Our new immersive exhibition invites you to step into the future.
Liam Young’s imaginary worlds take over various locations in the Barbican, inviting us to imagine what the future of humanity could look like, and the challenges and adventures to come.
Through an immersive experience, created in collaboration with leading voices from film, TV, literature and science, comes a display of films, audio stories, tapestries, soundscapes and costumes. In Other Worlds constructs a series of imagined futures for our planet, rooted in real technology and climate-based possibilities.
This is the first major UK solo exhibition of the filmmaker and speculative architect. Operating in the spaces between design, fiction and futures, these works immerse us in the consequences and opportunities of the decisions we make today. It is about stepping away from dystopia, asking: what if the future could actually be… hopeful?
Liam Young is an artist, director, and BAFTA-nominated producer who creates imaginary worlds as a way of thinking through the futures we fear, desire, and are already making. His visionary films and speculative landscapes act as rehearsals for the world to come, spaces capable of holding both our wildest aspirations and our most unsettling truths, where fiction becomes a tool for navigating the environmental urgencies of the present. Described by the BBC as “the man designing our futures,” Young also extends this worldbuilding practice across the film, television, and video games industries, crafting stories that remind us that the future is not a distant inevitability but an act of collective imagination.
His films, designs and costumes have been collected internationally by museums such as the MoMA in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Victoria & Albert Museum. He wrote, designed, and directed the sci-fi film Planet City and is the subject of his TED Talk, now watched by almost 3 million viewers. In parallel to his work in art and entertainment he is in demand as one of the world’s leading futurists consulting on next generation technologies and design strategies for clients such as Nike, BMW, Google, Sony, Microsoft and NASA JPL.
In Other Worlds / Liam Young
May 21 – Sep 5, 2026
Barbican Centre
London, UK
