Nicholas Friend to Give Two Lectures on Cities of the Future
Online talks are being hosted by the Bedford Park Society
Left - Antonio Sant'Elia design for Monza Cemetery, 1912. Drawing. Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York. Right - Paris 2025, an ecological vision by Victor Callebaut
January 29, 2023
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The next two online lectures to be hosted by the Bedford Park Society will be by Nicholas Friend, MA, FRSA.
His talk will trace the development of city design – from the idealistic vision of the Bedford Park Garden Suburb and early 20th century responses tackling increased population – to the climate change issues facing cities of the future.
He argues that rather than being alarmed, there is inspiration afforded by architects who have imagined ways whereby every city of the future, not just its idyllic suburbs, could become a cleaner, greener, more fulfilling place to live.
Nicholas Friend
The first lecture takes place on Wednesday 15 February at 7.30pm and is entitled ‘Early dreams of better communal lives: from Bedford Park to Le Corbusier’.
Bedford Park came out of Jonathan Carr’s 1870’s vision of how middle-class people may be enabled to live happier, healthier lives in a London Garden Suburb. Shared to varying degrees by his contemporaries, this vision influenced projects such as Bournville, Port Sunlight and Letchworth Garden City.
This lecture explores how such visions were very much of their time, and how by the early 20th century rather different demands were being made of city visionaries to address increasing population and decreasing footprints of land.
Tickets can be purchased at £10 per person (plus 70p administration fee per ticket) from TicketSource.
The second lecture is on Monday 13 March at 7.30pm and is entitled ‘Design of the Future City: challenges to the city in the age of climate change’
In this talk, Nicholas Friend suggests that none of the different, later visions – whether General Motors’ city designed entirely around the motor car in 1939, the 1960’s Buckminster Fuller vision of the whole of Manhattan covered with a dome, or avant guarde architect Archigram’s imagined cities that could walk – addressed the current climate change challenges for cities.
Major change will have to take place – new sitings, new forms, new materials, new interactions between humans and the natural world, will all have to be considered, but architectural inspiration provides comfort that the city of the future could indeed be a cleaner, greener, more fulfilling place to live.
Tickets can be purchased at £10 per person (plus 70p administration fee per ticket) TicketSource.
For further information about the Society email: information@bedfordpark.org.uk or check its website.
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