3rd press - very limited run - the UTOPIA edition -
I'm very happy to share the third edition of This Was Tomorrow—a new, limited version of the book originally available at RIBA Bookshop and the London Review Bookshop.
The words are by Judith Martin, architectural conservationist and historian. The design and production? That’s a collaboration between me, Richard “Foe” Grainger (whose layout instincts are wicked), and the excellent Porto-based Devity Studio.
This version isn't just a reprint—it’s a reimagining. Less book-as-object, more object-in-motion. A tool, a companion, a field recorder for stray thoughts and sharp provocations. It’s playful on purpose, a little rough in the right places. Designed to clash with the seriousness of its themes—and to help shake something loose.
Because the point of this book has never been just about buildings or preservation. It’s about utopia—not as some unreachable dream, but as a tool. A lens. A way of thinking better futures into existence. And if you haven’t noticed, we desperately need to.
The last 30 years of global economics have stripped us of the ability to imagine alternatives. We live in a system where constant growth is the law, gain is the only measure, and hard work is sold as a magic key. And yet, here we are: people working two jobs and still unable to pay rent, while serial landlords and passive shareholders hoard resources with zero effort and even less empathy.
Calling housing a human right? Radical. Suggesting that rents should be capped? Revolutionary. Meanwhile, owning ten flats and renting them all out is “smart investing.” Nothing about this setup is fair—or even functional. And let’s not pretend it's “charity” to question it.
If people don’t have homes, or peace of mind, or a sliver of spare energy, they can’t even participate in this system. Not even as good little consumers. Capitalism is stalling. And the ones with private islands? They’ll be fine. But the rest of us need to wake up.
Because no one is coming to fix this. Not some politician, not a startup, not a prince charming in a Patagonia fleece. It’s all for profit now. Everything—except the love we share, and the corners of nature that still resist.
There’s so much potential in people. And don’t believe the story that humans are selfish by nature. That’s just the bedtime story the wealthy tell themselves to sleep at night—an old, boring fable by those terrified of sharing.
The answer isn’t to have nothing. The answer is to rethink what having even means. Property isn’t sacred. Technology should improve lives, not build empires. Money is a tool, not a destination. Being rich doesn’t make you interesting—it just means you’re good at hoarding. Good for you. Now what?
When platforms have millions of users, they’re no longer “private ventures”—they’re public utilities. And they should be owned as such. Imagine building systems from the ground up, where laws reflect lived realities, not just protect those sitting on piles of capital.
The myth of the self-made billionaire? Absolute fiction. At best, your skills make up 5% of your “success.” The other 95% is your environment—your family, your networks, the schools you could access, the chances you were given. We’ve built a system where only the extraordinary make it out. Everyone else has to contort themselves into some perfect, productive, high-functioning version of what? A servant? A brand? A smiling pitch?
That’s not human. That’s eugenics with better PR.
We’re standing at the edge of another industrial revolution. Like in the 1800s, we have the tools to work less, share more, and rebalance the equation. But will we? Probably not.
And not because people are asleep. Most are acutely aware—of rent swallowing their wages, of managers ignoring frontline insight, of the sheer energy it takes just to stay afloat.
The problem isn’t ignorance. It’s isolation.
People feel the weight of the system, but there’s no story that links their personal struggles to the wider machinery behind them.
Instead of questioning wealth concentration, they’re told to fear immigrants. Instead of seeing landlords as extractors, they’re told to become one. We’ve been sold the myth that success is personal and failure is moral—that if you’re not thriving, it’s your fault.
What we need, collectively, are stories that make sense of what we’re living through. And spaces to act on that knowledge, together. New blueprints. New pathways. New narratives.
This book is not a solution. But it’s a contribution. A signal. An invitation to keep dreaming, even when hope feels pointless. Because if we give up on that, we’ve already lost.
Let’s keep building—even if it’s just thoughts, questions, new ways of seeing. From the cracks of the current mess, something else can grow.
-------
Each copy is handmade, with a lot of care and a bit of chaos—so we’re keeping things slow.
If you're interested, drop me an email or reach out to me on Instagram to order.
Il'll try and get back to you as soon as I can to sort things out personally.
No big shop, no buy now button—just real people and a bit of patience.
TWT // Museo da Quinta de Santiago, Matosinhos, Portugal - 2025
The title of this work takes direct inspiration from the landmark 1956 exhibition This is Tomorrow, held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London’s East End. That show was a bold, collaborative venture that brought together architects, artists, and designers to explore the idea of a shared future. It challenged the norms of its time, presenting a vision that was forward-looking, experimental, and deeply rooted in collective imagination.
The original exhibition layout was designed by Erno Goldfinger, while the catalogue—striking in its lowercase title—was designed by Edward Wright, embodying the spirit of modernism and experimentation. Contributors included Alison and Peter Smithson, photographer Nigel Henderson, and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi—figures who redefined the relationship between art, architecture, and society.
