Imagined buildings, structures and schemes - from designs for palaces by medieval masters to futuristic film sets - are the focus of this new National Touring Exhibition which opens in Sunderland before touring to Salford, Walsall and Preston. Featuring the work of visionary figures as diverse as Inigo Jones, Joseph Paxton, Robert Adam, John Soane, Edwin Lutyens, Archigram and Foreign Office Architects, this exhibition includes a wealth of historical and contemporary drawings. Paintings, models, collage, film and computer renderings of designs for buildings that might have changed our lives, or could still do so, are also presented. Organised by the Hayward Gallery in collaboration with the Royal Institute of British Architects. Fantasy Architecture is divided into eight sections. The first, Private Worlds, looks at domestic environments, including the architect and design studio Softroom's 1998 commission for Wallpaper* magazine showing a radical alternative vision of twenty-first century domesticity. The Appliance of Science includes designs by the adventurous counter-cultural group Archigram, as well as NASA Ames Research Center's scheme for a space settlement developed in the 1970s. Megastructure includes Asymptote's recent design for the New York Virtual Stock Exchange with streams of financial data as a dynamic virtual environment and Joseph Paxton's 1855 vision for a monumental ten mile Great Victorian Way, combining shops, hotels and restaurants with an elevated railway. Vertical Visions reveals un-built plans for a new World Trade Center by Foster and Partners and a design for a bombastic tower commissioned by Gordon Selfridge in 1918 to perch atop his London department store. Past Perfect shows visions of imaginary landscapes and panoramas inspired by legend and archaeological evidence, while City Futures offers a glimpse of things to come in works like Fast Forward, 2001, a film designed to test visual memory of London's skyline. All the World's a Stage includes the lavishly ornamented Renaissance set designs of the Galli Bibiena Family and a sketch for a Fun Palace of 1974 by Cedric Price. The final section, In Memoriam, is at once serious and humorous. It includes designs for a Princess Diana Memorial Bridge by FAT as well as Claes Oldenburg's 1966 maquette for a monument to the mini-skirt. TOUR DATES 30 April - 3 July 2004 SUNDERLAND, Northern Gallery forContemporary Art 17 July - 19 September SALFORD, The Lowry 1 October - 21 November 2004 WALSALL, New Art Gallery 29 January - 9 April 2005 PRESTON, Harris Museum and Art Gallery More here ...