worst Episodes Summary
"The Georges Pompidou Centre" is the worst rated episode of "Architectures". It scored N/A/10 based on 0 votes. Directed by Richard Copans and written by N/A, it aired on 7/23/1998. This episode scored NaN points lower than the second lowest rated, "Family Lodging in Guise".