Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate is an architectural exhibition that tackles today’s climate and environmental crises. The exhibition is on now at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) campus grounds in Singapore, allowing you to encounter visual and narrative works that make the scale of the planetary crisis feel immediate and public. Let’s take an explore.
Furthermore, the exhibition is co-organised by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU-CCA Singapore) and NTU’s ADM Gallery. It runs from 28 April to 13 June 2025 at the building’s 2nd floor art galleries. You explore how architecture and speculative fiction can make sense of Earth’s transformation in the age of climate change.
Also, the featured works are by DESIGN EARTH a design-research practice founded by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy. Ghosn is Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Science in Architecture Studies in Urbanism at MIT. Jazairy is Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Urban Design program at the University of Michigan.
Stories of architecture, storytelling, and planetary design
Moreover, their work blends architecture, storytelling, and planetary design. It visualises the impacts of climate technologies using detailed drawings, graphic novels, and installations. You won’t see typical architectural plans here, it is simply works of scientific art in an aspect, all speculative, critical, and at times surreal.
The exhibition’s titled “Design Earth: Speculative Fiction for the Climate”, sets the tone and the mood of the galleries. It presents architectural fantasies rooted in real environmental scenarios. Here, you walk through stories that imagine Earth reshaped by climate interventions. They depict tad a dystopian future, sometimes for better, sometimes worse.
This exhibition highlights three chapters from the larger work, each addressing a planetary common as matter of concern. This is namely the atmosphere, deep seabed, outer space: After Oil (2016), Pacific Aquarium (2016), and Cosmorama (2018).
Moreover, this isn’t your typical gallery experience. You’ll move between wall-sized speculative drawings and compact book excerpts. The pace is yours to set. Sit with one narrative or breeze through the visual provocations. Either way, the ideas stick. The galleries here are small, but functional with 3 separate spaces showcasing the artwork as square tiled canvases.
Also, the drawings focus on three planetary domains: the atmosphere, the deep seabed, and outer space. Each domain features a specific environmental concern, interpreted through visual storytelling. One eye-catching work turns the Empire State Building into a space-faring Empire State Ark. Inside this vessel is a bestiary of animals fleeing extinction. You will likely pause to absorb the haunting mix of nostalgia and doom.
Additionally, other pieces show altered weather patterns, massive atmospheric machines, and geoengineering gone wrong. These speculative scenarios might seem exaggerated, but they’re grounded in ongoing scientific debates. You will find that these imagined futures raise very real questions.
As told through engineered drawings
Also, these works use maps, section drawings, and diagrams. However, it is always with an artistic twist. You are not just learning about climate science. You are witnessing a form of design activism through fiction.
Moreover, in the book, the five central “geostories” include Petrified Carbon, Arctic Albedo, Sky River, Sulfur Storm, and Dust Cloud. Each story explores the Earth after the implementation of controversial climate engineering techniques. In Petrified Carbon, you will see fossil fuel infrastructures repurposed as monuments of a bygone carbon era. In Arctic Albedo, melting ice and solar reflectors change how sunlight touches Earth’s poles. Sky River imagines the atmosphere as a weather modification system, pulsing with artificial rainfall.
Expect to engage with graphic novel excerpts and cinematic animation loops. Each piece is accompanied by short, accessible texts. They don’t bombard you with data. Instead, they nudge you to reflect, a tad uncomfortably at times. The artworks ask questions like: Who decides to intervene in Earth’s systems? Who benefits from those interventions? Who bears the cost? You may not walk away with answers, but you’ll be thinking about these dilemmas long after leaving.
The exhibition doesn’t preach. It doesn’t claim to offer solutions. Instead, it reframes the problem through design and storytelling. That’s its power—you’re not being told what to think, but shown what could be. Notably, the gallery exhibition is curated by Dr Karin G. Oen, Director of NTU CCA Singapore, and Senior Lecturer in Art History at NTU’s School of Humanities. Her curation balances scientific inquiry with visual artistry. It’s accessible to design students, climate activists, architects, and curious minds alike.
Also, you do not need prior knowledge of architecture or climate science to appreciate the show. Just bring curiosity. If anything, you’ll leave wondering what role architecture can, or should play in a world undergoing rapid transformation.
Wrapping up
It is worth noting that DESIGN EARTH’s past work has been shown at major global venues like the Venice Architecture Biennale and MoMA. This NTU edition builds on that foundation, tailored for a Southeast Asian audience navigating its own climate challenges.
There’s no sense of doom, just urgency and creativity. The tone is serious, but there’s also playfulness in how the stories unfold. That contrast makes the content easier to digest and a tad more engaging. It is a call to imagine better futures, even amid planetary instability. By walking through the stories, you participate in that act of re-imagining. You are not just a viewer, you are a potential thinker, critic, or even dreamer. You can browse through the Geostories book at a small reading nook at the last gallery.
All in all, that wraps up our visit to DESIGN EARTH’s, you are good here for under 30 minutes given its small gallery size in the ADM Gallery 2 of the NTU School of Art, Design and Media. The adjacent ADM library is also one to check out in the building too, all in the same university which is also known for their annual National Vertical Marathon challenge.
The exhibition runs from 28 April to 13 June 2025 at NTU with the gallery opened only on weekdays from 10am- 5pm. If you are visiting NTU Singapore between late April and mid-June, this is worth checking out. It’s not every day you get to see architecture used like this, as fiction, as forecast, as provocation.
