Architect I.M. Pei returns to his home city of Suzhou, China to build…
A Is for Architecture
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A panorama of ancient cities, palaces and temples whose splendor has awed mankind. The film moves from one tradition to another, illustrating how each reflects the sentiments and values of its time, from the massive temples of the pharaohs to the soaring skyscrapers of today
Citation
Main credits
Verrall, Robert Alan (film director)
Budner, Gerald (film director)
Daly, Tom (film producer)
Low, Colin (film producer)
Needles, William (narrator)
Other credits
Animation camera, Douglas Poulter, James Wilson; actuality camera, Wally Gentleman; music, Eldon Rathburn; editing and commentary, James Beveridge.
Distributor subjects
ArchitectureKeywords
WEBVTT
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[music]
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It’s sometimes said
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that buildings tell a story, that
architecture is a testament,
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a record of things that men believe in.
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The first function of
architecture is shelter,
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shelter for all the needs of daily life.
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In providing shelter,
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buildings reveal something
of the spirit of their time.
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[music]
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What about our buildings?
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All these familiar places,
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what do they say about the times we
live in, about the things we value?
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[music]
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There is a mystery here.
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Many of these shapes and
forms are chosen pillars,
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have come to us from times not our own.
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Towers and columns from the
distant past reflect the
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struggles and the dreams of other men.
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[music]
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The story of these buildings
begins not with us
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but many thousands of years ago.
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[music]
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Very early in our western history,
a certain view of life and death
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were shaped in stone.
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[music]
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The King in Egypt was supreme
ruler counseled by the God’s,
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worshipped as God himself.
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The palace life was rich and graceful
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and yet, another world was never far away.
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Much of life on earth was taken
up with ritual preparation
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for the life to come.
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[music]
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The king’s journey through the temple
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symbolized every man’s journey
to the world beyond our own.
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[music]
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In the inmost hall, the
king’s own image stood,
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a darkened shrine, where
man might speak with God.
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[music]
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On sunlit seas, the Greeks explored
new shores and built new cities.
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[music]
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The leading beauty of the body and beauty of the
spirit to be one. They sought a harmony of body,
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mind, and soul.
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[music]
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The legends of the Gods filled the Greek
mind with a sense of fate and human destiny.
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Their rituals of worship grew into
drama, enacted in the earliest theaters.
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[music]
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The Gods were close at hand,
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fully involved in human
lives and destinies.
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[music]
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They themselves were much like men on
earth, but idealized and perfected.
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Temples built in their
honor, should then embody
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perfect harmony and balance.
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[music]
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At the center,
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the God of love or war, or wisdom.
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[music]
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In the Greek city states, buildings
reflected a harmony of civic life,
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a sense of beauty, a balance,
underlying man’s relationship
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with the world he lives in.
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[music]
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Rome, the Conqueror.
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[music]
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Greater by far than any city state,
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Rome and her empire grew in
power, in her buildings, scale,
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and splendor, to suit an age
when man himself is glorified.
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[music]
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Symbol of Rome’s conquests
was the triumphal arch.
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And in the arch, the Roman
engineers found many uses.
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[music]
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From intersecting arches grew the dome, a lofty
covering for great assembly halls and monuments.
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[music]
00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:14.999
After Rome fell, the empire’s capital
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renewed to a new Rome, Byzantium.
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[music]
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Hagia Sophia, the Church of Divine
Wisdom, built for a Christian emperor.
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Above it, rose a dome pierced by 40 windows
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described as the Great Lantern(ph)
hung from the heaven.
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[music]
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The Byzantine tradition spread in
Christian Europe and in Muslim Asia
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and long outlived Byzantium herself.
00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:13.000
[music]
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North of the Mediterranean,
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peace was slow in coming after Rome’s
fall and the Dark Age of barbarian wars.
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[music]
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Fortress and castle rose on many a
hilltop guarding the lands nearby.
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[music]
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As generations passed,
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the medieval towns of Europe
grew around their castles.
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[music]
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Like city-states of Greece long before,
each was a separate island to itself.
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[music]
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Here, craftsmen and merchants
might work in peace.
