In Other Worlds by Liam Young Reimagines Cities, Landscapes, and Climate Futures at the Barbican Centre

"The Barbican Centre has announced In Other Worlds, a major immersive exhibition by speculative architect, filmmaker, and artist Liam Young, opening from May 21 through September 6, 2026. Occupying three distinct locations within the Barbican complex, the Silk Street Entrance, The Curve gallery, and Car Park 5, the exhibition will transform the Brutalist cultural landmark into a sequence of cinematic environments examining architecture, infrastructure, climate futures, and planetary urbanism."

"Developed in collaboration with writers, scientists, filmmakers, musicians, and performers, the project brings together large-scale projections, LED installations, sound environments, graphic narratives, costumes, and speculative artifacts to explore how fiction and spatial storytelling can shape conversations around environmental and technological change. Conceived as an immersive journey through interconnected speculative worlds, In Other Worlds extends Young's long-standing practice at the intersection of architecture, cinema, and environmental research."

"Rather than presenting fixed predictions, the exhibition approaches fiction as a tool for rehearsing possible futures and reconsidering relationships between cities, landscapes, machines, and ecological systems. The spatial experience begins at the Barbican's Silk Street entrance with a public LED installation featuring animated portraits of fictional workers inhabiting one of the exhibition's imagined futures."

"From there, visitors move through The Curve gallery and into the Barbican's infrastructural interiors, where large-scale moving-image installations construct narratives around extraction, climate adaptation, automation, and collective survival. Among the central works is World Machine (2026), a newly commissioned film created for the Barbican and presented on a 12-meter-wide projection."

In Other Worlds opens May 21 to September 6, 2026 across three Barbican locations: the Silk Street Entrance, The Curve gallery, and Car Park 5. The exhibition turns the Brutalist landmark into interconnected cinematic environments that examine architecture, infrastructure, climate futures, and planetary urbanism. Developed with writers, scientists, filmmakers, musicians, and performers, it uses large-scale projections, LED installations, sound environments, graphic narratives, costumes, and speculative artifacts. Fiction functions as a rehearsal tool for possible futures rather than fixed predictions, reshaping relationships between cities, landscapes, machines, and ecological systems. The journey begins with a public LED installation of animated portraits of fictional workers, then moves through gallery and infrastructural interiors featuring moving-image narratives about extraction, climate adaptation, automation, and collective survival.

Read at ArchDaily