ARTE France.

The Maisons-Laffitte chateau overlooks the Seine and has a French- style garden on a gentle slope. It is made up of a central block, flanked by two wings. The Hotel de Ville in Paris and the town halls of each of the twenty Paris arrondissements were built on the same model. The chateau is so famous that its image is commonplace. Yet the Château de Maisons was revolutionary in French chateau architecture. It was the masterpiece of a brilliant architect,...

The lounge chair designed by American husband-and-wife team Charles and Ray Eames in 1956 has come to symbolize the affluent 1950s. The Eames wanted the chair to have "the warm receptive look of a well-used first baseman's mitt". But the chair also reflects the prevailing Cold-War mentality of 1950s America, which the Eames' designs and advertisements actively and naively fed into.

Álvaro Siza Vieira, one of the greatest living architects, designed the buildings of the new faculty of architecture for the University of Porto, where he studied and continues to teach. The buildings that conform to the shape and natural setting of the site demonstrate the architect's modernist ideals of functionality, geometric design, architectural solutions to structural problems, organization and movement, and the variation of light according...

We are on the shore of Lake Geneva, facing the Alps, a few kilometers from Lausanne. Poised on the shore of the lake, lies a wave of cement and glass, with holes in it. The building has inspired many metaphors since it was built in 2010 - from a slice of Emmental cheese to a piece of molecular fabric. The building is certainly unlike any other and its shape provides no clues as to what goes on inside. It is, in fact, a Learning Center, a new concept...

Illegal electronics recycling is a toxic business on a global scale. Why do three quarters of Europe's electronic waste disappear from the official recycling system? In the suburbs of Accra, Ghana, children play at dismantling scrapped electronic equipment, surrounded by toxic fumes in a sadly-famous, uncontrolled rubbish dump. The film takes this site as its point of departure, and is driven forward by Ghanaian journalist Mike Anane, who is an expert...

Built at the dawn of the 20th century, the Glasgow School of Art is the masterpiece of the only British artist considered as a precursor of modernity, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The most eminent practitioner of the "Glasgow Style", the equivalent of French Art Nouveau, Mackintosh devoted more than 10 years to fulfilling what is without doubt his most innovative architectural project, a masterwork that combines constructive rationality, Art nouveau...

Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designed the Säynätsalo Center, which houses local government offices and a public library on an island in Lake Päijänne. Inspired by Italian Renaissance architecture, a raised courtyard is bordered by a glass-enclosed circulation space and accessed by grass stairs. The town hall is crowned by the council chamber, a double-height space which is capped by innovative "Butterfly" trusses supporting both the roof and...

This documentary addresses the major environmental challenges of our century by investigating a forgotten gas from Earth's past. With up to 20 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, methane emissions could threaten life on earth. From the Arctic Ocean to Siberia to the Antarctic, what impact will this greenhouse gas have on our climate? Join scientific teams from the U.K., Russia, Denmark, Canada, France, and the U.S. as they study the effects...

Built in 1926, the Bauhaus at Dessau remains Walter Gropius' most important building and one of the most famous examples of twentieth-century architecture. This higher academy of the arts connected crafts and art to industrial design where artists, filmmakers and furniture designers joined teachers like Klee and Kandinski. The glass walls, angles and flat roofs were new and became a landmark for modern architecture. Gropius influenced industrial architecture...

Brazil is said to be a sleeping giant waking up to become one of the world leaders. Our film will tell the country's history through the eyes of two families over several generations. In one of the families, the slaves of before became domestic workers, and the former domestics are now employees, with fixed hours and living in their own homes, where they raise their own children rather than those of their bosses. They have reached the middle class....