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[music]
00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:49.999
In gothic churches, mind and eye
followed tall verticals upward
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to pointed arches, to lofty vaulted space.
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No heavy walls to hold
the weight of the roof.
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Now, slanted buttress of stone carry
it outward and down to the ground.
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[music]
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Every line leads upward and walls
with lifted load are pierced
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to let the light flood in.
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[music]
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No more of the castle, but the cathedral,
the cross, at the heart of the town.
00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:28.000
[music]
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Then, the past reappeared.
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The ruins of the ancient world came
again to light in the 14th century.
00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:08.000
[music]
00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:19.999
In Italy, artists and scholars rediscovered
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the forgotten glories of Greece and Rome.
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[music]
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The stately Roman arch became the
keystone in a new mode of building.
00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:39.999
[music]
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The painter took delight
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in his new grasp of perspective.
00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:54.999
[music]
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His imagined view of an ideal town square often
inspired the building of the square itself.
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[music]
00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:29.999
In Italy and France, the squares provided new
prospects of ordered spacious city life.
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Symbol of this rebirth in art and building
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was the royal palace, a stately setting
for pageants and ceremonies of the court.
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[music]
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The Sun King of France,
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
a brilliant autocrat crowning the
most glittering court in Europe.
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[music]
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Absolute ruler. Patron of art and science.
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A new Apollo echoing the
splendors of Greece and Rome.
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[music]
00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
Versailles,
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an entire court and government set
amidst open space and formal beauty.
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Here, the dream of an age was realized
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in the scale and breadth of plan,
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foreshadowing the needs and
methods of our own times.
00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:48.000
[music]
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
Now came an age of iron and coal and steam.
00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:13.000
[music]
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It began in Britain. It’s landmark,
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the great exhibition of 1851.
00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:33.000
[music]
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Working models and engines, marvels
of invention and power were on show,
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the shape of things to come.
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:58.000
[music]
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
And overall, even the tall trees of
Hyde Park rose the greatest wonder,
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a crystal palace of iron and glass.
00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:18.000
[music]
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
This was a new kind of structure,
00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
built with surprising speed
from prefabricated sections,
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a triumph of engineers
rather than architects.
00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
[music]
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
The secret was cast iron, which
industry could now produce in quantity.
00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:53.000
[music]
00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
Within 40 years, in Paris, a structure
even more remarkable astonished the world.
00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:08.000
[music]
00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
Steel, and the knowledge
won from building bridges.
00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
Industry could now convert iron into steel.
00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
A structural engineer could
raise a tower a 1,000 feet.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:38.000
[music]
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
It proved that buildings in an age of steel
00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
could grow in a new dimension.
It fired the dreams and plans
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
of those who looked ahead.
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:33.000
[music]
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
Because of it’s great height,
00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
the skyscraper is built on simple principles,
an open cage of steel or reinforced concrete,
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
the outside walls, or screens, no
longer basic elements of structure.
00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
[music]
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
Light and strong,
00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
the steel skeleton suggests
new shapes and new solutions.
00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
[music]
00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
Concrete,
00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
first used in Roman times, can now
be formed in free organic shapes.
00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
[music]
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
A covered stadium,
00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
an aircraft terminal, or any structure
needing uninterrupted space.
00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:58.000
[music]
00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
An office building can be hung on a pole,
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
very deep and strong foundations.
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
The floors like ribs branching
from a spinal column.
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
The walls, a little more than
00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
a curtain of glass.
00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
[music]
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
Materials and means for modern building,
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
their use has spread around the world.
00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
In every continent, they
bring new opportunities.
00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
New shapes arise in ancient towns,
00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
in Rome and others older still,
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
whose ruins remind us, how long it
is that men have lived in cities.
00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:13.000
[sil.]
00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
Around us, our age is taking shape
00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
from day to day. Everything we build
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
expresses in some way the things we value.
00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
[music]
00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
What do we build?
00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
How will the story read
when our time has passed?
00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:58.000
[music]
Distributor: National Film Board of Canada
Length: 29 minutes
Date: 1959
Genre: Expository
Language: English
Closed Captioning: Available
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