I went to see the Future City exhibition at the Barbican on Saturday.
In terms of exhibits it was excellent. Lots of arcitectural models, lots of technical drawings and plenty of large photographs of real buildings influenced by the Sci-Fi ideas on display. Unfortunately the interpretation fails. Visitors are presented with large amounts of undifferentiated text, much of it in big blocks, all in capitals (give us headlines!). Most of it either direct quotes from the ‘architects’ talking in broad terms about their philosophy or nonsesnical spiels about how such and such a scheme is “a triumph of horizontality” or something. The result is to make you feel in equal measure confused and patronised. That it’s often hard to tell which caption relates to which model is condemnation of both the writing itself and the layout and design of the exhibition space, sometimes arrows point from models to captions, sometimes it’s the other way around.
The curators seem to misunderstand many the strengths of the collection, certainly they don’t look at what I found interesting about the whole thing, for these guys it’s all about the architecture, in a vaccuum. That most of the ideas are totally impractical (their implementations have often been rather unfortunate) is never really addressed nor is that fact that most of the grander schemes have a particularly narrow view of what a city is which verges on a kind of middle class/bohemian totalitarianism. It’s mostly about monuments to the designers and their ideals, which mostly seem to be about out door theatre, the role of architecture in society is both massively exaggerated and hardly examined at all. Taking it all at po-faced face value, as the exhibition encourages, is kind of ridiculous (I really can’t believe the designers intended it that way, I mean some of the details in these schemes are laugh out loud funny, the roaming airships laden with middle class values decending on towns to enlighten the dull proles spring to mind). Basically, there’s not really much attempt to situate the schemes in any broader social or political context.
Maybe part of my problem is that I think architecture should be about small units, not overarching schemes, how individuals shape and create their built environment rather than how some well meaning authority dictates it. You know, planning’s not a science, if it goes right it seems to be mostly by mistake rather than design. I mean check out the Barbican where the exhibition is being held, it’s hardly the thiriving community center that it was designed to be, it’s pretty much deserted, the social housing sold off as million pound corporate flats that are empty half the time, the activities available catering to a tiny slice of Londons community (yay an Egyptian cinema season!). Holding a totally uncritial celebration of this kind of development bang in the middle of an obviously failed example is a bit ironic. Actually, I like the Barbican, getting lost (incredibly easy to do) around it’s deserted walkways is a joy for me, and I can’t deny that it’s been succesful at becoming highly presitgious central London address but I don’t think that was the plan. The plan for simple affordable social housing failed.*
For an example of this kind of architectural hubris about to be made concrete and an excellent criticism of it check this out…
“Gehry, lauded as one of our greatest living architects, is basing a multi-billion-dollar project, which will dramatically change the face of Brooklyn, and indeed New York City, on a pretty bride.
Well, it is a great way to avoid the real issues, like what 16 towers are doing in a low-rise neighborhood, and why, 30 years after the idea of planned developments has been completely discredited, are Gehry and his puppet-head landscape architect Laurie Olin building a mall-o-condo-plex surrounded by closed-off park-cades. Olin, in an interview with the Times, spat out this: “Yeah, Brooklyn has a structure of streets, and buildings and people, and a history and culture, but underneath that there’s a geology and a topography and a history of the land that I’ve found inspirational.”
In other words, “We know they’re there, but we really don’t care about the streets (which we are going to close off and cover over), or the buildings (which we’re going to seize, destroy and cast into permanent shade) or the culture (which we’ll just push out or build over) or the people (ditto). We’re just gonna do what we want [and] candy-coat it with idiotic imagery”
But… You should still go to the exhibition. I’d probably go again if you’re interested. It’s the best exhibition I’ve been to for ages, purely on the srength of the massive amount of material that’s been put together; a pretty much comprehensive survey of the important movers and shakers in the area. You just have to do the interpretation yourself eg. I would have put some stuff about science-fiction art and film set design in there as there’s obviously a massive cross over, as i mentioned back up the top, for me what the exhibits are about is a kind of architectural equivalent of science-fiction, the models encourage you to examine the values of the societies which dreamed them up and to imagine what it would be like to live in such alien settings. To be fair I think this is what the exhibitions designers were getting at a bit but they just didn’t do a great job. Rather than seeing the architects as genius visionaries you can see them as a kind of combination of the awesomely imaginative, the politically naive, consumate craftsmen and frustrated dictators and then the whole thing makes a bit more sense.
Anyway, I’ll stop rambling now.
*I guess I should point out I’m under no illusion that my own views on the subject are any less a product of prevailing cultural ideas of how development and progress happens than the designers featured in the exhibition.
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