Building sites are ever-present in our cities. Yet we are always separated from them, experiencing them from a distance and from behind hoardings. There are important practical and health and safety reasons for this – building sites can often be dangerous. But this separation has the effect of disconnecting us from the construction process that exists almost in a separate world, where questions about how buildings are made and who they are ultimately for can struggle to get heard.

This exhibition aims to help change this. It recasts building not as an object but as an action. When you do this, everything the hoardings obscure comes into view: who builds our buildings, the conditions they work in, the tools they use and the skills they employ; the materials buildings are made from and their environmental impacts both locally and further afield; the money that funds buildings, where it comes from and what it wants in return.

In its exploration of the process of making buildings, the exhibition also turns a light on the process of making exhibitions. In contrast to the conventional ‘big reveal’, which often serves to obscure or erase the very many hands involved in favour of the artists or curator, BUILDING comprises a series of collaborative projects that will take place during the exhibition’s run, inviting the public to reconsider how exhibitions are made and the ideologies they reflect.

Project aims to establish a community design space

The exhibition opens with Stage Directions, a project by Sweden-based artist and architect Andjeas Ejiksson and Joanna Zawieja, which explores written instructions as an alternative architectural tool. Local artist and technician, Peter Evans, will build a waiting room from a set of instructions written by Ejiksson and Zawieja. Reframing the tools by which architecture is conceived and communicated, this is the latest iteration of an ongoing project putting forward an exploratory architecture that allows for change and subtle shifts in public life.

Working with and empowering communities to shape the architectural and building process is core to the exhibition. Lee Ivett, founder of architecture and design studio Baxendale, and Head of the Grenfell-Baines Institute of Architecture at the University of Central Lancashire, where he also runs Other People’s Dreams, a live-action participatory research and teaching studio, will work with a group from North East Young Dads and Lads – a unique youth support service that is dedicated to helping young men and young fathers to play an active and meaningful role in the lives of their children, within families and wider society.

The project aims to establish a community design space within the Farrell Centre and then utilise it as a resource to conceive, develop and produce a new mobile community workshop that can be used to facilitate participatory making activity throughout the city. The design will be open-source and be made available free of charge to other community groups, charities and third sector organisations.

Local architecture studio Mawson Kerr will work with students studying building trades from Sunderland College to create an installation in the Farrell Centre’s shop window. Inspired by the ‘apprentice pieces’ that aspiring craftsmen would make historically to show off their skills, Carpentry & Joinery, Electrical and Plumbing apprentices and Level 3 students will look beyond the functional grounding of their trades to explore the expressive and creative possibility of their skills. Underlying this will be a focus on retrofit and the impact of modern construction on the environment, with the students making use of recycled materials.

'We can create a city that works for everyone'

Owen Hopkins, Director of the Farrell Centre, said: “Architecture is so often something that is ‘done’ to places, with little involvement of the communities who will be directly affected by developments. BUILDING: An exhibition under construction aims to change this by shining a light on the building process and inviting the public to get involved. It is only by putting people at the core of how the built environment is produced and sustained and that we can create a city that works for everyone.”

Local architecture studio Mawson Kerr will work with students studying building trades from Sunderland College to create an installation in the Farrell Centre’s shop window. Inspired by the ‘apprentice pieces’ that aspiring craftsmen would make historically to show off their skills, Carpentry & Joinery, Electrical and Plumbing apprentices and Level 3 students will look beyond the functional grounding of their trades to explore the expressive and creative possibility of their skills.

Underlying this will be a focus on retrofit and the impact of modern construction on the environment, with the students making use of recycled materials.

The 3D design for the exhibition will be undertaken by local designers AND+Studio who will create a series of spaces that will adapt and evolve over the course of the exhibition’s run. Foundation Press will be responsible for the exhibition’s graphic identity and 2D design, which visitors will see them develop and install during the exhibition. Both studios will offer various opportunities for visitors to get involved in learning new skills and techniques, actively shaping the resulting exhibition.

Alongside the various projects and installations, a programme of workshops and activities will look to include as many people as possible in making the exhibition, as a way of broadening the conversation about how we can re-imagine the built environment as something we can all positively shape.

Katie Lloyd Thomas, Professor of Architectural Theory and History, Newcastle University, said: “It’s very exciting to see the architect Sérgio Ferro’s critique of the design/labour separation as the starting point for this innovative exhibition.

"Our research in the four year Brazil-UK project TF/TK has tended to focus on how this plays out in architecture – looking at widespread disregard for the construction site and know-how of builders, whilst promoting more emancipatory forms of building.

"This exhibition explores the same separation in the field of exhibition making, turning the galleries into spaces where design is returned to the fabricators and the processes of production are made visible.”

The exhibition emerges from the major research project Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledges of Architecture, Design and Labour for the New Field of Production Studies (TF/TK), work from which will also be on display in the Farrell Centre. Reflecting the ethos of that project, the exhibition has been conceived through a collaborative curatorial process involving Katie Lloyd Thomas, Professor of Architectural Theory and History (and Principal Investigator UK of TF/TK); Will Thomson, TF/TK Research Associate in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape; Lorna Burn, Assistant Curator, Farrell Centre; and Owen Hopkins, Director, Farrell Centre.

Visitor information:

BUILDING: An exhibition under construction

Farrell Centre, The Sir Terry Farrell Building, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RD

3 April – 18 August 2024

Opening times: Wednesday–Sunday, 10am–5pm

Free entry (no booking required)