Building Sights - Season 1

First aired: 10/31/1988 8 episodes

Personal reflections on the best of 20th Century architecture in Britain.

Episodes

1. Water Authority Pumping Station

Aired: 11/1/1988

Architect Piers Gough looks at the brand new Water Authority Pumping Station on London's Isle of Dogs, designed by John Outram , that's good enough to eat in ...

2. Marsh Court

Aired: 11/7/1988

Writer Jonathan Meades revisits Marsh Court, a private house-turned-prep-school designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1904 and with gardens by Gertrude Jekyll. Meades finds the place an ever-changing maze.

3. Schlumberger Building

Aired: 11/8/1988

Eva Jiricna -- the architect responsible for designing interiors for Harrods, Joseph and parts of the Lloyds building -- visits Schlumberger Cambridge Research (architect, Michael Hopkins 1984) and is enchanted by its modernity.

4. Byker Wall

Aired: 11/15/1988

Writer Beatrix Campbell visits the successful Byker housing estate in Newcastle, designed by Ralph Erskine in the early 1970s. It's an epic development - both monumental and modest, and Beatrix Campbell describes why it is such an ingenious design solution.

5. Alexander Fleming House

Aired: 11/23/1988

Stephen Bayley, curator of the Conran Design Museum opening in 1989 argues, in the face of popular opinion, that Alexander Fleming House (Erno Goldfinger, 1962) in London's Elephant and Castle is a building worth preserving in its original design.

6. Glasgow School of Art

Aired: 11/29/1988

Artist Bruce McLean attended Saturday morning classes at the Glasgow School of Art from the age of 6, and went on to study there in the 1960s. But it is only recently says McLean, that he has realised the influence Charles Rennie Mackintosh's building (1897-1909) had on him.

7. De La Warr Pavilion

Aired: 12/6/1988

First-year architecture student Sophie Hicks delights in the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, Sussex. Designed in 1933 by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, the building is one of the finest examples of modern seaside architecture in Britain.

8. Creek Vean

Aired: 12/13/1988

Editor of Blueprint magazine Deyan Sudjic examines Creek Vean in Cornwall. It is a house built in 1966 by Team 4, a group of young unknowns. Two of them are now Britain's best known architects, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster.