Life on Earth - Gallery Exhibition & Lecture
Join us for LIFE ON EARTH, an audiovisual exploration of architecture and design's relationship with our planet, featuring David Chipperfield, Feral Atlas, Francis Kéré, Alice Rawsthorn and many more.
Beatrice Galilee of The World Around and McKenna Dunbar will give an opening lecture on January 24 at 4:00 p.m. in the Forum (GDB 111). The exhibition will run from January 24 through March 14, 2025, in the Gray Design Building Gallery.
Exhibit info from The World Around:
"Assuming a vantage point from space, Life On Earth invites the University’s students to examine human civilization with critical distance. The exhibition presents video dispatches from 18 international members of The World Around community, alongside stories of intergenerational learning and collaboration from participants in The World Around’s Young Climate Prize program, all commissioned and produced in-house between 2020 and 2024. Life On Earth conceptualizes architecture and design at a planetary scale, mapping the global span of the systems that have enabled us to build and live as we have for the past 50 years—and the extent of their environmental and social consequences.
The international array of experts and leaders, all of whom have been speakers at past events organized by The World Around, includes: Alice Rawsthorn (UK), Cave_Bureau (Kenya), Comunal (Mexico), David Chipperfield (UK), Deanna Van Buren (USA), Ecocitex (Chile), El Futuro Imposible (Argentina), Ensamble Studio (Spain), Ernesto Picco (Argentina), Etta Madete Mukuba (Kenya), Feral Atlas (USA, China), Formafantasma (Italy), Francis Kéré (Burkina Faso/ Germany), Holly Jean Buck (USA), Hsieh Ying-Chun (Taiwan), Liam Young (Australia), Top Manta (Senegal and Spain), and waiwai (UAE).
Featuring on-the-ground videos from the salt flats of Argentina to the caves of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, the exhibition brings into focus the diversity and uniqueness of our planet, championing the efforts of those using design to conserve and heal it in the face of compounding existential crises. Revealing through its videos the interconnected nature of life on Earth, the exhibition aims to emphasize the necessity—and urgency—of collective action in addressing climate breakdown, and to invite a broader discussion on the role of the architect in the Anthropocene, asking students to consider how as designers they can make an impact.
The exhibition will also present The World Around’s Young Climate Stories, a video series celebrating the intergenerational collaborative relationships formed between pre-eminent designers from The World Around community and the young people designing to address the climate crisis through our Young Climate Prize. The Prize is a unique award and mentorship program created to empower the generation born into the climate crisis by pairing young designers with mentors from our global community with the expertise and experience to accelerate their impact. Mentor-mentee pairs featured in Young Climate Stories: Alfonse Chiu (Singapore) and mentor Paola Antonelli (Italy/US); Lulu Goulet-Hofsass and Sophia Tabibian (US), and mentor Bruce Mau (Canada); Namra Khalid (Pakistan) and mentor Henk Ovink (Netherlands); and Stanley Anigbogu (Nigeria) and mentor Jon Marshall (UK).
The videos were all first shown within the global programs that form the pillars of The World Around; including the platform’s all-day Summit in New York City, created to convene and champion the now, near and next of architecture; and its In Focus programs, which meet the moment in the world cities at the center of the conversation with thematic curation."