Crossroads of Change • 2011 • episode "S1E3" • Design with the Other 90 Percent

58:55

We each spend three years of our lives on the toilet, but how happy are we talking about this essential part of our lives? This film challenges that mindset by uncovering its role in our culture and exploring the social history of the toilet in Britain and abroad - as well as exploring many of our cultural toilet taboos. Starting in Merida, Spain with some of the the earliest surviving Roman toilets, we journey around the world - from the UK to China, Japan and Bangladesh - visiting toilets, ranging from the historically significant to the beautiful, from the functional and sometimes not-so-functional to the downright bizarre. Leading the journey is Everyman figure, Welsh poet and presenter Ifor ap Glyn, who has a passionate interest in the toilet, its history and how it has evolved over the centuries, right up to the development of the current design. Finally, there's a glimpse of the future and a possible solution to the global sanitation issues we now face.

2012 • Design

9:09

A time when sprites reigned supreme.

S1E2 • A Brief History of Graphics • 2014 • Design

45:54

Piers and Caroline travel to Norway to see a charming family cottage, a summer house built around a rock, a daring concrete home and a rugged retreat.

S2E7 • The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2019 • Design

58:49

Architect Piers Taylor and actress Caroline Quentin explore unusual homes built in or near areas of forest. After trips to properties near Madrid and the Catskill Mountains in New York State, they arrive in Piha, New Zealand, to a house built within an indigenous forest of pohutukawa trees. Navigating very strict environmental laws, this wooden-cladded and glass-roofed property mimics the branches of the surrounding trees, while its huge sliding glass walls open up to allow the surrounding forest to become an intrinsic part of the house itself.

S1E2 • The World's Most Extraordinary Homes • 2017 • Design

54:09

La Sagrada Familia – although still under construction in Barcelona – is a cathedral without any flaws. Almost 100 years after his death, experts are convinced that Gaudi was a mathematical genius and that each embellishing ornament of the Sagrada Familia actually serves an architectural purpose.

2015 • Design

48:36

The story of design enters the 50s and 60s, when a revolutionary new material called plastic combined with the miracles of electronic miniaturisation to allow designers to offer post-war consumers something new: liberation.

S1E4 • The Genius of Design • 2010 • Design