Architecture at the Crossroads

First transmitted in 1986, a look at how some young architects are reacting against modernist sterility with an exuberant return to traditional forms. For decades it has seemed as if our architectural legacy to the future will be the squalor and ugliness of the modem city. After years of dictating the look of the environment, a kind of infamy is now attached to architecture. But at last there are signs of hope - architects are learning from the mistakes of the past. An adventurous new spirit has produced new shapes and forms. Architects are no longer afraid to use colour and ornament, and throughout the world the bland and monotonous are beginning to be replaced by the bold and exuberant. This programme introduces the distinctive work of three young architectural groups who have done much to make architecture acceptable: Team Zoo from Tokyo, Arquitectonica from Miami and Helmut Jahn from Chicago, with contributions from 1. M. Pei , Philip Johnson Richard Meier , James Stirling and Richard Rogers.

We are living in an age of experiment. The 80s have seen a rich crop of radical and controversial ideas about the form and content of buildings. This second of ten programmes looks at four high-profile movements in modern architecture. 'Post-modernism' is alive and well, represented by Philip Johnson 's mammoth AT&T building in New York, Graves' building in Oregon, Isozaki's Civic Centre in Japan, and the new Stuttgart museum by James Stirling. Recent factories designed by Rogers and Foster epitomise 'High-Tech.' Richard Meier 's Atlanta Museum represents a reinterpretation of the 'Modern Movement'. And, most controversial of all, the skyscraper hasn't been killed off. It is living through a multitude of mutations, reinvested with a wit and daring reminiscent of its earliest incarnations. Joining the debate are James Stirling , Philip Johnson , Richard Rogers , Norman Foster , Richard Meier and architectural writer Ada Louise Huxtable.

The newly-acquired oil wealth has brought an unprecedented boom to the Middle East and, as a consequence, a massive programme of new buildings. At first the Arabs looked to the West, at a time when architecture there had reached its worst phase in history. They imported a style that totally ignored climate and traditions. This programme looks at Kuwait, Doha and Jeddah where signs of an Islamic contemporary architecture are now emerging. The State Mosque in Kuwait, the University of Qatar and the Suleiman Palace in Saudi Arabia were all built by Arab architects. The new Parliament Building by Utzon, the spectacular Haj Terminal by SOM show that Western architecture can give a feeling of place. Sheikha Hussa (daughter of the Emir of Kuwait), Sheikh Farsi (Mayor of Jeddah), Egyptian architects Kamal El Kafrawi and Abdel El Wakil are all working towards an Arab identity based on tradition. Narrator Andrew Sachs

Modern architecture has revived the concept of the open 'galleria' and the 'atrium'. All over the world the traditional town square is giving way to the pedestrian precinct and the shopping mall. The hotel lobby has assumed epic proportions, become a public meeting-place. Museums are no longer monumental temples that house the treasures of the past. From Atlanta to Stuttgart, Tokyo to Paris, leading architects are transforming the museum into a welcoming environment where people can relax, enjoy art, participate in events, wander at leisure. This programme features the Washington Gallery Extension by I. M. Pei , the Galleria in Dallas, the dazzling Trump Tower in New York and spectacular new hotels in Qatar, Tokyo and America. These radical changes in public places are discussed by 1. M. Pei , Richard Rogers , Philip Johnson , Ada Louise Huxtable and John Portman. Narrator ANDREW SACHS

Next year the once devastated inner-city of Berlin sees the most exciting and historic event in present-day city planning. It has taken eight years to create the mammoth International Building Exhibition, with a cast list of contributors that reads like a Who's Who of contemporary architecture. Its focus is on social housing within the modern inner city. But the new ideas it proposes will not be hung on walls or exhibited as scale models. The venue for the exhibition is the city itself, real houses and building complexes, already inhabited, and designed to demonstrate how the city can once again become a place fit for people. This programme features the work of OSWALD MATHIAS UNGERS. HANS HOLLEIN , ROB KRIER and ALDO ROSSI. Their ideas could well become prototypes for the rest of the world, and their experiments prove that, instead of overall planning, individual solutions to building for the people can be hammered out with the people themselves. Narrator ANDREW SACHS

