I co-curated this exhibition, which drew material principally from the RIBA Library Drawings Collection's holdings of over 600,000 artifacts. Through the presentation of around 130 imagined buildings, structures and schemes from the late medieval period to the present, the exhibition set out to answer two principle questions: What might our cities look like now, had the realities of history been different? How close will the architecture of the future bring us to a world already familiar from science fiction films and the fantastic virtual environments of computer games?

Fantasy Architecture was designed in a flexible touring format and included work by AOE, Robert Adam, Archigram, Charles Barry, Etienne Louis Boullee, William Chambers, FAT, Foreign Office Architects, Foster and Partners, Erno Goldfinger, Louis Hellman, Inigo Jones, Berthold Lubetkin, Edwin Lutyens, Eric Mendelsohn, Nils Norman, Claes Oldenburg, Joseph Paxton, Sir John Soane, Softroom and Paolo Soleri, among others. A significant proportion of the artifacts included from the RIBA Collection were exhibited here in public for the first time.

Previous examinations of 'fantasy' or unbuilt architectures tended to concentrate on specific subject areas (such as outsider architectures), periods (such as radical architecture of the '60s) or media (such as film). Fantasy Architecture surveyed the subject teleologically, focusing on the divergent formal qualities of architectural fantasies and motivations for their creation.

The selection of works was refined over a three-year period in collaboration with architectural historian Neil Bingham, then curator of the RIBA Drawing Collection and Rob Wilson, Exhibitions Curator at the RIBA Gallery. I also undertook research at the British Film Institute archive and visited and conversed with the various artists, architects and architectural practices involved. The accompanying publication (Fantasy Architecture 1500-2036, National Touring Exhibitions in association with the RIBA, 2004) included texts by Bingham, Wilson, Peter Cook of Archigram and myself. It was short-listed for the AXA Art Newspaper Award for Art Publishing.

Fantasy Architecture opened at The Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland in April 2004 and toured to The Lowry, Salford; The New Art Gallery, Walsall, The Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston; and The Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne. It was seen by an estimated 300,000 people and was widely reviewed in the specialist architectural press and mainstream media, including an extended feature on BBC2's Newsnight Review.