Art, Architecture and the Environment

26 programs

Television rights and prices on request

Increasingly, nowadays, we are made aware of the importance of our relationship with the environment that we inhabit - the whole planet - and we hear that modern civilization is causing drastic damage to the ozone layer, the rainforests, the oceans, in fact the whole eco-system. Late in the day, and all too reluctantly, we are beginning to face our ecological responsibilities, and to look to cultures and to periods in the past when nature and humankind seemed to exist in harmony.

The films in this section look at architecture that damages the environment and continues the industrial aggression of the twentieth century; at a `new age' of architecture that by contrast is caring in its use of the earth's resources, and that seeks wholeness in its philosophy; at traditional African building in which such principles have never been abandoned; and at artists who have taken their works out of commercial galleries and into the landscape, to make statements of `eco-consciousness' and solidarity with more ancient world-wisdom.

Tribal village, Cameroon
From the program 'Of Leaves and of Earth'