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Fantasy Architecture: the seductive lure of the unbuilt

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For every building that is ever built, for every approved masterplan or feasibility study, for every competition win, there are dozens of other designs lurking in the shadows. The ones that should have been built but weren't. The hopeful contenders that never got to first base. And the ones that were only ever meant to exist on paper, or on-screen, or as models. Some of the best architecture is unbuilt. It is an alternative world, a parallel universe of fruitful possibilities. And you can find it in Sunderland.

I don't think for a moment that the organizers of "Fantasy Architecture" planned it this way, but there is something apposite in the opening venue for this Hayward Gallery touring exhibition. Sunderland, in north-east England, is one of those hard-hit industrial football cities (no more shipbuilding, no more coal, team desperate to get back into the Premiership) that you can just imagine signing up a big-name architect to deliver a "strategic vision". A vision replete with sketches of happy people in a Geordie townscape somehow transformed into Sienna or Barcelona. But in fact, Sunderland is getting along just fine with its new university campus and its Nissan factory and its Stadium of Light and its various cultural venues, even if it is doomed forever to play second fiddle to mighty nearby Newcastle. So somehow it seems fitting that pragmatic Sunderland should play host to an exhibition of other people's architectural fantasies. And it is a good show.

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