Architects and their work

Director Nathaniel Kahn searches to understand his father, noted architect Louis Kahn, who died bankrupt and alone in 1974.

The work of the architects Aires Mateus have, for many years, developed a language with a strong universal impact. From this universality, emerges an adaptation to the territory rooted in a clear Portuguese tradition.

Albert Frey, a Swiss native architect, had previously worked on his Villa Savoye with Le Corbusier, but once in America his predilection for new materials and daring constructions came to the fore. A sleek aesthetic that appealed to many.

An interview with Álvaro Siza Vieira, one of the best architects in the world. With works in Portugal and around the world, he has already received several national and international awards, including the 1992 Pritzker Prize. He was the first Portuguese to be distinguished with the one who is considered the Nobel Prize for Architecture. Recently, he was awarded the Spanish National Architecture Prize, having been the first Portuguese architect to receive this distinction.

Álvaro Siza Vieira, a famous visionary Portuguese architect, is called to coordinate the rehabilitation of the monuments and architectural heritage of Cidade Velha (Old Village) in Santiago, one of the African islands of Cape Verde.

Created on the initiative of the architect Nuno Portas as Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Development of the First Provisional Government, the Local Ambulatory Support Service (SAAL) was a housing assistance program promoted by Resident Associations. The Portuguese Architecture of 25th of April is SAAL - an unparalleled movement in the history of architecture thinking, which served as an example and discussion for many other projects at an international level.

A documentary about the social architecture of Pritzker Prize winner architect Álvaro Siza Vieira. We follow the legendary architect through his buildings in Oporto, The Hague, Venice and Berlin, as he revisits them and meets with their current inhabitants, in what ends up being an extraordinary voyage through time and space, when both the artist's personal and professional stories cross with those of the very people he provided with a place to live in.

The faculty of Porto by Alvaro Siza: the program and its spatial transposition, the complexity of the articulations between the buildings, the richness of the interior circulation and the variety of lighting.

Focussing on his gift for harmonizing technology and nature, architect Alvar Aalto looks at all aspects and examines his creative style in the context of his time, the traditions he inherited and the country and climate in which he lived.

Architectural documentary of the villa Mairea, designed by the Finnish modernist architect Alvar Aalto for Harry and Maire Gullichsen in Noormarkku, Finland. The building was constructed in 1938-1939.

This captivating exploration of Alvar Aalto, the defining figure in Scandic design and one of Europe's greatest modern architects, focuses on his remarkable and loving partnership with wife, Aino. Theirs was a profoundly humanist vision that put people at the centre of design, and ranged from work in furniture design through to huge architectural projects. They mixed with, and influenced, major figures of modernist art and design including Le Corbusier, Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Come on a cinematic tour of their iconic buildings all over the world, from a library in Russia, a student dormitory at MIT, an art collector's private house near Paris, to a pavilion in Venice. Narrated by experts in the field and featuring never before seen archive footage, Aalto tells the love story of an extraordinary couple with a great passion for human scale architecture.

Renowned architect, Arata Isozaki creates with a rare and specific hand, blending his Japanese culture and education with classic Western aesthetics. Inspired deeply by the architecture he saw in Europe, Isozaki's buildings appear both grand and delicate, entirely aware of the space they occupy. Of his particular style Isozaki tells us, "Even though my buildings look very Western and not Japanese, conceptually and fundamentally, I feel that I have been very influenced by Japanese traditions, both in architecture and in traditional concepts of time and space." (Arata Isozaki) Arata Isozaki: Early Work in Japan takes a detailed look at the architect's pieces, exploring applauded projects such as the EXPO '70 Osaka Festival Plaza, Gunma Prefectural Museum of Modern Art and Kitakyushu Municipal Library. The extraordinary series of architectural breakthroughs made during this time contributed significantly to the evolution of contemporary architecture worldwide, and eventually gained him his first foreign commission: The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Through a blend of Japanese history and Western influence, Arata Isozaki has built a career around his boldly distinctive architectural style. Constantly challenging the concepts of space, form and tradition, Isozaki's work dares us to imagine a merging of cultures where artistic movements and methods bind together in riveting new forms. Arata Isozaki II (International Projects) follows the architect to many of his most famous sites including the Barcelona Olympic Sports Palace, Disney's Team Building in Orlando, New York's Palladium nightclub, as well as the newly completed Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson, by former students and by architectural historians. Mies is seen in rare documentary footage.

90-minute special on the architect. Filmed throughout the world over a two-year period.

The film traces the rise of one of the world's premier architects, Norman Foster, and his unending quest to improve the quality of life through design.

Rarely has an architect caused as much sensation outside of the architecture community as Rem Koolhaas. His outstanding creations--such as the Dutch Embassy in Berlin, the Seattle Library and the Casa da Musica concert hall in Porto--are working examples of the Dutchman's visionary theories about architecture and urban society. But Koolhaas' work is as much about ideas as it is about constructing buildings; he is equally celebrated as a writer and social commentator. For Koolhaas, what is essential is not to create individual masterpieces, but to provoke and excite through the wide range of his activities. REM KOOLHAAS: A KIND OF ARCHITECT is an engaging portrait of a visionary man that takes us to the heart of his ideas. Directors Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch have made a visually inventive, thought-provoking portrait of the architect, prompting Rem Koolhaas to state, "It's the only film about me that I have liked."

REGULAR OR SUPER is a fascinating and informative introduction to the work of Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), one of the 20th century's most influential architects, and a thought-provoking demonstration of the social and artistic contributions that architecture at its best can make to our urban environments.

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel, among the most thoughtful, innovative, and rebellious architects of his generation, reflects on his work past and present. We see a master in action in exclusive footage at the various stages off his process--conceptualizing, sketching, and even deciding the color of the stones to be used in the galleries of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. This is a meditative and rare portrait of one of the giants of contemporary architecture and design.

Swiss architects duo Pierre de Meuron and Jacques Herzog - spent their careers virtually rewriting the rules of their chosen field, by coupling a centuries-old art form with a spate of fresh and vital technical innovations.