Featuring proposals by some of the world’s leading architects, Future Non-Future includes works by FOA, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, OMA, Zaha Hadid, Foster + Partners, Cedric Price and many others. Iconic projects by these architects have been brought together to demonstrate the remarkable (and remarkably under-acknowledged) role that projects for London have played in shaping the past, present and future of this global city, and of contemporary architectural culture worldwide.
Some of the projects included in the exhibition are conceived as deliberately speculative, visionary and provocative; openly experimental, they are radical and nearly unimaginable. Others are more commercial or speculative in a city largely built this way since Georgian times. Some were initiated with every expectation that they will be built in coming years, and are still in planning stages. Others, however, are now nearly forgotten, having been surpassed by their designers’ subsequent careers. Some of these building projects are conceived as massive urban extensions to the city; others as small, private and intimate structures. Taken together, this collection of architectural drawings, models, sketches and statements builds a surprising, alternative vision of a well-known city and shows how London has served to provoke urban and architectural imagination.
[close]