During a three-month residency in Birmingham, Sven Bergelt explored the architectural transformation of the city. His research focused on the Birmingham Central Library, designed by architect John Madin and located at Paradise Forum, which was facing demolition at the time. While some regarded the Brutalist building as an outstanding example of British post-war architecture, others, including Prince Charles, considered it an architectural failure. In 1988, the latter described the library as a place where books were more likely to be incinerated than kept.

The resulting works were presented in 2015 under the title Future Worn Out New One at the offices of Glenn Howells Architects in Birmingham. The exhibition brought together different artistic explorations of the city's past, present, and possible futures. The installation Behind, the Paradise combined a large black wall with a taxidermied crow placed on concrete fragments from the former Longbridge car factory. For Where is the Library, Bergelt documented architectural details of the library's façade through frottage, bringing them together in an artist's book. Other works connected Birmingham's urban history with German literature, drawing a parallel between the mummified cat found at Curzon Street Station—a traditional building sacrifice meant to ward off misfortune—and the burial of a child in Theodor Storm's novella The Rider on the White Horse. A doormat printed with the exhibition title, meanwhile, addressed the ongoing renewal and transience of urban architecture.

For Chapter II: Re-construction, a further development of the project presented in the library of HALLE 14 in Leipzig, Bergelt combined selected works from Birmingham with new works. The artist's book and a series of large-scale frottages were presented alongside a photograph and a three-dimensional reconstruction of the library's façade. A marble slab engraved with a quotation by Prince Charles stood in dialogue with these elements, alongside a live webcam feed from Paradise Forum documenting the ongoing demolition of the library.

Future Worn Out New One brings together different approaches to documentation, archiving, and reconstruction. The works explore how architecture becomes a carrier of collective memory and the role it plays in shaping the identity of a city whose appearance is continually transformed by urban redevelopment.

▶︎ Review of the exhibition by Anneka French