Concrete Dreams is an eight-month programme of events running at Newcastle’s Farrell Centre, setting out to explore the ways in which Tyneside was transformed during 1960s and 1970s, and how we might now reimagine the city today.
Running until June 2025, the project includes exhibitions, events, teaching and research to ‘explore the ideals and aspirations that drove these transformations and the ways they continue to shape how we use and understand the city’.
We were happy to contribute a number of archive pieces to be included in the supporting ‘Brasília of the North' exhibition. This included extracts from our Metro Design Guide and strategy, which set out to ensure consistency across both old and new stations. Also, a selection of original photos showing various station construction stages and the Metro’s public opening. This supporting project to the overall programme sets out to ‘explore the ideas, personalities and broader social, cultural and political climate that underpinned the aspirations to transform Newcastle into a modernist city’.
We also loaned our model of Jesmond Library - ‘a building that signalled modernity on a local level’ - to ‘The Metro Studio’, a room dedicated to the Metro system and showcasing the transformation of the city’s transport infrastructure amongst developing home, leisure and cultural buildings.