We’ve titled this project This Was Tomorrow to reflect on those once-hopeful visions of the future—on their ambition, and on the promises that went unfulfilled. It’s about revisiting a time when dreaming of a better tomorrow felt not only possible, but essential—and asking how those dreams still resonate now.
The project began as a book, created in collaboration with architectural historian and conservationist Judith Martin. The book investigates the legacy of post-war modernist housing projects, reflecting on their ideals and how they’ve endured (or not) over time.
This exhibition is a second iteration of the project—an expanded revision that builds on the themes initiated by the book and opens them up for public dialogue.
February 2025
Residency for ESAD IDEAÂ
Matosinhos, Porto - Portugal
The ESAD IDEA residency expanded This Was Tomorrow into a new cultural context, shifting its focus from architectural critique to a broader investigation of how collective futures are imagined, built, and often deferred. Centred on Brito Capelo Street in Matosinhos, the project explored the visual language of economic stagnation, public memory, and cooperative housing. What began as a study of decaying utopias evolved into This Was “Já”, a reflection on suspended futures and grassroots resilience. The resulting photographic series, produced on-site, functions as both critical record and interactive object: printed double-sided and left unfolded, inviting viewers to reshape, fold, or reconfigure the images. This gesture reinforces the project’s central idea — that meaning, like architecture, is never fixed. Instead, it emerges from shifting perspectives, social dynamics, and the fragments of yesterday’s dreams.
The format of the images themselves plays a key role in the work’s conceptual fluidity. Printed double-sided and left unfolded, they invite interaction—viewers are free to fold, rearrange, or repurpose them as they choose. They may form patterns, construct origami, clean their shoes, or build paper boats and planes. This engagement underscores the project’s core idea: everything remains malleable, interpretable, temporary, and never set in stone. The phrase Volto Já may or may not emerge through the folds, revealing itself only by chance—just as the high-rise facades of Matosinhos, Porto, and beyond may appear or dissolve into abstraction. This element of unpredictability mirrors the way urban narratives are shaped—not by fixed truths but by shifting perspectives, fragments of memory, and lived experiences.
The initial brief for this residency was to expand the artistic exploration of This Was Tomorrow within a local context, shifting away from the Brutalist setting—less common in Matosinhos—to extract its essence. The goal was to explore the decay of old utopias and understand how this phenomenon manifests in public space.A key realization emerged: This Was Tomorrow was fundamentally about dreaming of the future and how those aspirations materialized—or failed to do so. This theme resonated with Brito Capelo Street, where Enrico undertook an immersive residency, later extending the project to peripheral areas of the greater Porto region.
This tension, between the belief in an impending economic revival and the stark reality of stagnation, became the conceptual foundation of the residency’s visual exploration. The project evolved into This Was “Já”, capturing the paradox of a future endlessly deferred while the present remains in a state of decay.
The photographic series produced during the residency serves as both an aesthetic and critical document of these spaces. The images capture the architectural plasticity of cooperative housing, its quiet resilience, and its overlooked significance in contemporary urban discourse. More than just a record of the past, this work reintroduces these environments into the present conversation, raising questions about how individuals take action when formal structures for progress are absent.
The format of the images themselves plays a key role in the work’s conceptual fluidity. Printed double-sided and left unfolded, they invite interaction—viewers are free to fold, rearrange, or repurpose them as they choose. They may form patterns, construct origami, clean their shoes, or build paper boats and planes. This engagement underscores the project’s core idea: everything remains malleable, interpretable, temporary, and never set in stone. The phrase Volto Já may or may not emerge through the folds, revealing itself only by chance—just as the high-rise facades of Matosinhos, Porto, and beyond may appear or dissolve into abstraction. This element of unpredictability mirrors the way urban narratives are shaped—not by fixed truths but by shifting perspectives, fragments of memory, and lived experiences.
This documentation does not claim historical accuracy or objective truth; rather, it embraces flâneurism, voyeurism, curiosity, and speculation. It is not a definitive representation of reality but one version among countless others—one of many yesterdays, one of many tomorrows.
During a recent visit to Park Hill in Sheffield, I took photos that, unfortunately, came too late to make it into the exhibition. Still, the visit felt like closing a circle. Walking through Park Hill, I could imagine what life might have been like there in the 1980s and ’90s—a vibrant community with a sense of pride in living in buildings that others often dismissed as “ugly.” It’s a phenomenon that echoes across Europe.
These buildings don’t conform to conventional ideas of beauty, but they represent something deeper: the certainty of a roof over your head, the freedom to build a life, and the hope for a better tomorrow. They stand as bold attempts to solve a pressing problem, using design to house as many people as possible, affordably and efficiently.
