Carpenters Workshop Gallery presents Bad ideas for good living, a solo exhibition in London by Rotterdam-based Atelier Van Lieshout. Opening alongside the publication of a new book by the same name, the show spans the gallery spaces, Prouvé House and Ladbroke Hall’s gardens, as a self-portrait of primal nature and the quest for a better world. Reflecting the genesis of Atelier Van Lieshout itself, the exhibition draws parallels between humans and nature, reflecting our shared instincts to survive, to dominate and to strive for utopia.

Building on the recent project The voyage: a march to utopia, where multiple large-scale sculptures stretched from the entrance to the exit of Art Basel’s Unlimited in 2025, this new exhibition continues Atelier Van Lieshout’s exploration of human drives, invention and alternative worlds. From mobile homes to biogas installations, the works are created to facilitate freedom, like birds roaming the planet, as well as autarky and survival.

The studio’s work has held a mirror up to our society for decades – a mirror that does not flatter but confronts, as exemplified by the controversial Domestikator, infamously installed at the piazza of the Centre Pompidou. Such provocations question our relationship to nature and our need to domesticate or dominate, threading ironically through functional sculptures, architecture, household objects and other works that Atelier Van Lieshout presents both in this exhibition and in the new publication Bad ideas for good living.

At the centre of the exhibition, Brutalist monkey towers above all living creatures. Representing the beginning of mankind, the work merges evolution with Van Lieshout’s fascination for movements that shaped modernity. This same lust for invention across art, design and architecture threads through the new publication Bad ideas for good living. Like the countless functional sculptures that grew into entire movements, or his pioneering ecological projects such as the self-sufficient anarchist free state of AVL-Ville, Van Lieshout’s practice consistently merges invention with survival, while proposing solutions, systems and alternative paths. Whether through architecture, ecology or sculpture, the atelier’s works embody an obsession with creating worlds where necessity and imagination co-exist.

Persistent, Predatory and Wise form a triptych of bird sculptures – an eagle, a vulture and an owl – acting as heraldic creatures whose instincts mirror our own: to survive, dominate, hunt, reproduce and explore. Alongside Brutalist monkey, the works offer encounters that explore how humans, nature and systems intersect with survival and invention.

As demonstrated in the book, Bad ideas for good living is a conceptual journey through Atelier Van Lieshout’s radical thought experiments, realised through the studio’s art and design, which go beyond aesthetic objects. They are functional tools for an alternative way of life and, ultimately, a reminder that even in challenging times, the quest for a better world remains possible. The path to a good life might just begin with a bad idea.