The Architecture Foundation and the Sunday Times launched an open competition in 1995 to design a millennial monument or landmark. In this exhibition 40 of the 200 entries were shown, with themes ranging from environmental concerns and technological skepticism, to a pro-science stance encouraging a celebration of scientific achievement and its potential.
The wide range of exhibitors included Robert Webb and his plans for a Millennium Forest. Webb's Forest was exhibited through documents supposedly from the next century, with captions such as, 'This rare archive photograph shows the forest in 2003, before the widening of the M25,' and, 'The first wild boar sighting was made in 2004', alongside aerial photographs showing a broad strip of forest flourishing along a motorway. Tim Martin and Nick Paske of ArtAcre designed a grass covered earthwork 50 metres high for a landfill rubbish dump, on which a flare would burn, powered by the landfill's methane gas. Edmund Hayden-Pigg and Carl Wenczek submitted the idea of placing camera obscuras all over the world and linking them by an information highway, to enable viewers to sit inside and see a five-foot image of what was happening, at that same time, in another location.
In association with
The Sunday Times