Animations of the Algae Canals of Planet City, an imaginary city for the entire population of the earth.
"The batteries of Planet City are alive with fish and algae, as excess wind and solar power pumps water through canals to high altitude holding lakes in the city’s upper floors. When needed the dams open and turbines turn. Tides rise and fall as lights glow, televisions blare and hard drives spin."
Planet City
Humans dominate the planet. As a consequence of hundreds of years of colonisation, globalisation and never-ending economic extraction and expansionism we have remade the world from the scale of the cell to the tectonic plate. But what if we radically reversed this planetary sprawl? What if we reached a global consensus to retreat from our vast network of cities and entangled supply chains into one hyper-dense metropolis housing the entire population of the earth? Planet City is a conceptual design project explores the productive potential of extreme densification, where 10 billion people surrender the rest of the planet to a global wilderness. Although wildly provocative, Planet City eschews the techno-utopian fantasy of designing a new world order. This is not a neo-colonial masterplan to be imposed from a singular seat of power. It is a work of critical architecture – a speculative fiction grounded in statistical analysis, research and traditional knowledge. It is a collaborative work of multiple voices and cultures supported by an international team of acclaimed environmental scientists, theorists and advisors. In Planet City we see that climate change is no longer a technological problem, but rather an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics. Planet City is simultaneously an extraordinary image of tomorrow and an urgent examination of the environmental questions facing us today.
Designer and Director Liam Young
Visual Effects Supervisor Alexey Marfin
Visual Effects Case Miller, Aman Sheth, Vivian Komati, Yucong Wang
Lead Researcher Case Miller
Researcher Pierce Myers
The pink algae canals and fish farms of the city are both its food source and power supply.
The pink algae canals and fish farms of the city are both its food source and power supply.