the world turned inside out calls for an 'unexploring' of the earth at venice biennale

throughout history, humans have raced to explore, discover and chart every square meter of earth, but, instead of rushing forward, what if we reveled in not knowing and slowing down? this is what joyce hsiang and bimal mendis of plan b architecture & urbanism ask with their exhibition at the 2021 venice architecture biennale titled ‘the world turned inside out’. showing the globe cracked open, the exhibit calls for an unexploring of the earth in the bid to forge a new relationship between humans and the planet we live on.

images © designboom

located inside the main pavilion in the biennale giardini, the exhibition is composed of a large unfolded globe made up of three parts and 86 steel frames. the frames hold highly detailed contour drawings on the front and back while behind the deconstructed earth, there’s also a cosmic map wall drawing. the work follows a previous exhibition in 2013 by the duo called ‘the city of seven billion’, which modeled the earth’s surface as one continuous metropolis without boundaries

for this project, hsiang and mendis look beyond the surface of the earth to highlight what isn’t explored, mapped, or claimed by humans. ‘the world turned inside out calls for an unexploring of the earth. it mobilizes practices of redeacting, rewilding, and otherwise unclaiming the known. these can give way to phantom geographies and the wisdom of uncertainty,’  says hsiang and mendis. ‘the time has come for a mandate of abandonment and forgetting, an epoch of great deceleration. let’s scour the world to engineer emptiness and celebrate omissions. if one turns the world inside out, what will be unearthed?’

project info:

name: the world turned inside out
location: central pavilion, giardini, venice
event: 17th international architecture exhibition – la biennale di venezia
dates: may 22 – november 21, 2021
architect: plan b architecture & urbanism (joyce hsiang; bimal mendis)