Future Cities Forum's selection of built environment autumn/winter art exhibitions
- Heather Fearfield
- Sep 6
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 7

Image: Abigail Pogson, courtesy of The Barbican
The City of London Corporation has announced Chief Executive of The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, Abigail Pogson, as the new CEO of the Barbican Centre, following a competitive international recruitment process. She will take up the role in January 2026. The City Corporation says:
'Her appointment comes at a pivotal moment as the Barbican enters an exciting new chapter with an ambitious Renewal programme to restore and revitalise the iconic Grade II listed buildings for future generations. This coincides with a renewed artistic vision that includes seasonal, cross-arts programming and an enhanced civic focus.'
Future Cities Forum recently held its June 'Cultural Cities' discussions at The Barbican with the Director of Buildings and Renewal Programme, Dr Pip Simpson, which looked at the themes of retrofitting heritage buildings with net zero in mind, the development of the City of London Culture Mile, funding for the arts and much needed UK government investment.
Central to our discussions was the description of the Barbican renewal programme, where significant upgrades to the energy systems and public areas are due to take place. Our host Dr Simpson, described the history of the site and the first five years of plans for the retrofitting of the Barbican:
'The Barbican started as a housing regeneration project as the district of Cripplegate was cleared. There were only about forty-five houses on the site but soon 2,500 flats were created. The arts centre was interestingly always a part of the plans from the beginning. A lot of the build is underground with layers stacked on top of each other, so it makes it a tricky building project to work on. So we are now picking up on the genesis of the centre as a civic space and agitator and I think the friction between us and the City is a good thing.
The first five years of renewal will cover both public facing and hidden work. Pip explained:
'Our energy plant is forty five years old and we need to fix it by pulling it out and starting again. It has been well maintained but it is a third the size of Wembley stadium and as an engine room contains a very complex system. It is a challenge getting in there and doing the work. But then we have a fabric first approach to our envelope that surrounds the building and we need - for sustainability terms - to 'seal ourselves'.
'We are still raising forty million on top of the one hundred and ninety one million pounds already achieved in terms of funding. We need to work on our foyers, restaurants, conservatory and lakeside. How do we open the doors to all these spaces? There is the appetite from people to meet in our open spaces to run dance events or just meet as community groups and we also want to bring back some of our de-commissioned spaces. We do not have a front door, just a back one and we need to learn how to create a hub that is alive to the street.'

The Barbican's new art exhibition, 'Encounters: Giacometti' has opened with themes of displacement and hostile environments. Future Cities Forum is highlighting exhibitions this autumn/winter that provide a focus on the built environment and how this affects communities.
The Barbican describes its new exhibition:
'Works by contemporary artist Mona Hatoum and 20th century sculptor Alberto Giacometti are seen together for the first time in this ground-breaking exhibition, part of Encounters: Giacometti.
'Mona Hatoum presents a mix of pre-existing and new artworks alongside her own selection of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures, opening up connections and dialogues across generations. Integrating historic works by Giacometti within her own installations, Hatoum responds to Giacometti’s work, with a focus on the motif of the cage, themes of domestic and hostile environments, and how these spaces affect the viewer of the artworks.
'Hatoum’s work often looks at issues of displacement, marginalisation, exclusion, and systems of social and political control. Alberto Giacometti is one of the most significant European sculptors of the 20th century, known for his distinctive, elongated sculptures which experiment with the human form.
'This is the second of three exhibitions as part of Encounters: Giacometti, a series that brings together the practices of three contemporary artists known for their originality and ingenuity alongside historic works by the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966).
'Co-organised by the Barbican and the Fondation GiacomettiIn partnership with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi
The Encounters: Giacometti series is generously supported by Blanca and Sunil Hirani, Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a Donor Advised Fund held at The Prism Charitable Trust, and Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, with additional support from the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation. Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum is supported by the Bagri Foundation and Mandy Cawthorn Argenio as part of the Mona Hatoum Exhibition Circle, with additional support from White Cube.'

From the 13th September for a week, at the V&A South Kensington, part of the London Design Festival, is looking at how traditional Punjabi building techniques might provoke ideas on how globally we approach our built environment. It states:
' traditional Punjabi mud building techniques, the pavilion and sound installation explores how access, care, and environmental responsibility can shape the structures we build, both physically and socially.'
Heal, Home, Hmmm is a new sculptural pavilion by artist Roo Dhissou, commissioned by the V&A for London Design Festival 2025. Made using clay excavated from HS2 sites and traditional mud building techniques, the work explores how access, care, and environmental responsibility can shape the structures we build, both physically and socially. The pavilion will be accompanied by performance, sound, and public programming.
Heal, Home, Hmmm was co-designed by artist Roo Dhissou with Intervention Architecture, built using reclaimed HS2 clay from Rescued Clay, and features a sound installation created in collaboration with sound artist Oliver Romoff.

