From Garden City to Green City

Ever since the Victorians first longed to introduce more 'green' into their congested and polluted cities we have been striving for a better urban way of life.

This exhibition explores the many visions, designs and projects that have inspired the 'green city' movement over the last 150 years.

From the Victorian pioneers determined to improve living conditions in post-Industrialised Britain, to today's ground-breaking landscape architects transforming our urban centres, the exhibition considers whether our current enthusiasm for eco-living and seasonality can make a lasting change.

The exhibition 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 20th century.

It traces the impact of the Second World War and the wild flower meadows that sprang up in former bomb sites.

It considers the work of contemporary visionaries like the Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori's farming towers and Triptyque's green-walled office building that collects, filters and mists water over Sao Paulo.