Ideal City - Exclusive Exhibition Preview and Tour

Prior to the opening of the Farrell Centre's summer exhibitions, we'll be hosting and exclusive exhibition preview and guided tours of the exhibitions with expert input from the Centre team. The three exhibitions are:

Spaces for Nature: An exhibition exploring how urban brownfield sites can become vital spaces of cultural and ecological diversity and resilience for both humans and non-humans.

Cities are inhabited not just by humans, but by a vast range of plants, animals, micro-organisms. Conventional urbanist approaches have long sought to marginalise or even eradicate these non-human inhabitants. However, the challenges posed by climate change – from urban heating to flash-flooding – requires working with, rather than against, these urban ecologies. Landscape architects are central to this task, helping to facilitate the necessary transformations by working collaboratively and in tune with human and non-human beings to co-create resilient, inclusive environments.

This exhibition, presented across three threads, showcases a landscape architectural design project undertaken for the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. As part of the National Lottery Climate Fund supported programme Birds, Bees, Bikes and Trees, the brief was to reimagine Baltic Square as a biodiverse, inclusive habitat. Drawing from the material richness and ecological resilience of urban brownfield landscapes, the project explores how degraded sites can become vital, participatory spaces of co-habitation – for pollinators, birds, plants, and people alike.

Creative Central NCL: An exhibition showcasing proposals by students from Newcastle and Northumbria Universities for fostering creativity in the heart of Newcastle city centre.

What is a creative city? How do we make space for creativity? How can creativity enhance a city’s places, spaces and communities?

Creative Central NCL is a Newcastle City Council initiative to create opportunities for independent artists, creative professionals and cultural organisations to thrive in central Newcastle. In 2022, the Creative Central team approached Newcastle University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape and Northumbria University’s Department of Architecture & the Built Environment to invite students to help imagine creative futures for creative zone around Clayton Street in the city centre. Since then, both universities have worked collaboratively to embed Creative Central into design project briefs that envisage a creative, vibrant, urban environment.

This exhibition presents a selection of design ideas developed by architecture, interior architecture, landscape and urban design students from both universities, including collaboration with local creatives, design practices and schools. The images on display are snapshots of larger projects, addressing a variety of design briefs, some only lasting a week, others a full semester. They are not meant as fully formed proposals, but rather as a source of inspiration and a starting point for imagining what a creative city would mean to you.

Keep on the Grass: An exhibition inviting you to think about the role of signs in public spaces: what signs are needed, which ones work and why.

Signs are everywhere. They tell us where we are, where we can go and where we can’t go. They tell us what we can do and what we can’t. Signs are about information but they are also about behaviour: they set a tone.

Signs take up space. They affect what our cities look like. They can help us get around, but they can also get in the way.  And sometimes signs make us laugh. Are there too many signs? What kind of signs work best for you? How do they make you feel? The exhibition invites you to think about the role of signs in public spaces: what signs are needed, which ones work and why.

About the Farrell Centre

Located in Newcastle, the Farrell Centre’s mission is to widen the debate around the crucial roles that architecture and planning play in the contemporary world in ways that are engaging, innovative and challenging.

The Centre is admission free and offer a variety of experiences for visitors of all ages: exhibitions, public talks and debates, activities for schools, young people, community groups, professional events, as well as publications, podcasts and other digital projects.

One of the UK’s leading architect-planners, Sir Terry Farrell is the driving force behind the Farrell Centre project. Sir Terry grew up in Newcastle and studied at Newcastle University, before leading the regeneration of the quayside in the 1990s, among other projects. Local practices SPACE and Elliott Architects worked to restore and transform the historic Grade II-listed Claremont Buildings on the edge of the Newcastle University campus into the Farrell Centre’s new home, which opened in April 2023.

About the venue

You can find further details about this venue here.