From Garden City to Green City

A new exhibition at the Garden Museum has brought together the many visions, designs and projects that have inspired the ‘green city’ movement over the last 150 years. From the Victorian pioneers determined to introduce more ‘green’ into post-industrialised Britain to today’s ground-breaking architectural schemes transforming cities around the world, From Garden City to Green City considers whether our enthusiasm for eco-living and sustainability means we’re ready to make a lasting change.

Eastern Curve © Sarah Blee & The Landscape Institute

The exhibition includes some of the most exciting ‘green’ schemes from around the world, including Bosco Verticale by Stefano Boeri, Milan – a residential skyscraper complete with vertical forest;

and The Plant, Chicago – a 93,500sq ft former meat-packing building transformed into a net-zero energy vertical farm. Could this be the future of farming?

From Garden City to Green City re-visits a time when areas like Brixton and Waterloo could be depicted as rural idylls – this green signature underlying London inspired the designer William Morris and the novelist Richard Jefferies to imagine a future in which nature takes over. It tells the story of the very first ‘garden cities’ in Letchworth and Hampstead and their founders Ebenezer Howard and Dame Henrietta Barnett and looks at their legacy in the town planning of the 20^th century. It considers the work of contemporary visionaries like Triptyque’s green-walled office building that collects, filters and mists water over Sao Paulo. It opens the door on the many private green spaces that have been created by individuals and considers the impact of community movements like ‘guerilla gardening’.

Clapham Allotment by A. S Hartrick. 1940 courtesy The Garden Museum

The exhibition brings together books, works of art, photographs, design drawings, maps, diagrams and films to tell the story of the green city movement over the last 150 years.

How ‘green’ are we?
A series of lectures, in association with the Landscape Institute, will explore the many themes found in the exhibition culminating in a panel discussion entitled ‘Realising the Green City’ on the 16^th November.

Green Estate Meadows, Sheffield © Jane Sebire