Liam Young

Planetary Redesign

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square

Ground Level, NGV Design Studio

19 Aug 23 – 11 Feb 24

Liam Young: Planetary Redesign is the first major Australian solo exhibition of filmmaker and speculative architect Liam Young. Through an immersive display of moving image works, costumes and photography, Young proposes thought-provoking redesigns of our planet that offer a radically optimistic solution to the climate crisis.

Facing the climate crisis

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for urgent and coordinated actions to address the climate crisis – the severe challenge posed by anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change.

The IPCC has set a target to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and strives to keep it below 1.5 degrees Celsius. This requires substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions compared to current levels. At times the challenge ahead seems too large and complex to solve.

This exhibition offers two radical and highly speculative design ideas in response to the climate emergency. Both ideas are intended more as provocations than actual solutions. Through these radical ‘design fictions’ Liam Young calls for us all to be more ambitious, creative and collaborative in the way we address the climate crisis.

The Great Endeavor imagines one possible pathway – a multigenerational collective project, of epic scale, to draw greenhouse gases back out of the atmosphere. Meanwhile Planet City speculates on how human impacts could be vastly reduced by consolidating our activities and designing a radically sustainable megalopolis for the entire population of the earth.

The Great Endeavor

The Great Endeavor, 2023, depicts the construction of a global system of greenhouse gas extraction and storage, powered by vast renewable energy infrastructures – together capable of removing huge quantities of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. To achieve this, Young imagines a mobilisation of workers and resources on a planetary scale, enabled by international cooperation like never before.

Planet City

Planet City, 2020, provides a window into an alternative urban future. Commissioned for the NGV Triennial in 2020 and supported by the Bagôt Gjergja Foundation, it depicts the design of a new city for the whole human population of the earth. It questions whether the accelerating impacts of climate change could urge everyone to retreat together into one hyper-dense sustainable metropolis, providing space for the rest of the planet to recover as wilderness.

Liam Young

Liam Young is a speculative architect and director. He is cofounder of Tomorrows Thoughts Today, an urban futures think tank, exploring the local and global implications of new technologies and Unknown Fields, a nomadic research studio that travels on expeditions to chronicle these emerging conditions as they occur on the ground. His worldbuilding for the film and television industries has been acclaimed in both mainstream and architectural media, including the BBC, NBC, Wired, Guardian, Time Magazine and New Scientist.

Watch & Read

LIAM YOUNG: PLANETARY REDESIGN
THE GREAT ENDEAVOR

Listen to speculative architect and film maker Liam Young reflect on The Great Endeavor, 2023.

Liam Young: the worlds of tomorrow

By Dr Timothy Moore and Ewan McEoin

Liam Young is a designer and film director who works in the para-fictional space between render and reality. Through installations, film and performance, he builds worlds that showcase striking visions of tomorrow as a way of examining the urgent environmental questions confronting the present world.