Future City at the Barbican

Edwin Heathcote has a review of the extensive but disjointed Future City exhibit at the Barbican, which opened last week and runs through mid-September.

Nothing dates faster than the future. That is why architecture, the slowest of the arts, is probably the worst medium to express it. But that hasn't stopped architects trying and their futuristic fantasies have been hugely influential in our cities. This was never more so than in the early 20th century, when the modernists conceived of rational cities that would replace random street-patterns with gardens spiked with skyscrapers linked by streets in the sky. The best ended up like London's Barbican (yes, the best), the worst like the decaying housing projects that circle nearly every major city.

So it is entirely appropriate that Future City, a paean to architectural utopias, should sit in the Barbican, London's last chunk of architectural utopianism. (Conceived in the 1950s, it was finished only in the 1980s, when it was already painfully passé.) Future City is an attempt to display architecture's most radical visions from the lasthalf-century. It is a superb collection of stuff, with fantastic, visionary drawings, pasted-together manifestoes and stunning models.

pictured: David Greene / Archigram's 1967 Living Pod, photographed by Philippe Magnon.

Comments

[Akira Ohiso]

Wow, looks like the set of Buck Rogers or something

[onie]

hi i stop by at this nice website when i am browsing for 'cartography'.

nice design, especially for a hectic, densily populated and heavily populated cities in south east asia, such as my city (surabaya, east java, indonesia).

[etat]

Anyone who thinks the Barbican is passé has to be some kind of Shoreditch/Hoxton loft-owning snot. The Barbican is quite simply the best indoor social space in London, and has a damn fine outdoors too! In a city that has a meagre share of good lounging weather, the quality of indoor spaces is critical for the rest of the time. The Barbican is a preeminent public space with a varied and usually engaging programme. Moreso than a lot of places, public or private. Give me the Barbican over the Tate Modern, for example. It's a great space to wander around, inside and out. It's fine for sitting and watching, for reading and writing, for a variety of other activities too. The city recedes as one tours the skyways and promenades. It's a good place to wait out a rainshower, it's got a great texture and a lot of fine detailing. So the complaints have to come from someone who can afford to look down his nose at this plebian architecture.

[JLT]

I agree. We lived in London for a short time when I was 12 (1982 - the same year the Barbican opened) - I loved visiting the complex, with all its places to hide and details everywhere. Stairs leading into the water; mysterious passages that went nowhere, or to odd rooms and walkways; banks of lifts that looked like something out of a science fiction film and wonderful Helvetica everywhere.