Architectures

Architecture as an object? Learn from a building, stay as close to architecture as possible, constantly return to the materiality of the choices that this implies. The volume, the organization of space and light, how we are guided through a space, all these elements characterize the approach proposed by this series of films. This episode is devoted to the Van Eetvelde Hotel in Brussels, built by Victor Horta, one of the forerunners of Art Nouveau.

Roissy 1 embodied the aspirations of modern architecture.It was built during the initial era of mass travel, a pre-crisis era that revered progress and dreams of high speed and that witnessed the first appearances of airport architecture. People would come to Roissy 1 to admire, no longer the planes, but the architecture. Paul Andreu was the main player in this revolution. He was 29 years old at the time. It was his first construction and the very beginning of a long series of about fifty platforms throughout the world that were to make him into one of the greatest 20th century airport architects.

The China Academy of Art allowed architect Wang Shu (Pritzker Prize, 2012) to work in total freedom. Made up of many elements, the Guest House is much more than just another gesture of today’s “star architecture”. Built upon the ruins of tradition, it bears the values that anchor it in the future.

There is no place here for the architect’s imagination or fantasy. The building is a manifestation of social administration. The La Santé Prison was built in Paris by Emile Vaudremer between 1861 and 1867. It was a model prison, at the forefront of incarceration theory, in which a marked obsession with physical and moral hygiene is evident. This modern prison, equipped with the most advanced equipment of its era, features a dark side of architecture: all pleasure is absent, and efficiency and control reign supreme.

The three-storey main building, known as the Heart of the School, houses classrooms, offices, the school library and a huge playground. Made entirely of bamboo - no concrete, metal or glass has been used in the building framework, floors and ceilings, walls, tables and chairs - it an inspirational example of eco-friendly architecture.

Dreamed up by the experimental, provocative Israeli designer Ron Arad, whose playful furniture designs featuring rounded, sculptural shapes have made him world famous, this startling construction swells, curves and winds its way through Médiacité, Liège's gigantic shopping centre, for over 350 metres. It is a covered mall - the main artery of a huge shopping centre built in 2009 to regenerate an abandoned industrial estate. At Médiacité, Arad has set out to conquer architecture, putting his ideas into practice on a bigger scale and reinvigorating the often criticised genre of retail architecture.

Completed in 1971 in Exeter, New England in the United States, the library of the small Exeter Academy is an 8-storey brick cube with identical facades, a mysterious monolith. The library is a masterpiece of geometry and building precision. In designing it, Louis Kahn remained faithful to the ideals of the Age of the Enlightenment, reinventing a temple of reading, knowledge and reason.