DESIGN EARTH’s ‘A World Previous to Ours’ and ‘Elephant in the Room TalkBox’ on exhibit at 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale
El Hadi Jazairy’s work with research practice DESIGN EARTH exploring missing narratives and ecofeminist fables in the face of climate change and mass extinction are included in this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale.
Jazairy is a professor of architecture at Taubman College and founding partner of DESIGN EARTH with Rania Ghosn. He also directs Taubman College’s Master of Urban Design program. DESIGN EARTH’s work was previously featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, 2018, and 2021.
This year, the practice has contributed the installation and accompanying narrated fable “A World Previous to Ours” to The Perimeter of Architecture: Amid the Elements project led by Princeton University’s Sylvia Lavin, and the “Elephant in the Room TalkBox” installation based on their “Elephant in the Room” animated fable to the The Next Earth exhibition presented by Antikythera in collaboration with MIT Architecture.
The 19th international exhibition, curated by Italian architect and MIT Professor Carlo Ratti, runs through Nov. 23 in Venice.
More on both projects from DESIGN EARTH is below.
A World Previous to Ours
Beginning with the Mastodon tooth drawing, through which Georges Cuvier articulated his theory of extinction, DESIGN EARTH constructs a sectional model of a stratified earth, into which is inserted a series of cavities that bring attention to missing narratives from the historical record.
Each cavity is a miniature-room that traces the physical displacement of the tooth and other old bones — unearthed from the New World, moved through colonial outposts to presidential, royal, and natural history museum collections. This journey reconstructs a history of speculative accounts through which the fossil form was put to do work in the world — mythological tales of First Americans, Founding Narratives, and political and racial theories that legitimize power to rule over lands, bodies, and lives. This brings us to the present moment of what stories to tell in the midst of another mass extinction on planet Earth.
Design Earth Project Team: Rania Ghosn & El Hadi Jazairy; Ekin Bilal (Design, 3D Model), Monica Hutton (Text), Jabari Canada (Sound), Qilmeg Doudatcz (web interface), Joyce Tullis (prototype).
Installation Coordinator: A/P Practice.
With Support from:
- Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
- MIT Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Grant
- Princeton School of Architecture
Listen to the fable “A World Previous to Ours,” narrated by Sylvia Lavin, on Design Earth’s site.
Elephant in the Room TalkBox
The “Elephant in the Room Talkbox” is a climate fable, spoken in the voice of Donna Haraway and dressed in architecture-parlante clothing. The box flattens the initial animation structure of a shot/counter-shot along the mirror-selfie at the back of the box.
The project addresses the elephant in the room — the climate crisis — by telling the story of one African elephant matriarch, from her capture and iconic staging through her ultimate break away from the American Museum of Natural History.
“Elephant in the Room” is the pilot animation in the eponymous DESIGN EARTH ecofeminist climate fables.
DESIGN EARTH Exhibition Team: Rania Ghosn & El Hadi Jazairy, Celia Chaussabel (installation), Jabari Canada (sound).
Elephant in the Room: Rania Ghosn & El Hadi Jazairy, Anhong Li, Monica Hutton (storyboard, script, animation).
Narrated by Donna Haraway
MIT Architecture Climate Work is curated by Nicholas de Monchaux, Ana Miljacki, Calvin Zhong.
Watch the animated fable on Design Earth’s YouTube channel.
Photo Credit: DESIGN EARTH
