Palaces & Houses
Where people lived, at both extremes. Versailles and the Alhambra, the Forbidden City, Fallingwater and the Villa Savoye, Neuschwanstein, and the houses that changed what a house could be.
Part of Architectural Wonders
13 moments in this segment.
- - The Alhambra. The Nasrid palace in Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Iberia. Muqarnas vaulting, the Court of the Lions. Surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492; the Hall of the Abencerrajes still has bloodstains in the marble.
- - The Forbidden City. Ming Emperor Yongle's palace complex in Beijing. 980 buildings, 9,999 rooms. Off-limits to commoners for 500 years. The world's largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures.
- - The Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan's mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. 20,000 workers and 1,000 elephants over 21 years. The Mughal architectural high-water mark, Persian, Turkish, Indian, and Islamic traditions fused.
- - Palace of Versailles. Louis XIV's seat of government and the most-copied palace in history. The Hall of Mirrors. Forced the entire French aristocracy to live there under royal surveillance. Bankrupted the state in the process.
- - Casa Milà (La Pedrera). Gaudí. No straight lines, no load-bearing walls. The roof has Star Wars-stormtrooper-style chimneys that George Lucas literally copied. The model for organic architecture.
- - Villa Savoye. Le Corbusier's "machine for living in." Demonstrated his "Five Points", pilotis, roof garden, open floor plan, ribbon windows, free façade. The reference example of high modernism.
- - Fallingwater. Frank Lloyd Wright over Bear Run, Pennsylvania, cantilevered balconies over a waterfall. The house is engineered into the landscape, not on top of it. Almost collapsed before structural reinforcement in 2002.
- - Unité d'Habitation, Marseille. Le Corbusier's vertical-city housing experiment, 337 apartments stacked in a single concrete slab on pilotis. The blueprint for the post-WWII social-housing tower; the source of both its triumphs and its disasters.
- - Brasília. Lúcio Costa's pilot plan + Oscar Niemeyer's buildings. The new capital built from scratch in three years. Catedral Metropolitana, Palácio do Planalto, the National Congress. UNESCO World Heritage.
- - Habitat 67. Moshe Safdie's Expo 67 housing experiment in Montreal, 354 stacked precast concrete cubes forming 158 apartments. A built thesis on modular high-density housing.
- - Housing on the Stirling Shortlist. Channel 4 News on the 2024 Stirling Prize shortlist, in which two housing schemes were nominated for the award given to the best British building of the year. Reporting on what the shortlist says about where the profession is putting its attention.
- - The Arc at Green School, Bali. Shortlisted for the 2025 Aga Khan Award for Architecture: a community hall at Green School Bali built entirely in bamboo by IBUKU, raised on the foundations of a former gymnasium.
- - Appleby Blue Almshouse - Stirling Prize. The RIBA's film on Appleby Blue Almshouse, named winner of the 2025 Stirling Prize. Built where an abandoned care home stood, it inverts a centuries-old typology by putting communal space at the centre of housing for later life.
