Motopia? Past Future Visions
Motopia? Past Future Visions was our headline exhibition from 20th May 2023 – 14th April 2024
Exhibition
The display looked at future visions of the motor car from the past, ideas that have become reality, and future visions still to be realised.
The exhibition offered an immersive journey through 130 years of future thinking about automobility.
It explored how this has influenced what we ride and drive, the nature of our towns and cities, the way we work, shop, and socialise. Visitors discovered some of the radical motoring concepts from the past that remain relevant today, and viewed bold visions both for vehicles and the built environment in which they would operate.
Ideas that are from history, but also of the future, still as relevant to our conversations about the future of motoring as they were when first introduced.
Motopia?
In 1959 British architect Geoffrey Alan Jellicoe described the place where vehicles and humans co-exist in harmony as Motopia. However, much earlier at the turn of the 20th Century another visionary, John Scott Montagu, was predicting fast roads connecting cities. Successive generations have taken these ideas and built upon them. The exhibition looked at those and other visions of the future from the past.
Vehicle Visions
There have been imaginative visions for motor vehicles over the decades, concepts and innovations for mechanical systems, body shapes and layouts.
Motopia? Past Future Visions – the guest volunteer blogs
We asked Seth Burgess, a third year university student currently studying history at Bournemouth, to write a few blogs on themes related to the Motopia? Past Future Visions exhibition.
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