There’s a complexity to these places that goes beyond their physical form. They embody hope and failure, progress and struggle. For all their imperfections, they remain a testament to the human desire to build something better—that’s what I tried to capture: this schism, this tension.
My practice begins with the idea that art can’t exist on its own, cut off from the world. It’s tied to everything—our struggles, our society, our politics. Art is political, or it’s nothing. Just decoration, extra fluff—and we’ve got enough of that already.Â
What I make isn’t a statement—it’s a challenge. It’s about rejecting the spaces we’ve been given, the systems that created them. Art isn’t about making things pretty—it’s about shaking things up. It reflects the pain and contradictions of the world we live in.Â
Brutalism came from a real need. A direct, honest response to the demand for housing, for home. It looked ahead to something that didn’t exist yet—what some called utopia.Â
But don’t we need utopias? Dreams are what keep humanity moving forward—the belief that things can get better.Â
Brutalism wasn’t about luxury or pleasing the eye. These buildings were made to meet a need. To give people homes. To create communities. To serve. Â
They weren’t built to satisfy the rich or to be admired for their beauty—they were built to be useful.Â
And yet, it wasn’t the ideas that failed. It was the systems that were supposed to support them. Those systems focused only on raw, cheap concrete part - shelters stripped to their most basic form—and over time, they forgot the people and the communities these spaces were meant to serve.Â
Some of these buildings are still here—caught between relics of the past and reminders of greater ideas. They stand in limbo: housing the present, haunted by the unrealised future they were meant to bring. This was Tomorrow.Â
They ask: What are we building now? Who is it for? Â
Do we still have the courage to dream of something better—something real, something that matters?Â
My practice begins with the idea that art can’t exist on its own, cut off from the world. It’s tied to everything—our struggles, our society, our politics.
Art is political, or it’s nothing. Just decoration, extra fluff—and we’ve got enough of that already.
My practice begins with the idea that art can’t exist on its own, cut off from the world. It’s tied to everything—our struggles, our society, our politics. Art is political, or it’s nothing. Just decoration, extra fluff—and we’ve got enough of that already.Â
What I make isn’t a statement—it’s a challenge. It’s about rejecting the spaces we’ve been given, the systems that created them. Art isn’t about making things pretty—it’s about shaking things up. It reflects the pain and contradictions of the world we live in.Â
Brutalism came from a real need. A direct, honest response to the demand for housing, for home. It looked ahead to something that didn’t exist yet—what some called utopia.Â
But don’t we need utopias?Â
Dreams are what keep humanity moving forward—the belief that things can get better.Â
Brutalism wasn’t about luxury or pleasing the eye. These buildings were made to meet a need. To give people homes. To create communities. To serve. Â
They weren’t built to satisfy the rich or to be admired for their beauty—they were built to be useful.Â
And yet, it wasn’t the ideas that failed. It was the systems that were supposed to support them. Those systems focused only on raw, cheap concrete part - shelters stripped to their most basic form—and over time, they forgot the people and the communities these spaces were meant to serve.Â
Some of these buildings are still here—caught between relics of the past and reminders of greater ideas. They stand in limbo: housing the present, haunted by the unrealised future they were meant to bring. This was Tomorrow.Â
They ask: What are we building now? Who is it for? Â
Do we still have the courage to dream of something better—something real, something that matters?Â
This Was Tomorrow isn’t about nostalgia or embellishing the past.
It reflects on a time when dreams were big, not for gain but for communities. These houses, while often cold and flawed, succeeded in creating spaces where people could belong—places that fostered security, connection, and a sense of togetherness. The failure wasn’t in their design or materials but in the systems that neglected them.
Support structures—maintenance, funding, belief—crumbled as quick solutions overtook the deeper vision of building communities. The concrete didn’t fail; what failed was the collective commitment to those bold ideals.
Inspired by the 1956 exhibition This is Tomorrow at Whitechapel Gallery, this project echoes its spirit. The original exhibition brought together figures like Alison and Peter Smithson, Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Erno Goldfinger—united in imagining a shared future shaped by art and architecture.
This Was Tomorrow began as a book with Judith Martin, exploring the legacy of postwar modernism.
Now, this exhibition expands that dialogue, urging us to reflect: What are we building? For whom?
Accompanying the exhibition, opening 18 Jan 2025 at Museu Quinta de Santiago in Porto // @museuquintadesantiago, is a video exploring these ideas. Using Tim Rodenbröker-inspired techniques // @tim_rodenbroeker, I processed original images in Processing // @processingorg, reassembling them in a stop-motion style and editing them back together.
This blend of deconstruction and reconstruction mirrors the hopes and contradictions of the past and present.
This project isn’t just about looking back. It’s a challenge to the present, to believe in something better.
2087
vaporwave
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto