Brasília of the North

An exhibition exploring the ideas, personalities and broader social, cultural and political climate that underpinned the aspirations to transform Newcastle into a modernist city.

During the 1960s, policymakers, planners and architects had the highest aspirations for Newcastle and the North East, imagining it being transformed into the ‘Brasília of the North’ – a shining north European equivalent to the futuristic new Brazilian capital city then emerging from the Cerrado savanna.

This exhibition, which forms part of our Concrete Dreams project, explores the ideas, personalities and broader social, cultural and political climate that shaped these aspirations. It brings together a range of models, drawings, photographs, films, archival materials and other artefacts, relating to Tyneside’s 1960s and 1970s transformations.

Exhibits include the 6m-long Newcastle city model dating from the 1960s, the original model for Gateshead’s Trinity Square Carpark, a Metro ‘cube’, and a range of maps, books, drawings, photographs and films.

Rather than tell one single story about this still controversial moment in the city’s past, we are inviting visitors to construct their own individual stories as they explore the exhibition.

Running September 2024 to June 2025, Concrete Dreams is a project exploring how Tyneside was transformed during 1960s and 1970s and the ways we might reimagine the city of today. Find out more

Photo credit: Killingworth Towers, c. 1980. Image Courtesy of Amber Collective