WORLD’S BUSIEST CITIES, BBC2, 8pm
THIS new four-part series visits big cities to see how they keep ticking over without collapsing into an angry mass of commuters, traffic jams and pollution.
We will explore Delhi, Moscow and Mexico City, but tonight it kicks off with Hong Kong, a former British colony now “in China’s embrace”, and where a lack of room has seen it “driven skywards by trade and money”.
We visit the busy port, the famous race course, and witness the construction of a bridge linking Hong Kong with China, but there is still room for old customs and traditions, such as the female street traders who sit under the flyover “whacking slippers on stones”. They offer to help you rid yourself of demons. For £5 you can have a session of “devil-beating” where you slap a picture with a slipper, the picture is then burned, and you’re free of those nasty spirits. Bargain!
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT: THE MAN WHO BUILT AMERICA, BBC4, 9pm
THE popular perception of American architecture is tall, shiny, glassy skyscrapers, but its most famous architect didn’t dabble in such soulless stuff.
Over his career, Frank Lloyd Wright created more than 500 buildings, such as the Guggenheim Museum, Unity Temple and Falling Water, which has been called “the greatest house of the 20th century”.
We learn there was a philosophy to his work, which he called “organic architecture”. It meant he wanted his buildings to be “a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace”, and where the thoughtful structures might even have the power to change someone’s character and attitude.
Presenter and architect Jonathan Adams tells us of Lloyd Wright’s legacy, worried he has become the subject of coffee table books instead of being seen as a genius who has, and still does, shape the landscape.
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