Channel 4 announces The Secrets of Buildings (w/t)

In a first for architecture TV and for his career, Dyckhoff abandons his usual approach - looking at empty buildings - to immerse himself in the lives of the people who use them. He embarks on a mischievous journey inside the lives of some of the world's most beautiful architecture and into the buildings we all end up living, working and playing in.

In a series of experiments Dyckhoff explores the emerging science of space - the space we spend 85% of our lives in - with the world's leading environmental psychologists, behaviourists, philosophers and neurologists.

With this new knowledge Dyckhoff interrogates the world's pre-eminent architects and their creations with new eyes. He challenges their assumptions by bringing them face to face with the people who actually use their buildings and argues that architecture should be less about ego, art and economics and more about environmental psychology and individual well-being.

In a passionate series of polemics he argues that architects don't know much about us. "They've effectively forgotten us - they don't design space as if it has anything to do with us... and we need to know that because it's affecting us in all sorts of ways individually and as a society."   

The Secrets of Buildings (w/t) will air in 2011.  

Series producer: Louise Wardle
Executive Producer: Alan Hayling
Directors: Mike Christie, Louise Hooper and Louise Wardle
Commissioning Editor Tabitha Jackson  
Renegade Pictures in association with ChristieHQ