The World Around’s first public exhibition explored the evolving relationship between design and the planet

January 24, 2025 – March 31, 2025 

University of Kentucky, College of Design

In January 2025, The World Around presented its first public exhibition, Life On Earth, an original curatorial project exploring the planetary dimensions of architecture and design. Installed at the newly inaugurated Gray Design Building at the University of Kentucky’s College of Design—designed by Studio Gang—the exhibition brought together a collection of video works commissioned and produced by The World Around between 2020 and 2024.

Through contributions from eighteen international practitioners, alongside short films developed through the Young Climate Prize program, Life On Earth examined the global systems that underpin the built environment and the social and ecological consequences of design in the Anthropocene. Assuming a conceptual vantage point from orbit, the exhibition invited students and visitors to observe human civilization with critical distance, and to consider architecture and design as both products of and responses to planetary crisis.

The selected videos offered grounded, site-specific perspectives from six continents, including the salt flats of Argentina, the caves of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, and urban centers across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Contributors included Alice Rawsthorn, Cave_Bureau, Comunal, David Chipperfield, Deanna Van Buren, Ecocitex, El Futuro Imposible, Ensamble Studio, Ernesto Picco, Etta Madete Mukuba, Feral Atlas, Formafantasma, Francis Kéré, Holly Jean Buck, Hsieh Ying-Chun, Liam Young, Top Manta, and waiwai—all of whom had previously participated in The World Around’s public programs.

In addition to these dispatches, the exhibition featured Young Climate Stories, a film series documenting four mentor–mentee collaborations formed through the Young Climate Prize:

Alfonse Chiu with Paola Antonelli

Lulu Goulet-Hofsass and Sophia Tabibian with Bruce Mau

Namra Khalid with Henk Ovink

Stanley Anigbogu with Jon Marshall

These intergenerational stories emphasized the role of mentorship, solidarity, and shared authorship in building a climate-literate design culture.

All videos included in Life On Earth were originally presented as part of The World Around’s core programming—including its annual Summit and global In Focus events—and were curated for this exhibition as a collective reflection on the urgency, complexity, and creative potential of design in the face of environmental breakdown. The exhibition marked a significant expansion of The World Around’s curatorial practice and reinforced its commitment to supporting interdisciplinary and globally networked forms of architecture that address the most pressing issues of our time.