In Japan architects and designers enjoy a public fame and prestige far greater than any painter or sculptor. Three quarters of the 90 million people are packed into a narrow corridor, the strip of land between Tokyo and Hiroshima. Architects have become international figures, spreading their influence and their innovative buildings across the continents. This programme looks at the world-renowned figures of Arata Isozaki , and Fumihiko Maki, and at the new concepts of living in personalised, minimal structures designed by Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito and Hiroshi Hara. The highly individual and beautifully finished buildings - cultural centres, gymnasia, private houses, and hotels have become a focus of attention for architects in the West. Narrator ANDREW SACHS

First transmitted in 1986, Stop the Bulldozer asks if conservation at all costs is inhibiting contemporary architecture. Conservationists have become a potent force in contemporary architecture, lamenting, and sometimes preventing, the demolition of old buildings and the destruction of our architectural heritage. More recently, there has been a backlash. Equally vociferous and convinced are those who believe that conservation at all costs is desperately inhibiting contemporary architecture, and standing in the way of a proper heritage for future generations. Will love of the old become a sellout of the genuinely exciting building concepts of our time? Or is the answer to continue to adapt old buildings and give them a new lease of life: stations to museums, warehouses to flats, post offices to restaurants.Ada Louise Huxtable , Michael Manser , Terry Farrell and Kenneth Frampton argue for a contemporary architecture. while Richard Meier and 0. M. Ungers demonstrate with their buildings how old architecture can be fused with modern language to make a strong statement for the present.Narrator ANDREW SACHS

First transmitted in 1986, Houses Fit for People looks at housing and where the modern movement went wrong with their high-rises and modern concrete estates. The fame and fortune of top contemporary architects is largely based on monumental institutional structures - towering office blocks, new hotels and some museums. But what's happening to housing? Ugly, second-rate homes seem to have been the rule rather than the exception in our towns and cities. Now there's an increasing demand for a humane approach to the places we live in, to let some care shine through.The changes so far are small, and rarely hit the headlines. Nevertheless, there can be exciting and even spectacular innovations in housing. The controversial Richard Bofill calls his houses on the outskirts of Paris 'castles for the poor'. The new towns of France feature interesting new homes by Henri Gaudin and Roland Castro ; in Germany Hans Hollein and 0. M. Ungers experiment with new town social housing schemes; while in England clean modern estates based on the findings of the modern movement have little chance of surviving, faced with people's preference for a quaint brick vernacular, aping 19th-century cottages. Narrator ANDREW SACHS

'Texas is a marvellous place to build, it's the last American state, a great country, a separate country. They have the money and the desire to decorate their state and they're doing a bang-up job of it.' (PHILIP JOHNSON ) Texas is America's 'super state', the land for the super rich, a boom country for architects and developers. Available cheap land, no zoning laws, unlimited wealth and an expansionist attitude make Texas a unique place of architectural experiment - a great Lego kit where all the problems and permutations of modern architecture can be played out. In the pop-up cities of Dallas and Houston - built for big business - new concepts and new values are turning upside down the traditional perceptions of town and city planning. Huge corporations vie with each other for the best names in architecture - such as Philip Johnson and I. M. Pei who, in this programme, discuss their work, as well as the young Arquitectonica team from Miami and William Canaday. In these cities, new values and new dimensions are being forged daily. They have very little to do with the perception people have of older cities. This is the 21st century in the making - a prospect which is intriguing, daring and deeply disturbing. Narrator ANDREW SACHS

This has been a series about change - in the attitudes of contemporary architects, in public awareness, in the ways they are shaping our future environment. There has been some optimism, but the last ten years of anxiety and argument have thrown up many questions and too few answers. The seminal buildings of our century are still those of the 20s and 30s, of the so-called Modern Movement. But the last decade has seen new adventures in architecture that may, once their effects have been assimilated, join the list of seminal buildings of the century. A look at MICHAEL graves's Humana building in Kentucky, ARATA ISOZAKI'S Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, ROGERS'S Lloyd's Insurance building in London, and FOSTER'S Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. In Paris, eight vast projects are in the making, catering for the demands of the next century. Architects and writers 1. M. Pei , Richard Meier Richard Rogers Norman Foster Philip Johnson Ada Louise Huxtable and Kenneth Frampton offer their own definitions of the changing role of the architect, still complex and uncertain. For the doubts we all have about architecture reflect the doubts we have about our society. Narrator ANDREW SACHS