Futures Found: The Real and Imagined Cityscapes of Post-war Britain

Interesting small but dense exhibition at the Royal Academy which invited six curators to look at plans for rebuilding cities in post-war Britain.  These buildings were often planned with a sense of social and economic aspirational change however often the ideas unravelled in reality.

I liked the mix in this show of looking at specific projects alongside themes. I was interested in the section of the University of Essex which pointed out it’s idealistic ideas of building a series of 28 towers as student accommodation which would be unsupervised and self-governing. However following demonstrations in 1968 the university became synonymous with unrest and only six of the towers were built.

The best of the themed section looked at carparks. Suddenly more people had car and obviously needed to park them when visiting cities. Bomb sites were seen as an opportunity by the x-military founders of Central Car Parks who developed a number of these building but as these were private commercial buildings they were of less interest to architects. They came to be seen as areas of crime. However a number of them are now being refurbished with shops being integrated.

There was also a good section on two London housing estates the Brandon and Aylesbury in Southwark. It compared the different approach taken to each estate with Brandon using a range of styles whereas the Aylesbury used system built slab blocks joined by walkways.

Closes on 29 May 2017

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