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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

'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 )

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.