In Liverpool this autumn, RIBA North is encouraging visitors to 'go behind the scenes of the beautiful game and explore how football stadiums have shaped cities, local neighbourhoods, and communities for over 125 years.'
Home ground - opening on 15th October in a joint exhibition between Tate Liverpool and RIBA North - it says celebrates the stadium as a cultural landmark and a place of weekly pilgrimage, where thousands gather in hope, pride, and passion. From early terraces to today’s bold arenas, stadiums reflect the identity of the places they belong to:
'Inspired by Everton Football Club’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium, the exhibition features more than 50 stadiums from around the world. Through architectural models, photographs, film, and archive material, you will see how stadium design has evolved, and why it matters.
'Alongside material from club and city archives across Europe, highlights in the exhibition also features works of leading contemporary architecture practices. These include Herzog and de Meuron who designed the Allianz Arena in Munich which is the first stadium in the world with a fully colour changing LED exterior as well as Meis/BDP; gmp von Gerkan, Marg and Partners Architects; Populous; and more.
'See how architects have shaped the stadium, solving complex challenges to create shared experiences, and designing spaces that unite fans.'

Cold War military bases, mining sites and deep sea-data storage units have inspired a new exhibition at Tate St Ives this winter. This is a major exhibition of the work of Lithuanian-born artist Emilija Škarnulytė which opens on 6th December, which the gallery describes:
'Working between documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė creates films and immersive installations that explore deep time and invisible systems, as well as power structures hidden within the cosmic and geological order. In her explorations of climate change, nuclear energy, fantasy, folklore and mythology, Škarnulytė’s work covers the poetic, personal and political.
'From the perspective of a ‘future archaeologist’, Škarnulytė traverses spaces that we do not readily see, such as Cold War military bases, mining sites, neutrino observatories, decommissioned power plants and deep-sea data storage units. She reveals them to us as relics of a lost human culture, in which technological advancements have wrought a complex future laden with environmental harm and human losses. At times, Škarnulytė positions herself in some of her films as a hybrid, almost mythical creature, swimming through various bodies of water. Other works reflect on ‘dead zones’ in the sea, caused by a lack of oxygen, whether from industrial processes, or the effects of climate change.
'In a deeply personal film, Aldona (2013), visitors follow Škarnulytė’s grandmother Aldona on her daily walk through Grūtas Park, a sculpture garden of Soviet-era statues in southwest Lithuania, as she touches the sculptures, tracing the past and present. In the spring of 1986, Aldona lost her vision and became permanently blind. Doctors claimed that the nerves in her eyes had been poisoned, most likely due to the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
'Æqualia (2023) is the third in a trilogy of recent films of an imagined pantheon of feminine deities. Filmed in various confluences of rivers, they are places historically used as centres for extraction. In it, Škarnulytė embodies a vision of a post-human chimera – part pink-river dolphin, part-siren – swimming through the waters of the Amazon Basin. Škarnulytė glides through the six-kilometre confluence where the Rio Solimoes; milky white with suspended silts and clays from the high Andes, meets the Rio Negro; murky, black and heavy with the decay of lowland forests. The confluence, and the sight of the imagined creature mirroring its movements, infer the complexity of what is real; the past, present and future swirl of myth, the destructive forces of capital on the ecology of the region, and what lies beneath the profundity of time.
'Škarnulytė spent the month of June 2025 at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, as part of a Tate St Ives artist residency programme, where she worked on a new 16mm film, Telstar (2025). Drawing on the large number of fabled and ancient locations in Cornwall, she visited the Dry Tree, a standing stone near Goonhilly Downs, the ‘Cornish Pyramid’ in St Austell, Mên-an-Tol, the Boskednan Stone Circle and Chun Quoit, as well as the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station; taking her across a spectrum of time from the Neolithic Period to the space age.
'This exhibition at Tate St Ives will present Škarnulytė’s work in large-scale immersive environments. The architectural structures in the gallery will invite visitors to view the films from a series of different perspectives and at different scales, from the macro to the micro, alongside glass sculptures and lightboxes, showcasing the breadth of Škarnulytė’s practice, and bringing to the fore her visions of how mythology and technology can form a vibrant and transcendental force.'
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