Upcoming Exhibition Imagines Sydney’s Future

By Katie Lozyniak

Six teams of selected emerging architects are to exhibit visionary projections of a future Sydney. To be held at Sydney’s Customs House through March, the Sydney Future Visions 2020 Exhibition will encourage the greater public to glimpse critical global issues that are challenging urban development. In part to the exhibition event, each of the six teams will further their Sydney future visions at the Royal Australian Institute of Architecture Critical Visions Conference 2008, a national event attended also by international architects.

Richard Francis-Jones, Creative Director for the conference and founder of the Sydney Future Visions Exhibition, recognizes that an important role of architects and artists in the community is “to support the social expectations of what future development should be.” The culture of globalisation is a central theme to the conference, and he “organized a speculation about what Sydney will be like.” The exhibition is ‘a visionary exploration of how such global challenges as climate change, social inequity, urbanization, technological development, population displacement and growth will shape the way we live.’

While the Critical Visions Conference, in addressing its central themes, will largely benefit from the exhibiting teams’ creative insight, the initial exhibition event to be held at Sydney’s Customs House will provide a great opportunity for engaging the public with the major social concerns surrounding the culture of globalisation and the built environment. As Richard Francis-Jones has noted, the event is a realization of how architects and artists alike are trying to contribute to the community. The exhibition promotes a “radical rethinking of the structural development of our cities.”

The exhibition will reveal future visions of Sydney using display panels and screen projections. These visions ‘may be insightful, dark, challenging, confronting, disturbing, reassuring, measured, revelatory,’ or some or all of these. Presenting an image of a future Sydney and how the built environment reflects our values in the face of major global issues, these visions will be confrontational of how we are choosing to live.

Sponsored by The City of Sydney and a state initiative, the Sydney Future Visions 2020 Exhibition will run from March 19 to April 13, at Sydney Customs House, 31 Alfred Street, Circular Quay. The event will be open to the public daily.